|
|
Post by NickTheNick on Oct 12, 2017 18:35:23 GMT
The Society Stage is still a ways away but we are speculating about concepts for it and one that always eludes us is a fun and realistic system for culture. Here is the latest idea we have on this.
I've been thinking about Cultural Traits for a while, as in small traits that randomly generate and spread between cities, granting minor bonuses and penalties. The player can try to encourage or discourage them if they want to finetune their culture (especially because the traits give bonuses or penalties and affect what buildings are built in that city). These would add up to form the cultures of civilizations.
Playing the Caveman2Cosmos mod of Civ 4 recently helped me visualize how to implement it. I think the best way is to break down culture into all of its different features or aspects, and then create a set of traits for that. Some of these traits would be mutually exclusive, others would be able to stack.
For example every culture has funerary practice/ceremonial burial (which would be the feature), or what to do with their dead. By default every culture starts with no burial.
However, as the player discovers new technologies and time passes new traits for funerary practice become available. The following are the different types of traits for ceremonial burial:
Burial – The dead are buried in graveyards.
Mummification/Entombment – The dead are buried in tombs/crypts.
Cremation – Funeral pyres
Sky burials - Placing the bodies on high points like mountains or towers
Burial at Sea - Bodies are thrown to sea
Burial in Space - Bodies are discarded to space.
Cannibalism - Bodies are eaten.
Fed to nature - Bodies are left for animals to eat.
Promession (Recycling the body’s elements) – Bodies are sent to mortuary recycling centers
Cryopreservation - The bodies are frozen to preserve and possibly later rescusitate them.
A culture could only have one of these traits at a time, and each trait would have its own effects on the people of that culture.
Some examples would be Burial would greatly improve health by disposing of the bodies cleanly, but would require the construction of graveyards which takes up space. Cremation increases the air pollution and flammability of your cities but hardly takes up space. Burial at sea would cause water pollution. Cannibalism could lead to diseases.
What are your guy' ideas for features and traits of cultures? Brainstorm here!
|
|
|
|
Post by blackink on Oct 12, 2017 21:01:25 GMT
Sounds like a neat concept, and kind of reminds me of the species traits of Stellaris.
One feature could be family composition and hierarchy, which could affect the rate at which people disgust with overpopulation grows, and how civil rights develop.
Nuclear family: a family is composed mainly of parents and sons
Extended family: Family is composed of grandparents, parents and sons
Patriarchal society
Matriarchal society
Male or female harems
Egalitarian society
Isolation: People prefer to have more space for themselves (bonus to migration)
Community thinking: People prefer to be in big population communities (less penalty for overpopulation)
Some of this may not apply (if species is hermaphrodite, it would be ridiculous to talk about gender from a rough approach) and some may depend on species traits (large carnivorous may prefer isolation and herbivores large communities)
|
|
|
|
Post by Omicron on Oct 13, 2017 7:44:09 GMT
This looks cool, but wouldn't a lot of cultural traits differ from species to species? Take blackink 's idea for example, a species using a caste-system (I.E. insects) probably wouldn't have "families", only for maybe the kings/queens of the group. I kind of feel like a lot of the things that are going to be suggested here just don't apply to a lot of species. Or, a species that goes "quantity over quality" (I.E. insects (again)) that have thousands of unimportant creatures probably wouldn't have ceremonial ways of dealing with their dead, they'll most likely just left there. |
|
|
|
Post by NickTheNick on Oct 13, 2017 18:59:26 GMT
That's why we're going to have to design the system to accomodate for unique alien social species and social structures. In such a case they can stick with the option of no burial, or they might be incentivized to pursue cannibalism or feeding the bodies to nature. Even if they don't view death as significant or believe in an afterlife, they can't let corpses clutter the settlements so they would need a way to dispose of them.
|
|
|
|
Post by NickTheNick on Oct 14, 2017 18:11:26 GMT
Just to make the brainstorming easier for us all, feel free to suggest whatever ideas you have even if it doesnt fit into the exact system of features+traits that I mentioned above (we can figure that out later), just to get some ideas flowing.
