Tier 1: International Groups
The groups in T1 incorporate a lot of information that used to be part of entities. It's split apart so that the groups it defines can be treated differently based on whether their group is favored by whoever runs the sites they inhabit. Individuals always belong to 1 of each category of Tier 1 groups, and Tier 1 groups are created at the start of worldgen. Tier 1 groups are:
Cultures: Groups which share art forms, languages, appearance styles (i.e. clothing, tattoos, etc) and value preferences (more or less so depending on personality). Critters will move from one culture to another by marrying into it, allowing for the culture of an area to change over time. Necessary so foreigners are treated as foreigners rather than just strangers.
Religions: Groups which share objects of worship and value preferences (more or less so depending on personality). Can be linked together (i.e. different sects of the same religion). Will come with their own taboos and traditions eventually. Individuals will flip to another religion practiced in their site if the values it prefers are more aligned with their personal values that their current religion. Necessary so that religions can spread between societies and make things less homogeneous.
Ethnicity: Groups who share physical similarities. They're necessary so that the player can observe population movement in a meaningful way if the people who moved/were subsumed into another culture have all already assimilated.
1. This is already in the game since entities essentially are cultures. Given the way that entities spread outwards from a single site, cultures are redundant unless somehow we can have parent entities spawn new entities. That is redundant however since site limit causes growth to freeze during larger maps around yr 100 while smaller maps will not have room for the process to make sense.
2. This has promise especially since at a site-level it already exists (for towns). It is easy enough to have religions form randomly in major settlements that do not have a religion and then spread outwards to other settlements, including jumping entity boundries.
3. Redundant since it is essentially the same thing as cultures or creatures having multiple entity membership (latter already exists).
Tier 2: States
Territorial States: States that own land and build permanent sites within it. Have provinces, which are groupings of sites in proximity subordinated to a sub-capital, that can try to break away and become independent.
City States: Superficially similar to territorial states, but actually quite different. They are lead by one of their subordinate groups exclusively (the inhabitants of their capital city) and treat other population centers they control as tributary colonies - and these frequently try to become independent city-states of their own. They are more likely to try to exact tribute form fellow city states than they are to conquer them.
Nomadic States: States that own land but have no permanent inhabited sites (except maybe religious sites). Their population instead moves around in camps on a randomly defined circuit. Much like city states they're ruled by a single group, and if leadership would pass from a member of that group to a member of another (most likely because that group has been depopulated) each subordinate group becomes and independent group upon succession.
1. Basically what have at the moment, at least with the planned developments.
2. At the moment we already have a confederacy of city states. Until genuine rural populations are added in, the concept of a city-state vs a territorial state is fairly meaningless.
3. This is basically just a development on the bandit camps that are already in the game.
Tier 3: Institutions
Kinship Groups: Groups defined by relationship among members. Necessary to allow for tribes/clans larger than immediate families to have an effect on politics.
Local Religious Hierarchy: A group defined by shared religion. Necessary for defining the relationship between temporal and spiritual authorities.
Local Business Organizations: Groups defined by shared profits among members. Necessary for trade cartels, business ventures that create sites (such as a bunch of carpenters in a dozen sites founding the creation of a lumber camp).
Local Criminal Organizations: Groups defined by shared criminal intent. Necessary so criminals can have warring subgroups or be spread across multiple sites.
Provinces: Only found in Territorial States. A single group subordinates other appropriate groups whose sites are in its immediate proximity. Necessary for multiple tiers of land-owning nobility and so that larger areas than a single site can revolt at once.
1. Will fast become synonymous with the site-government in any established site that has been around for a long while.
2. Not as such no. Individuals already belong to religions, there is no need to have a separate group for the 'religious hierarchy' as the clergy can just be site positions unlocked when the population of a given religion is sufficient.
3. That is basically a starting scenario.
4. Already exists.
5. Can be modeled by hierarchical relationships between settlements site governments or by including subordinate settlements in the site government of the ordinate settlement.
Tier 4: International Organizations
The groups in Ti4 are T3 Groups that are not contained to a single T2 Group to operate. They include;
International Religious Hierarchy: I'm still unclear as to how these should form during play, but these are religious groups that replace the T3 LRH while acting across multiple T2 groups. Necessary so you can have the Pope, missionaries and meddling foreign clergy.
International Business Organizations: Associations of merchants across multiple T2 groups. Necessary so you can have trade routes and giant trading companies. Can be subordinate to T2 groups.
Rebel Groups: Associations of exiles from a specific T2 group living in other T2 groups who want to overthrow their original government and either take control or hand it off to someone else. Needed so Bay of Pigs type scenarios can happen.
International Criminal Association: Groups of criminals. Needed so that there can be a sinister international guild of assassins and whatnot.
1. Again we do not need a separate group for this. We just tie the religion to a 'capital' and have one set of nobles living there and then have a set of nobles for the religion in major sites and another for minor sites. Relationships within the religion can be handled by religion+site government.
2. Perhaps could be dealt with by relationships between appropriate starting scenario governments with the rest of the world. In any case it is completely unrealistic to have giant business associations with no connection to any governments at all.
3. This can be handled by establishing hierarchical relationships among the existing criminal gangs.
4. There is no reason why the existing site governments cannot handle rebel groups, especially since we ideally want continuity between when they were rebels and when they take over their site.
5. Again a hierarchical relationship between existing criminal organisations will do.
Thoughts? Are there any other categories of group to track to could enable more stuff? Am I full of bunk for suggesting Toady break his nice little 4-tiered system into a convoluted 9 tier, 20+ unique group type system mess even if it would enable more varied societies and stories?
We simply do not need more groups. The average world is already swarming with groups for everything and everyone, most of the ideas you propose are best modeled by relationships between groups as opposed to requiring a new group be created for every eventuality.
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Topic: [Entity Rewrite] Better Social Organization (Read 2333 times)