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[tsen]

In short, re: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=61620.0 and the other threads linked to in it, I think it would be ideal to stay away from hard-coding wherever possible and leave tokens and variables moddable.

PLEASE NOTE: I'm currently not in a position to work the entire thing out, so I'm giving a general framework--the community is intended to mull over the possibilities and tinker with it a bit to make it robust and effective.

What I propose is...

Step 1: Assign dwarves personality values or to take advantage of the values already present to include things like ambition, work ethic, desire for social recognition, propensity to consume, civic-mindedness, and generosity.

Step 2: Entity tokens that delineate political variability, one for governmental type and another for economic model.
Example:  Laissez faire capitalism, pure communism, socialist capitalism, fascism, autocracy, theocracy, plutocracy, etc. with frequency and "seriousness" values. Frequency changes the chances of seeing one type or another obviously, and "seriousness" represents the average degree to which the majority of that entity will cleave to those beliefs.

For example, in a purely capitalist[5] autocracy[2], the average dwarf cares significantly more about personal wealth than political representation, whereas in a LF capitalist [2] autocracy [5] society, even with the same type of government, the average dwarf will value political power/status than money.


Step 3: RAW entries for varying types of governments that give the basic behaviors expected. Most of the things I could think of can be expressed algorithmically, including mimicking the current behavior exactly by including a zero coefficient so that social skills are the only source of social standing.
Examples:

Pure Communism
Social Standing is based on "income" (tracked but not backed by currency) divided by "consumption" (total value of goods and services consumed) such that hard working dwarves are respected, and dwarves who crave respect will tend to work harder to some degree and/or consume less to some degree. Thus, social class is related to economics but not in the sense that we traditionally think of them.

Pure Capitalism
Social standing will be to some extent based on a logarithmic scale of personal wealth. A dwarf's propensity to consume will cause that dwarf to decide to spend money (i.e. a higher value on the "do I buy something?" check) which can end up making that dwarf unhappy if say, they are also lazy (poor work ethic) and poor (not highly skilled in a desirable, read rare or important, field) Ambitious dwarves will went to want to do higher paying jobs (there will probably need to be a calculation that figures out how much time a job will take for this to work properly.)

Autocracy
Social standing is to a MASSIVE extent by your relationship to the current ruler, in a Feudal Autocracy blood relationships are primary, but not all autocracies are feudal.

Theocracy
Social standing and political power will be significantly boosted by being part of the normative religion and moreso by being active in the religion, with a scale from attends regularly (small social standing boost) to top leadership position in the church (huge boost.)

The whole mess is based on the idea that higher social standing = higher chance of occupying leadership positions.
The "seriousness" value I posited earlier would influence these values of course, and social relationships with people in leadership positions will slightly increase your standing as well, depending on the entity "sociability" value.

Step 4: RAW entries for "actions"

In short, these are the more noticable effects. Rules that will "trigger" every so often under certain circumstances.

Example:
Share -- Every so often (based on generosity, total wealth, and happiness) a dwarf will give money to someone who has less money. Sociability value of the entity is used to do a check to see what pool of dwarves the recipient is selected from, Family -> Friends -> Acquaintances -> Unknown dwarves.

This is a good place to use entity ethics and other numbers we already have to alter the probabilities. The incidence of most of these actions will be fairly low, but you might get a particularly ruthless and bloody-minded goblin who tries to arrange an unfortunate accident for the person who has a position he wants, or what have you.

Ideally the end result is dwarven (or whatever entity you want) societies will be modeled (somewhat) realistically by the game with the behaviors being the result of properties rather than as something hardcoded. Different actions might be the result of different types of unhappiness, or if we eschew NW_Kohaku's idea of multiple happiness values (which I personally like,) some actions will occur more or less when dwarves are unhappy or happy to varying extents.

[NW_Kohaku]

Ahhh... and I was just gearing myself up to rewrite the old Class Warfare thread, next.  (This time with more focus on internal fort economics.)