Here are some of the new traits I came up with recently:
Traditional - Incompatible with Innovative
Innovative - Incompatible with Traditional
Stoicism
Work Ethic - Boosted production but penalty to happiness
Warrior Code - Bonus to soldier morale/experience. Boost in relations to other cultures with this trait.
Chivalric Code - Bonus to soldier morale/experience. Boost in relations to other cultures with this trait.
Charity/Generosity
Hospitality
Indulgence/Hedonism - Boost to happiness but penalty to stability.
Asceticism/Abstinence
Childcare - Boost to education and stability.
Community - Boost to stability.
|
|
|
|
Post by Aquos on Oct 15, 2017 8:37:44 GMT
Pursuers of Truth (bassically like the Zoroastrians, obsessed with the concept of truth, and seing lies as hidieus blasphemy. I don't realy know what the bonus would be, maybe extrza resources to show that corruption has been lowered? Or less crime? Also, I dislike this name, but I can't think of a better one)
Civilised People: View their own as above the other, more 'barbaric' culture. Boost to national pride, but penalty to foreign relations.
Manifest Destiny: Boost to colonisation speed
Historian Scholars (Biased): Minor boost to science, Minor boost to national pride.
Historian Scholars (Unbiased): Major boost to science
Hermit Kingdom: Boost to happiness and resource production, major penalty to relations. (Yes, it's stolen from Stellaris' Inwards Perfection)
Friends of Wisdom: Cities are more likely to adopt new Cultural Traits
Rational Folk (I REALLY dislike this name): Boost to science
Also, would religion also fall under this, or would that be a seperate system?
|
|
|
|
Post by NickTheNick on Oct 15, 2017 8:55:06 GMT
Nice ideas! Religion would tie into this as well. I haven't nailed it down exactly yet, but when a religion spawns it sort of takes a "snapshot" of its host culture at the time, adopting most of those traits as its own and possibly changing some. Some traits only apply to religions (such as polytheistic or monotheistic or nontheistic).
|
|
bur
Multicellular
Posts: 22 
|
Post by bur on Oct 15, 2017 11:26:53 GMT
Sounds like a cool idea. I think there should be a difference between "global" cultural traits and emergent traits though. The more collectivistic a society is, the more global cultural traits it has (possibly enforced by some form of government or other societal pressures). This means that these traits are shared by nearly all members of society, but can still change randomly (or influenced by the player) over time. For example, the dominant funerary practice is burial, but a small amount of people choose cremation. Over time cremation might spread and become dominant. The more individualistic a society is, the fewer global cultural traits, leading to a situation more like the modern western world, where everyone chooses individually how to dispose of their dead. Each trait should have a level of importance, which influences how many people adhere to it. Traits should possibly also be split up into several categories. Some I can think of are: practices/traditions, taboos, beliefs, commandments/regulations. I would be very interested to see how all these different factors would shape this one aspect of society. ------------------------- To expand on this idea: Each trait could have several properties: - Level of enforcement: this is a "setting" for each trait (whether controlled by the player or by AI)
-Ranges from Enforced (100%) to Free (0%). Unless set at 0%, one form of this trait must be chosen.
-An Enforced trait will be shared by nearly all of the society and all other forms will be forbidden. Depending on the context this might cause discontent, rebellion, even revolution (towards the government/state/..)
-A Free trait will be much more subject to some sort of auto-evo. Several forms of this trait might be present at the same time, which means people will be generally more content, but depending on the context might lead to internal conflict.
- Level of acceptance: this is determined by the game and is different for each form of a certain trait
-Ranges from Expected (100%) to Taboo (0%)
-When a trait's level of acceptance approaches either 100% or 0%, this might cause discontent, rebellion, even revolution if the level of enforcement isn't changed to reflect this.
-An Expected form of a trait is very likely to spread among the population. People who have this trait are generally more content, and vice versa. Depending on the context this can also lead to internal conflict.
