Gedemon's Civilization, development thread

Another post about a possible mechanism, with a small relation with the effect of social stratification and the discussion about the tech tree:

A City could have extra yields relative to its size and depending on the population type.

Lower class could give production from the start

Upper class could give gold with currency, science/culture with "literacy" (which would represent an intermediate step between "writing" and "education")

Middle class could give gold (after economics?), science/culture with "education"

For example a size 10 city with 80% lower class, 10% middle and 10% upper would yield

8 productions
1 gold aftet currency, 2 after economics
1 science/culture after "literacy", 2 after education
 
General Opinions

I like how it would discourage unemployment, as Unemployed Citizens would just use up food :c5food: without any immediate benefits. It would be nice if the middle class science :c5science: /culture :c5culture: balance can be manipulated with Policy Cards. That would allow the player to manipulate the balance, while still keeping the AI in check. The production-heavy nature also fits perfectly into the system: with the largest lower class providing useful production :c5production:, and the smallest upper providing the less useful gold :c5gold:.

Queries and Ideas
  • Are you going to go full Victoria II POP-style and give people occupations?
You can add more functional systems if you do so. For example, Clergymen can provide faith :c5faith: from religious population through a religious building; abundant lower-class Laborers harvest resources from farms, while the fewer, middle-class Artisans convert the harvested resources to food :c5food:.
  • When implementing the mechanic (which I am in favor of), what would be it's justification?
I feel that the production :c5production: would be better off given to Slaves instead, with Corvée allowing you to extract production :c5production: out of the lower class, in exchange for greater Unrest :c5angry: (when stability is implemented). Again, the middle class science :c5science: / culture :c5culture: balance could be controlled in the same way. Having only the upper class produce gold :c5gold: feels weird, as all social strata can be taxed. It should be up to the player to decide the balance between the different yields. If we take faith :c5faith: as an example, the lower class would be the most religious if we have a trade off between science :c5science: or faith :c5faith:, so middle class Clergymen produce faith :c5faith: through a Church building for other middle and lower class people. The upper class contributes their faith :c5faith: output through their political power so Policy Cards and a government that favors high-ranking religious people allow them to produce more faith :c5faith: than a system where the religious power of the masses is preferred.
 
Depends what era we're talking about and the societal structure. If we're talking about late-ish medieval-ish Europe, the lower class would be the working/peasant/farming class, the middle class would be the merchant class and the high class would be the nobility.

The relative populations of each are determined by a few factors. Often in class-based societies, there is very low class mobility, meaning high class children are born to high class parents, middle to middle and low to low. You would not find a middle class person born in the lower class or a high class person born in the middle class. Also, the wealth and prosperity of each class was dependent on the wealth of the nation, not the other way around for the most part. The merchants were only as rich as the nation divided by the number of merchants. Having more merchants doesn't give more opportunities for trade- more opportunities for trade bring more merchants. In a feudal system, the wealth of the nobility was reliant on the work of the lower class.

Also, if you're talking about production, that probably should not be slaves. The way you use production in the game, it's mostly skilled labour- carpentry for building buildings, bricklaying, metal working, etc. Generally you'd want skilled, paid labour for those tasks as you can't afford to have your roof fall down, and using unwilling and possibly uneducated slaves would not work for that.

By that logic, it would be the middle class that would provide production: not only merchants, but they would be the blacksmiths, tailors, cobblers, and craftsmen of any kind. The lower class is for unskilled labour- basically working the land (farms, mines, etc.)
 
@dunkleosteus
social mobility is rare in strict class structures, yes, but it's not unheard of. It just takes a generation or two, or in rare instances, a decade or two
Take, for an example, Roman society (in the time of the republic). It was less rigid than european feudal socieites, more "advanced" and "free" to take modern Western terminology, though still based around the concept of classes.
Even in the early days of the Republic, it was possible, though rare, for slaves to rise up to the middle class, though most did eventually join the lower plebeian class.
In the later days, former slaves pretty much ran the bureaucracy of Rome. In fact, because of the patronage system of Rome, an argument could be made that a slave would have much better odds of doing well, and indeed some did rise to be immensely wealthy, rivaled only be the hereditary nobility. Regardless, most freed slaves would eventually become craftsmen or farmers in the middle of the plebeian class. A far cry from "unwilling and possibly uneducated slaves," and more along the lines of the "skilled, paid labour" that you believe most construction in civ to be.

