The Culture-Spreading Model

[Aussie_Lurker]

I would say that a key reason to allow culture flow is because the more cultural 'cross-fertilization' that occurs between two nations, the better their attitude towards each other. This, in turn, can improve the outcome of any trade deals which form between the two nations, and increases the 'publics' acceptance of good diplomatic relations between your nations as well!
Of course, all of these positives have to be weighed up against the possible downsides of 'cultural regionalism' and loss of cultural identity (and perhaps even whole cities). As in so many things, its all about swings and roundabouts.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Suki]

1) Ethnicity is kind of like culture-groups in Civ 3. But I hate using that term. Ethnicity is more the genetic makeup of your people that distinguishes them from all others. It's hardwired from the start of the game. In Civ 3, your population heads are brown or pink or tan #2, and that's just the way it is. Ethnicity, for lack of a better term, is genetic.

4) Think of the individual population heads start to become like miniature cities. Even though that population head is ethnically chinese, he gets 25% of his ideas from the Greek tradition (thoughts on religion, on democracy, and so forth). This is because he lives in a Chinese city, but that chinese city has anywhere from 10% to 40% greek culture. I figure this value would be randomly generated to give the game some spice.

if we were dealing with different species i'd agree with you. If we were dealing with humans, dwarves, elves, hobbits, ents, gremlins, goblins, orcs and trolls you'd be right on track, or if we were doing homo erectus, habilis, neanderthalis, florensis, austrailiopeticus and cro-magnon...

but ethnicities aren't any kind of clear cut, hard limit.

speaking of species, it was orrigionally it a biology class years ago that I came up with with my version of this culture flow thing, but for gene flow among populations... but since the idea of meme came from trying to find other things that replicate in a similar fashion to genes is easy to see how it's applicable...

know anything about speciesisation? genetic differences accumulate between populations until they've become different enough that it causes a barrier to gene flow, and then from there they can only get more different.

now this is different in that in the scope (either in terms of genes or memes) you can't ever get so different that you stop the flow.
if you have a city of 500 black and 500 asian, as time goes by you'll get more and more mixed, and eventually fully mixed as generations pass. Sure thery'll be some tribalism and assortive mating but it'll homoginise.

now if it were a city of hobbits and humans on the other hand, they can't mix. no matter how many generations goes by they're still a city of hobbits and humans. That's where your treating the different ethnicities of pop heads as different cities within the city comes in...

that tribalism and assortive mating kindof hints that speciesisation could be a possibility between these two groups. But at this point I think populations will only get more and more mixed

like those examples with frogs on a series of islands, spreading to new islands, but never having enough gene flow to stay one species, then the second species movign back to the first island and starts competing with the first...

or looking at gene flow of some kind of mouse around a mountian range
pop a exchanging with pop b and b&c exchanging with eachother, and depending on the flow rates between the groups you could end up with 1 2 or 3 different species... and you treat each group's area as a city....

it's interesting stuff...

but I'm just saying this mostly to get the point that ehnicity, genes, flow just
culture does.

i mean wouldn't it be enough just to include statistical data, like the variance of your culture and ethnicity so you'd have an idea of how homoginised your city is, so you'd get bell curves for the amount of each culture and ethnicity in your people insted of single points and you'd have an idea of how many greek, greek-chinese and chinese people you have in your city without trying to deal with it directly,
or the difference between a city with a neutral government opinion and one with average=0 and a high variance so some people who are strong democratics and strong facists.. i don't mind modeling what's going on outside but trying to model things flowing around within a city is pushing it just a bit don't you think?

 

[Suki]

If c is the weight of each meme then S is given by:

S = c(M1+M2+ M3+ ... +M20)

each of 20 memes!? I guess you don't understand how miniscule a meme is in comparison to a culuture... this is a perfect place to be using statistical methods..

i suggested using something similar to deal with different versions of techs but those are still on a much higher level than individual memes....

Similarity
Similarity = A(W - W') + B(X - X') C(Y - Y') + D(Z-Z') + ...

wouldn't it be easier to say just |Xa-Xb|
where Xa and Xb are the two vectors, allready weighted, and || are for absolute value or length defined by |x|=root((x1^2)+(x2^2)+...) it has much more mathematical meaning than what you've got there, it's directionally homogenous, so it won't matter if you're aligned with the axes or not, it just tells you the length from the tip of one culture vector to the other... it's the difference between an octahedron and a sphere

 

[dh_epic]

Sure ethnicity and culture can be said to flow in similar ways -- as in memes and genes. But just because they follow the same laws does not mean they are the same thing.

To me, the reason you allow culture into your city is because it would send a signal to your neighbor that you'd hope that they'll accept your culture in their city. It's a "balance of power" thing. But for some people, this doesn't resolve the underlying problem of culture in the original Civ 3 model.

In Civ 3, aside from cultural victory (which takes a long long time) and expanding your borders (which is only really valuable early game, along with maybe a few cheap culture flips), culture is still a peripheral in the game. Compare that to conquest. Even if you're not going for domination victory, you gain another city, which is a production center and thus valuable. Conquest is good in of itself.