-A Taboo form of a trait is very unlikely to spread. Obviously this has the opposite effect on contentness. Can also lead to internal conflict depending on context.
The level of enforcement influences the level of acceptance, and the level of acceptance determines how the population reacts to the level of enforcement.
The specific context of the game and properties that endemic to the species influence the level of acceptance and determine how these properties and settings interact and cause new mechanics to come into play. An insect-like species for example wouldn't respond well to Free traits, while a human-like species generally wouldn't respond well to too many Enforced traits.
It would provide one mechanic by which societies might fragment into separate entities (a country splitting up), or by civil strife is caused, things like that. It would also cause interesting dynamics when one society conquers another, for example. Does the conquerer adjust their policies for the conquered territory or do they deal with the backlash caused by enforcing cultural traits that are not accepted? Do the conquered assimilate or cling to their cultural identity and eventually regain their indepence?
|
|
|
|
Post by NickTheNick on Oct 19, 2017 23:43:41 GMT
Yeah definitely, traits spread between cities based off of ease of communication and travel, so cities and cultures that are more isolated are more unique from the rest.
Government policies would also allow either supporting traits or banning them, and these would cause the traits to grow/reduce in popularity, but would also incur penalties (such as angering the population who practices it if banning them).
Here is another batch of traits I thought of (this time different cultural practices for raising and educating children, which can have a huge effect on society):
-Communal education (The community raises the children)
-Apprenticeship (Children are raised as apprentices in a vocation)
-Tutorship (Families can hire personal teachers)
-Religious education (Religious institutions manage the education of children)
-Public schooling (Government manages education)
|
|
|
|
Post by tammio on Oct 25, 2017 11:51:14 GMT
Hey I think this is a very interesting idea. However I always feel there's some issues with these kind of traits like "chivalric code", "warrior code" etc. That's because these concepts aren't actually cultural traits but expression of such. So getting these -I'll refer to them as "buffs" now to avoid confusion- should be a result of your culture and not the cause of it. I always think it's strange if these kind of states can always be selected a think it results in very streamlined replays... like I nearly always choose very similar idea sets in EU IV
To expand on this I propose a sliding scale system. Imagine one scale on w ich your culture is measured is egalitarianism (everybody is equal) versus elitism. Another slide would be militarism vs Pacifism. So both the buffs "chivalric code" and "warrior code" would be expressions of a very militaristic culture.
However: If your culture is very egalitarian you would get the "warrior code" buff, because your society puts great value in every members prowess as a fighter (kind of like German facism which put a lot of emphasis on the "germanic warrior"). On the otherhand if you have a very elitist society you would have the "chivalry code" buff, expressing your societies reverence of a dedicated soldier caste (your world equivalent of knights, samurai, mameluks etc)
Your score on these sliders would be influenced by your creatures biology (say a apex predator or herbivore with strong territorial tendencies would be more aggressive than an intelligent song-bird), societal organisation (democracies tend towards more peaceful conflict resolutions and egalitarianism) or recent events like loosing a war (which might lead towards a radicalisation in either way)
|
|
|
|
Post by NickTheNick on Oct 25, 2017 14:37:59 GMT
Those are some interesting suggestions, and originally I was leaning towards such a system. The problem though is that the point of cultural traits is to avoid describing culture via its morals where possible, since morality is very hard to quantify into game values. It's even more difficult to quantify how morals would change over time, how to make this easy for the player to understand and keep track of, and if it was on a slider, how the values would scale from one extreme to the other. Sliders would also put a restriction on what sort of unique cultures could form. Maybe there is a pacifistic culture that believes in a military code of ethics for when war is inevitable, or maybe an elitist society believes in a code for the common soldier.
Additionally, cultures are usually a lot more nuanced than being simply pacifistic or egalitarian or traditional or etc.