If you truly want to simulate a rigid class system with slavery, just create another social class (in addition to upper, middle, lower) for slaves, which are only allowed to manage tiles on the map, (mostly for food) and produce decreased production. And have lower class produce normal/full production. (pun intended)
In this system, slaves would constitute slaves, the lower class would constitute hereditary craftsmen and liberated slaves, the middle class would constitute merchants, scholars, etc, upper class would constitute the educated elite
 
A number of cultural variants throughout history break the strict [upper, middle, lower] class model, at least concerning middle and lower classes. It's difficult to imagine a generic system that would be wholly appropriate. Where yield and other bonuses are concerned, I think much of that lies in the domain of civ specific traits, religion or social ideals (policies). That, of course, assumes the mod is taking a more realist/historical approach to game mechanics (which I think is true).

For example, Confucian ideals in feudal societies (Japan; China) place farmers at the center (middle class) due in part to the use of food (rice) as currency. The farmer produces something of value to society, while the merchant does not. As a result, farmers may be landowners (unlike their European counterparts in feudal periods). Merchants are decidedly lower class citizens, deriving their wealth from the labor of others, while producing nothing. They may be wealthier than their social "betters", but their profession is not honorable. Artisans, on the other hand, have social standing dependent upon whom they serve and what they produce. A bowyer or a builder is valued, while an actor or an artist is not (with exceptions). And forget about butchers, gravediggers, and anyone who touches dead things :cringe:

So if there's going to be a system where certain population class #s produce yield benefits (or have tax variation), it would be interesting and appropriate for there to be method where the player can choose the nature of social structure from a menu of historically representative options. This could be something permanent (unique trait), semi-permanent (religion) or transient (policies).

Example...

Let's say that you have generic system where certain population class thresholds impart some bonus to yields...

upper - stability; wealth; culture
middle - wealth (taxes); production
lower - production; food; instability

Or whatever.

Now, Japan could have a unique trait that shifts food and a greater wealth bonus to the middle class, maybe during specific eras or at a tech threshold. Or, you could do that through religion (e.g. Confucianism), or through policies (Nomin Caste). This could also impart a stability penalty, because many didn't really enjoy the extreme restrictions of their societal role, despite being nominally "superior".

Something like that, anyway...
 
Thank you all, good points.

First a precision, in my post I was referring to some extra city yields (what's a city could yield globally depending of it's social structure), not the population yield (taxes when implemented, actual yields of citizen slots, ...)

I find heinous_hat's idea of policies redefining the social structure very interesting, now I'd like to expand that idea to fit the mechanisms in the mod.

Just a reminder of the (basic) mechanism actually implemented:

- Each of the 4th class have it's own birth/death rate value
- To prevent complete lack of class mobility, there are also some minimal/maximal % threshold of total population for each class. The % variation is very basic ATM: some buildings change it (Palace raise the Upper/Middle max and min %, housing buildings raise the max% of their class)
- If a class is above it's max percent, part of that class population is moved one class down (slaves excluded)
- If a class is below it's minimal percent, part of the class under it is moved up (slaves excluded)

That's a part of the code that is a placeholder (and it will break when minimal/maximal percents of two classes overlap), but I've not really thought of the replacement yet and how to integrate government and policies with the actual buildings, not forgetting the cities citizen slots (and for that last part, I'm afraid it will be difficult to break the city size/citizen slot relation on the code size)
 
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Are you extending cultural diffusion to the population this time around (à la the revolutions component of the BNW mod project)?
ATM the same code is used, why ?
 
Just curious... something to consider when making suggestions and thinking about other systems that aren't there yet. Along with health, stability, etc there stands to be a lot of potential push/pull on the population and social divisions.
 
I mean, what's your ideas ?

In the Culture Diffusion / Revolution mod, the "Culture" values on a tile represent the strength of (the different) national "traditions" for the population on the tile, not the number of people living in that area.

You'd like to separate urban and rural population ?
 
No, wasn't suggesting anything yet. Just wondering if that's part of the plan... I read your design notes a while ago and don't recall.

If I remember the civ5 mod correctly, foreign population would contribute to instability due to either being at war with the parent civ, or if that civ had a superior happiness score. This was one of my favorite elements, since it made an issue out of "relative happiness"... in vanilla civ5, excess happiness had little effect, aside from golden age point accumulation, which was quite dull. The mod created the potential for a foreign uprising, though I don't think it quite hit the balance point where it was as dangerous as separatist sentiment.