I really appreciate the post from Huxley Hobbes. You definitely get it, just from looking at your thoughts on ethnicity versus culture. But I also appreciate your thoughts of other tangible benefits.

Espionage, to me, would be a key feature. Having a fertile ground of people who are warm towards your culture means that your spying can happen more easily or more aggressively.

If you add the idea of people having their own opinions, where the player has to accomodate or supress the cries of the people... then it could even lead to boosts in trade (if you have a lot of your culture and ideas in there, they're probably more likely to want your goods, and the player would have to trade to satisfy their people). Not to mention that cultural unity would become an asset, with cultural conflict making it harder to run your empire.

On the other hand, the question of why you'd let other cultures in is important. A science boost for letting in other cultures, to me, is a good idea. The explanation makes sense in many ways, too. One because your people are constantly receiving new ideas from alternative sources. Two is because your people are more likely to look at things from multiple perspectives. Three is because there are more thoughts coming from other lands that trickle down to your nation.

Those are just a few thoughts.

 

[sir_schwick]

Also, automatic commerce. This alone would do more to encourage not being at a constant state of war than anything else. Cultural exchange and the possiblity for trade to exist in general will generate additional trade commerce. Tons of trade, tons of commerce.

 

[mhIdA]

dh_epic
Sorry if I abset you with mathematical jargon, but anyway, it's just a simply way how similiraty could be implemented since I guess someone else in the thread had some doubts, but with more or less complexity, and of course the weights and their variyng among time is also important and the sum of weights just be equal to 1. But I think this is a issue to developers, and is not my main concern or problem and the fiferences between cultural features must be given in absolute values.


Aussie Lurker
I was think put more memes than 20 but I agree with dh_epic about a set of memes, and I agree that sthatistcal methods is the best way of model construct and I don't want to go very deeper in this mater, is only to give an idea of how achieve sim/dif between civs.

To me more important and intersting in history is the movements of population (migrations) mainly due the starvation, pauverty and wars, new ideas and forces and science advance (new techs).
So my idea of the migrant unity who could join to a city of a diferent civ.
when a city is on starvation whe could brought food from our cities or trade to other civs.
If we couldn't acquire food the migrant automatic appear when a city is on starvation and is resize from 8 to 7 for example.
Then we could send it to a city of own civ or to a city of another civ.
Once then he could or not be accepted, but that remaine in the memory between the 2 civs.
Other thing is the way of the migrant is acomodate in the hostage city, in a sense of ethnicity, culture and food surplus and city size.
If the civ of hostage city called L, are culturally strong the migrants more or less could easy be culturally assimilate but the ethnicity could remain.
Due the litle distance between origin and hostage citie and if the ethnic group are 1/5 of city population, for every 5 military unit maded 1 is to the foreign ethnic civ.
By time the civ L, wich is the major civ in the region (about 15 cities), had ethnic citizens from 5, 6 minor civs (A, B, C, D, E, F) around inner their borders.
If civ L had problems with civ A or B she could ask for help from civ E or F.
But at one time the Civ L have problem with 4 or 5 civs and their ethnic groups inside and outside the borders (related to short or long memory and the treatness of the other nationalities/ethnicities), that cities could flip and then we can assiste at fallen of an empire, like roman empire.
I hope that thought is quite understandable.

 

[dh_epic]

Part of this model is that it's a necessary step before creating provinces and balkanization. If you can represent an empire that is culturally spanish in the west, and culturally greek-influenced in the east, and culturally german-influenced in the north, and culturally african-influenced in the south, with multiple ethnicities all over...

Then it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to represent the crumble of the empire to becoming 5 or so seperate states -- if the empire is mismanaged. Such is the interesting challenge of the Roman Empire.

 

[mhIdA]

Even I give same examples I don't like it very much. I prefer thinking that the features of the game like culture-spread model allow same possibilities that mean in this case romanization, islamization or americanization due a higher culture and/or tech advanced and remain the ethnicity. If is only a new form of conquest and not a way of conquered people be the cultural conqueror or the military conqueror also are the cultural conqueror then we lost tremendous possibilities of a system that give the chance of a new forms of culture by their cross-flow.

 

[dh_epic]

To me, you could use culture as a vehicle to conquest, something that unites your people with likeminded people in another country... so they either flip your way, or consider you liberators when you show up with tanks.

But you could also use culture as a vehicle to victory in itself. You could have a nation of twelve cities. But if you managed to get, say, 25 culture in every city around the world, or for all of your culture to account for 40% of the world's culture, then you win. The idea being that no matter what happens beyond that point, the ideals and values and customs that your civilization stood for will be a permanant mark on the entire world.

So you could take a very militaristic route... you could do a bit of both... or you could take a very cultural route to victory.