Instead the point of cultural traits is to break down culture into specific ways it is expressed (celebrations, religions, burial, education, dance, music, language, social structure, etc.) because these can be easily quantified and are intuitive for the player in how they would spawn or spread. Then the total combination of traits a culture has gives you a picture of the overall morals of the culture (so essentially it's descriptive more than prescriptive).
|
|
|
|
Post by tammio on Oct 26, 2017 10:51:58 GMT
So the way i imagined it the slider would rarely be at the extremes. The effect a certain score on the scale gives is proportional to how far along the scale you are so speaking of the egalitarian vs elitist scale. You'd have "extremes" in terms of effects on the 100%egalitarian 100% chivalry and 0% points; these would signify that at one end you have enforced absolute equality (kimd of like in an ideal communist state) while the other has extreme societal stratefecation and the middle has neither. Then each of these points have bonuses and maluses for you.
|
|
|
|
Post by mitobox on Oct 26, 2017 17:13:43 GMT
A big thing to consider is what constituents of a culture consider worthy of respect. For example, imagine if military leaders could earn titles for their actions, like: - “___ The Merciful” - For habitually sparing captured enemies.
- “___ The Ruthless” - For habitually executing captured enemies.
Some aliens would consider mercy honorable and execution barbaric. Meanwhile, others may view mercy as a display of weakness, and execution a show of strength. As a result, the titles wouldn’t have the same effect (on squad morale, populace happiness, etc.) across every single game, at least for individual civilizations. |
|
|
|
Post by ATP Kraken on Oct 27, 2017 21:26:56 GMT
Perhaps the general political ideas of a state, religion, or faction can be represented as a series of sliders (as do many modern political compasses).
The classic Left-Right,Auth-Lib compass (now rebranded as Egalitarian-Hierarchist,Authoritarian-Libertarian) could be composited from many different sliders, such as economic/political/religious/gender/movement/etc freedoms, penal surgery, limits of powers, republicanism-constitutionalism-monarchism, welfare spending, and other things that would affect the position on that.
Other compasses could be a triangle, such as Aggression-Defense-Demilitarization, or merely be linear axes such as Centralization v. Decentralization.
|
|
|
|
Post by alohameanshello on Nov 20, 2017 21:00:32 GMT
While the terms 'culture,' 'values,' and 'customs' are often used interchangeably, each is actually a distinct piece of the bigger picture. A custom is a ritual or other tradition that is an outward sign of the group's cultural values. The group's values aren't always obvious right away - they run deep! Cultural values can be pieced together by observing the various customs that the people have passed down for generations. Culture is defined as all of a group's guiding values and outward signs and symbols taken together as one big whole. (more information: study.com/academy/lesson/cultural-values-definition-examples-importance.html)I made this chart to illustrate my ideas for Thrive's NE culture section:  Basically cultures are defined by a predominant value which permeates throughout their culture and customs. These values produce different cultural themes, which I have numbered down to six, divided into three dichotomies: strength-kindness, traditional-reason and pleasure-honor. Strength is the survival of the fittest. It's an eat or be eaten world, and you can only watch out for yourself. Mercy is a weakness that is stamped out of youth to shape them into strong, powerful adults. Opposite of Kindness.Reason is skepticism, not having any faith in a religion, ideology or theory without evidence. The society values free thought and speech, but places facts before opinions. Opposite of Tradition.Pleasure is hedonism, mindless self-indulgence, lust, greed and gluttony. It is a superficial society of mindless consumerists. Opposite of Honor.Kindness is altruism, treating others as you'd like to be treated. It is a selfless mindset, concerned for the well-being of others. Opposite of Strength.Tradition is idealism, a society absorbed into its propaganda and teachings. Questioning these ideals is heretical, and the individual must cave into the hive mind or else face prosecution. Opposite of Skepticism.Honor is discipline, self-control and abstinence. People devote their time to productive works, and giving in to temptations is frowned upon. Opposite of Pleasure. |
|
SteamBun
Multicellular
Excited for Thrive 0.4.0!