Anyway, it's rather exciting to me to see something like a fight over whether communism or lassaiz faire capitalism would reign in a fortress, but one of the things I think matters more is that the socioeconomic status of the fortress itself helps dictate these things.  The thread on whether dwarves are communist or corporatist is a good one.

Actually getting Theocracies in, however, might be a real crowning achievement in DF, as it would mean that we would be able to raw-modify behaviors based upon different spheres, as not all theocracies should necessarily be the same.  (Consider a "war" theocracies differences from, say, a "lust" theocracy.)

[Iapetus]

Autocracy
Social standing is to a MASSIVE extent by your relationship to the current ruler, in a Feudal Autocracy blood relationships are primary, but not all autocracies are feudal.

Actually, strictly speaking, the essence of a feudal society is military service to your liege lord in exchange for land and protection.

The importance of blood relationships in (most) feudal societies is more an artifact of these responsibilities and entitlements usually being hereditary (and they were inherited from the previous holder, not (necessarily) the ruler).  A blood relationship with the warlord who helped the current king's ancestor attain win his kingdom is potentialy as important (or even more so) than a blood relationship with the current ruler.  (After all, a close blood relationship with the current ruler might mean that you would be the one to inherit the kingdom should the king mean an unfortuante accident, which might mean you just get sent on dangerous missions far away rather than gain social standing).

And in theory at least, you could have a completely meritocratic feudal society, where lands and titles are not hereditary and are instead bestowed on the most competant commander (or the king's mistress's brother) whenever one becomes available.

[JasonMel]

Yeah, in medieval fantasy, capitalism, communism, and so on are anachronistic, and as such, it would be a mistake to bring them up. The dwarves may be advanced, but they are still fundamentally pre-capitalist artisans, not industrialists creating mass production factories with their own (borrowed) money. As an exercise, imagine a modern factory worker having a strange mood at her job one day, and what would happen as a result.

Edit: Class struggle in general, on the other hand, predates the industrial revolution, so that would be fine in my opinion, if divorced from modern economic philosophy.

[NW_Kohaku]

Yeah, in medieval fantasy, capitalism, communism, and so on are anachronistic, and as such, it would be a mistake to bring them up. The dwarves may be advanced, but they are still fundamentally pre-capitalist artisans, not industrialists creating mass production factories with their own (borrowed) money. As an exercise, imagine a modern factory worker having a strange mood at her job one day, and what would happen as a result.

Actually, Communism (specifically, "Primative Communism") is basically the earliest form of "government". 

That is, small tribes of hunter-gatherers who had to pool all their resources just to survive, and were typically directly related to one another (and so, could trust each other because of blood ties, as well as the whole "they'd die if they didn't work together" thing) would share all property.

This isn't much different from the situation in an early fortress - all property is communal property, except for the clothes on their back, because they'd basically die if they weren't all working together for communal survival. 

The reason it works like this is for that express reason - Toady said he doesn't introduce the economy early to avoid having dwarves die over worrying about how to pay for things.


Capitalism, likewise, has existed for almost as long as there have been major civilizations in the fertile river valleys of the middle east and Egypt.  Those areas made up in food production what they lacked in mineral wealth and wood, and so they had to trade.  These traders expected to be paid, and in order to fund their own expeditions, incurred debt (and paid interest) in order to do so.  Writing, in fact, may well have been invented just to keep track of who owed whom how much money. 

[Supersnes]

I really like the ideas presented here and in earlier threads about this.  It would add a whole new spin to how to manage a fortress.  All the gov. listed could make great impacts that would provide depth to the game. 

While communisms, capitalisms, and autocracies can have fun advantages, theocracies could possibly be highly entertaining.  Theocracy govs. dealing on devout worship can cause a lot of fun.  Dwarves can be placed, as stated before, due to how much they attend worship ceremonies.  Those who are always there will gain favor and be looked up to and possibly gain saint like status. Dwarves that skip out on these cermonies and/or believe in different gods will become ostracized and may need to be punished purified by their fellow dwarves the righteous.  Maybe sacrifices can be required for certain gods and may even involve those who are opposition impure in the eyes of the dominant religion.