 

[sir_schwick]

I know it is usually a bad idea to design feature unto themselve, but that is how I feel about culture. We should figure out the mechanics of culture flow first. Let that be modeled, and then get an idea of what makes sense based on the flow. Adjusting fluid mechanics to get a desire effect is reverse of how you should do it, adjusting your effects based on how the fluid flows.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I think that much of the beauty of THIS culture model is that it is far less of another route to conquest than that in civ3. Its ability to generate regionalism, and a lack of specific 'culture flips' means that things are a lot less cut and dried. For instance, you put vast amounts of effort into boosting the spread of your culture, and people, into the border cities of your neighbours. Unfortunately, you misjudge things, badly, and one or two of the cities undergo a 'culture crunch', which causes them to get a new 'regionalised' culture. If left unchecked, this regional culture may grow to a point where, if a seccession were ever to occur, the city would probably form a new, independant nation-with this new regional culture as its 'base'-rather than go over to your side!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[dh_epic]

Sir Schwick, the problem with just letting the flow happen and seeing what could come out of it is then there's no way to measure if the culture flow model works properly. You wouldn't know if some factors were too heavy, or if culture played too important or too unimportant a role in the game unless you had SOME a priori idea of what culture should do for the game.

I appreciate the thought, though, Aussie... that while this could be used for domination, it works in a seperate way with seperate strategies and seperate challenges.

All the same, even if you don't dominate, you should still be able to achieve a cultural victory. Say by making your culture a permanant fixture throughout the world, even if your official borders don't even come close to an empire. (e.g.: 90-100% of cities in the world have X amount of your culture in it.)

And beyond victory conditions, culture should get you some nice bonuses along the way, even if you don't pursue the victory. The same way that even if you don't pursue domination victory, conquering a few cities helps you for other victories.

 

[sir_schwick]

I'm saying someone needs to write a short program with a basic grid and run simulations. I am not saying the final game ships with culture just being some organism. With a little research, we could really find out, "wow, I had no idea about x development or trend".

 

[Suki]

I'm saying someone needs to write a short program with a basic grid and run simulations. I am not saying the final game ships with culture just being some organism. With a little research, we could really find out, "wow, I had no idea about x development or trend".

Done.
except I didn't make a program I did some spreadsheeting.
modeling the flow between three different populations, A, B and C
with A and C both connected to B

the "vectors" picture is of the resulting culture with Rab=800 and Rbc=200, the little animation of giffs is the graph of the different cultures present at A with Rbc heald at 200 and Rab varying nonlinearily from1-10 000
the "mice" picture is to help you visualisehow the genes are flowing if it was populations of mice around a mountian range that we were modeling.

play around with it see what you can do.

Edit: oups, forgot the attachment

 

[sir_schwick]

do you have a copy of the spreadsheet or the exact conditions(I am not getting a feel for that). And thank you for starting this.

 

[dh_epic]

It's pretty interesting to have even a general idea how adding more culture to one nation or another can make nations more similar or more different and so forth.

What would be even more interesting, of course, is to see how culture spreads when you're playing a game of Civ. But I guess we'll have to wait a long time to see that, if it ever happens at all.

 

[sir_schwick]

Very good work, although I must ask a few more questions:

What did you use as the spreading and growth formulas?
Does rab and rbc refer to resistance to movment?

I also noticed that it seemed like population A propogated very very quickly compared to B or C.

dh, I also highly recommend downloading this and playing around with it.

_____________________________________________________--

It would be really good if someone could mod Civ3 to spread culture around so it accumulates in other cities as well. You couldn't do anything advanced with that(besides instant borders when conquering cities), but it would allow us to test on a more massive scale. No matter what, good spreadsheet Suki.

 

[dh_epic]

I played with it a bit. I got the jist of it, although some of the numbers I wasn't sure where they came from. I figured it was just an arbitrary example. Thanks for doing this, Suki.

The challenge for the developers, if they embrace such an idea, is figuring out what happens when you implement this kind of culture flow. How fast does it spread? Too fast? Too slow? Too far? Too short? These are the kinds of effects to look for.

 

[sir_schwick]

I didn't quite like Suki's equations either(sorry), so I used my own. Very interesting results. I also added in columns for Total Population in each region and Global Population by breed(culture). Here is what I have so far. Have not tried to implement dynamic growth or resistance yet, interested though. The results were so interesting I am forming a more comprehensive Table simulating four cities(details coming with it) along with some expansive features that may be turned on/off. It'll probably be a couple days though.

 

[Suki]

I didn't quite like Suki's equations either(sorry)

but one difference between mine and yours is that in mine the culture points only move around, they don't make any new culture points themselves... I haven't checked mine but I'm confident that if i added up the population by breed i'd only ever have the amount that was being created in the home region. If we want culture to naturally reproduce i'd prefer to have a term in the equation explicitly for that.

I also noticed that it seemed like population A propogated very very quickly compared to B or C

I assume you mean with the resistances as 800 and 200 like when I sent the file, i'm not exactly sure what you mean, but I do see that area 'a' accumulates much more of it's own culture than anyone else does, but that's because, even though they all produce culture at the same rate the 800 resistance causes a bottleneck so the 'a' culture is mostly trapped there..