Posts: 21
|
Post by SteamBun on Nov 21, 2017 4:48:26 GMT
While the terms 'culture,' 'values,' and 'customs' are often used interchangeably, each is actually a distinct piece of the bigger picture. A custom is a ritual or other tradition that is an outward sign of the group's cultural values. The group's values aren't always obvious right away - they run deep! Cultural values can be pieced together by observing the various customs that the people have passed down for generations. Culture is defined as all of a group's guiding values and outward signs and symbols taken together as one big whole. (more information: study.com/academy/lesson/cultural-values-definition-examples-importance.html)I made this chart to illustrate my ideas for Thrive's NE culture section: Basically cultures are defined by a predominant value which permeates throughout their culture and customs. These values produce different cultural themes, which I have numbered down to six, divided into three dichotomies: strength-kindness, traditional-reason and pleasure-honor. Strength is the survival of the fittest. It's an eat or be eaten world, and you can only watch out for yourself. Mercy is a weakness that is stamped out of youth to shape them into strong, powerful adults. Opposite of Kindness.Reason is skepticism, not having any faith in a religion, ideology or theory without evidence. The society values free thought and speech, but places facts before opinions. Opposite of Tradition.Pleasure is hedonism, mindless self-indulgence, lust, greed and gluttony. It is a superficial society of mindless consumerists. Opposite of Honor.Kindness is altruism, treating others as you'd like to be treated. It is a selfless mindset, concerned for the well-being of others. Opposite of Strength.Tradition is idealism, a society absorbed into its propaganda and teachings. Questioning these ideals is heretical, and the individual must cave into the hive mind or else face prosecution. Opposite of Skepticism.Honor is discipline, self-control and abstinence. People devote their time to productive works, and giving in to temptations is frowned upon. Opposite of Pleasure.The problem with this is that your entire species shares one single ethic trait. This is impossible unless your species is a hivemind or some sort of collective robot intelligence. Some of these traits can coexist, like kindness and reason, honor and reason, strength and tradition, if your species had multiple ones of these traits, where would they fit on the chart? Also these traits are more ethics than cultural traits. Cultural traits (in my opinion) are laws or unspoken rules and subjects or political traits in society. Ethics are more of how your species naturally think and deal with problems and situations. A rewised version of this could be a great idea in the awakening stage. |
|
|
|
Post by alohameanshello on Nov 21, 2017 14:38:59 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by ATP Kraken on Nov 21, 2017 22:55:44 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by alohameanshello on Nov 24, 2017 2:26:53 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by mitobox on Nov 24, 2017 8:02:07 GMT
I just thought of a few that would be more relevant later in the Strategy Mode stages: - Mechano-Transcendence: The culture practices ritualized mechanical augmentation.
- Bio-Transcendence: The culture practices ritualized biological augmentation.
The two aren’t mutually exclusive, and could probably work within a culture whose tenets idealize the species’s “pure” anatomy (in a way similar to the hybrid Affinities in Civ: Beyond Earth).Granted, I was thinking of something else (semi-off-topic):One of the long-standing “villains” of the SCP Foundation mythos is the so-called Church of the Broken God, basically a faction that seeks to rebuild their mechanical god out of certain anomalous objects implied to have once been pieces of him.The faction has been fleshed out (upgraded?) to consist of three feuding sects, each with a different view of their god:- The Broken Church: The original sect, which has existed since the Bronze Age.
- Cogwork Orthodoxy: A sect that began during the Industrial Revolution, and whose church structure operates as such. They augment themselves with steampunk and clockwork components, but largely consider electronics and software heretical.
- The Church of Maxwellism: A mostly decentralized sect that began during the Information Age, and who believe that the Broken God is made of data. They incorporate cybernetic enhacements as part of establishing a neural network in order to
post dank memes “recompile” the Broken God.
The whole thing’s not too different from the Warhammer Universe’s Adeptus Mechanichus in terms of being a technocratic theocracy.
Basically, my point is that certain practices and tenets shouldn’t always be mutually exclusive, and that the player should be able to set the finer details if he or she wants to set “opposites” (even among the details themselves) to be shunned. |
|