The mod didn't have population classes though [upper, middle, lower]. So, I guess my only question at present... if you intend to introduce these population elements again, how do they fit into the current scheme? Is foreign (or separatist) culture to be represented within each population class?

such as... [upper class: 10% foreign 20% separatist; middle class:5% foreign 35% separatist; lower class: 3% foreign 22% separatist]
 
I hadn't designed that part yet, the base would be identical to civ5 and I wanted to add different values for unrest in the mix depending on the class but didn't thought of a separate repartition of culture (especially separatists) per class. It's something that makes sense again, and everything could be linked to the discussion about how policies, buildings, etc... could affect the 4 classes.
 
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It's another facet where the social model could change depending on culture, period, policies etc. Foreign population could grow at different rates (or not at all) in each social class, depending on policies and such. Too much foreign influence in the upper class (if allowed) could create some interesting scenarios. Disallowing cultural growth in the upper class could then create a different problem elsewhere... e.g. lower class foreign dissent due to lack of representation.
 
Small update on GitHub:

Code:
- compatibility update with civ6' summer patch
- temporary restore city and defense healing (until the mod handle them using resources)
- temporary add yield to some of the new buildings to encourage the AI to build them (until coding some AI helper)

I'll have a look at Combat & Stacking Overhaul, as I'm afraid we may face the same issues here, let me know.
 
Just starting again with the mod after a short break.

- That issue with city population initially growing too fast (at epic and marathon) seems fixed. Same with the wrong value for storage capacity in the UI. Unless those were fixed earlier?

- The supply line graphic is missing (the path). Not sure about city connections... haven't gotten that far. Supply works though.

- City defenses are now replenishing, and the capital doesn't get a free ranged attack without walls. I know you mentioned the former in the notes.

- Did you change some combat values? Recon and ranged get absolutely murdered now by melee... not necessarily a bad thing.
 
- The supply line graphic is missing (the path). Not sure about city connections... haven't gotten that far. Supply works though.

- City defenses are now replenishing, and the capital doesn't get a free ranged attack without walls. I know you mentioned the former in the notes.

- Did you change some combat values? Recon and ranged get absolutely murdered now by melee... not necessarily a bad thing.
I'll have a look at the supply path.

I've removed the defense value for the Palace, which in turn disable the city ranged attack. I'll remove the ranged attack completely at some point, and may raise defensive values (with and without walls) when attacking units will be allowed to "pillage" parts of the city resources (including population)

The patch has broken CSO in a bad way (see posts starting from here) I'm not sure this can be fixed without the DLL source code access.
 
Speaking of units, I'd like to discuss the unit tree, classes and abilities (including promotions)

Don't limit your thoughts to the scope of civ6, I'm assuming that we'll get DLL access at some point, here are some of my design plan

  • limited stacking
    • 1 melee unit + 2 support unit (numbers could changes with eras / policies, not sure if we'll use/need the corps/army mechanism of civ6 then)
    • translated to modern terms, "melee" would be division sized, "support" would be regiment sized
    • "support" include ranged, recon, and other regiment sized unit like heavy tanks, assault guns, etc... (think R.E.D. WWII if you used it)
  • most current "support" units will be removed and their effect reintroduced as promotions (keeping anti-air unit as regiments)
    • medic promotion -> field hospital (less dead from wounded, heals wounded faster, applied to all units on the same tile)
    • engineer-like promotions : unit could automatically spawn city-assault units (siege tower, battering ram, if it has enough materiel) when near an enemy city with walls
  • techs unlock equipment (bronze equipment, iron equipment, steel equipment, chariot, crossbow, musket, rifle, cannon, ...)
  • a city that has access to enough of that equipment (using trade for example) can build the corresponding units, even without the corresponding technology
  • each units has an small upgrade path with an equipment type, unlocked using projects, you need the equipment tech to research those project
    • for example bronze equipment allows spearmen, the "base" unit, and a military project unlocked by the same tech as bronze equipment allows phalanx units based on spearmen

Now what I'd like to discuss based on this is the global unit tree, IE what kind of units we should have for each era, and what should be the rock/paper/scissor for the gameplay
 
Are you planning to eventually introduce the reactive combat feature from the RED BNW project? Such as preparatory fire, counter-fire, etc. That keeps combat flowing nicely and somewhat influences how strong RPS relationships should be.
 
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