What makes people riot? When are they happy? What are some good ways to model how different cultures react inside the same city or country? I'd like to brainstorm some general rules and ideas for siming a society at the city level. Take three examples: An Old West town, a Big Brother 1984 Society and a medieval English town. What are some variables or stats that would help abstractly simulate these three types of places? I'm looking for interesting behaviors, useful variables and any rules you think would be cool. Assume that this is for a 4x empire game or an RPG where you'll hear about or see the events.

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This approach may work:

• Make each city composed of one or more factions
• Factions have stats, behaviors and special abilities
• Factions vye for power by taking over structures in the city
• Structures, in turn, improve the faction's stats, behaviors and special abilities
• Stats control contests, like combat or trade, depend the factions
• Behaviors are general things that a faction does
• Special abilities are new things the faction can do as long as they have some resource; for example, the police faction has an "enforce the peace" as long as they have guns and bullets; but guns and bullets alone don't let, say, a religious faction "enforce the peace" (i.e., w/o rebellion or unhappiness)

Details Define a faction as:

• Strength - Numbers modified by weapons and physical difference
• Wealth - Ability to build or buy structures. Also reflects standard of living. Controls certain special abilit
• Identity - How likely they are to be assimilated when in the shadow of a powerful or numerous culture, how confident they are, how right they think they are
• Unity - Affects how much they can get things done versus quarreling with each other
• Moral Bearing - Basically, the faction's alignment. I use a system I call the Moral Compass that's more textured than Good-Evil / Law-Chaos, defining attitudes people have without judging them, but both would work.
• ...????

Each faction should also have a short list of allies and enemies, with everyone else (since there will be many) considered neutral States - Complex Stats Certain variables are too complicated to be just a linear value, so instead should be states:

• Health - Sick, diseased, poisoned (each has a specific remedy)
• Mood - Ecstatic, Happy, Content, Afraid, Rageful (each has a thing they do when in this mood, for example sports fans might riot when happy, people might hide in their homes when afraid)
• Average Respect - On average, this is how EVERYONE views the faction, such as Awed, Despised, Cursed, etc. This acts as a modifier to how Moral Bearing allows one faction to treat another.
• ...????

Inter-faction Relations Factions will have 3 (?) friends and 3 (?) enemies, which they will have an individual value for. Mixing this along with Average Respect I think gives greater tone and definition to the relations without having to define each (most factions in the world don't even know each other, and so base their opinon on how OTHERS think). Behaviors Something any faction can do. Faction to faction:

• Attack
• Trade With
• Peaceably Recruit - Lowers other faction's strength without changing diplomacy
• Impress / Enslave - Force into servitude, lowers other faction's strength but provokes conflict
• Protect another faction
• Flee the city
• Hide
• ...????

Faction to structures:

• Takeover - Stops the building from functioning
• Defend - Forces a combat contest if one faction tries to attack it
• Raid - Storm a building and steal its resources, increasing its own stats
• ...????

Factions also have interesting internal things that can happen to them:

• Peacably Assemble
• Protest Violently
• Die Off / Dissolve
• Suppress Dissent - Faction effectively loses power trying to keep its own house together
• Schizm - Creates new, likely antagonistic factions
• Create Resource / Good - Requires a building / facility; could be making food (with farms) or making moonshine (with bathtubs), whatever... [wink]
• Celebrate (quietly, racuously - How could just give them character)
• Consolidate - Increase unity and identity through group ceremonies, celebrations or group activities. This increases the group's confidence, which in turn affects how it responds to attacks or the cultural awe caused by more powerful cultures.
• Deconstruct - Decrease group unity and identity (rare). Usually a result of soul searching or some past crime (post-Nazi Germany is an example)

Special Abilities These things ONLY a faction of a certain type can do

• Enforce the peace / uphold the law - Lowers crime and civil unrest. Only recognized authorities can do this, anyone else doing so is subject to challenge. Requires weapons and ammo and a Strength
• Reassure populace - A function of recognized authority only, can switch an allied or neutral faction's mood. Requires mass communication structures.
• Convert Faithful - Only religious factions can do this for themselves and allies. Raises unity.

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Some problems: Factions might be useful for modeling conflict, but how do you say someone is a member of multiple factions without getting messy? A group might be both a religious and a laborer faction. Should they be defined as allies? Maybe religious faction means just the staff and leaders (clergy/imams/priests/whatever), while the faithful are "allies?" So if this cops attack the religious faction, the workers, being allies, may naturally respond. I want to throw in things like addictions, vices and virtues, but couldn't really figure how it might work. How would you model addiction to TV or VR or gambling? Maybe this modifies behaviors and structures the faction owns? Thoughts or improvements?

Last post was getting to long for even me, but I wanted to include the examples:

Old west town, big brother city, medieval town

Dodge City - Old West Town
Our Dodge City is a dusty ramshackle of dozens upon dozens of clapboard wooden buildings on the Kansas prarie. Chief among them are several assayer's offices, general stores, churches, saloons, banks, stables and hotels. Mines, ranches and farms surround it.

Factions
Ranchers - Raise cattle, feed the population, hate the farmers (special ability: Ruin farmland with cattle)
Farmers - Raise crops, feed the population, hate the rangers (special ability: Repel rancher ability with barbed wire)
Desperadoes - Attack the banks and generally cause trouble (special ability: Vanish into surroundings)
Bounty Killers - Drift in and out of town looking for criminals (special ability: immune to Desperado attacks)
Regulators - Keep the peace (special ability: Enforce the peace)
Miners - Bring vital resources for construction of things like bullets and wagons (special ability?)
Parishioners - Try to spread the gospel and save souls (special ability: Gain high respect with anyone of the same moral bearing)
Grangers - Wealthiest ranger family in town employ them

Hackets - Wealthiest farmer family in town
Smithson Mining Company - A powerful mining company
Jefferson Mining Company - A rival mining company
Commoners - Everyone else, many of the stores in town

Ugh... running out of steam, more later...

Interesting ideas.

First of all, some factions should be able to exist on different levels. A religous faction and an economic faction usually exist on seperate levels. That is, they would probably hardly interect with each other unless they specifically decided to. This allows you to better alter the way in which factions realate to one another. A religous faction warring with another religous faction would probably use missionaries, while an economic war would be a price war.

Sometimes a religous faction will grow into a religous and economic faction. Some kind of 'Church of Capitalism'. Now it must compete with both economic and religous factions, but it has the resources of both economic and religous factions to pull from.

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I don't like the idea of a faction's power being related to its control over structures. Faction power is the strength of the people in it. Without knowing what level of abstraction you're using, here's how I would deal with factions:

Have an array of 1000 'typical' people in the city. This is like a sampling survey. When you build your array, set one third to poor, 1/10 to slave, etc. for economic attribute. Then you have a religous attribute. Set 30% to carnal, 30% to pious, etc. Then you have a political attribute... you get the idea. How you distribute the values should be somewhat random, as this will give you the most interesting results. The exact percentages of the distribution you determine by some set of rules based on where the city is (coastal cities are probably richer than rural towns) and other factors.

You may end up with some interesting combinations, but these help give your city a unique 'flavor'. A pious capitalist might ruthlessly trample people in business but give extensive money to his church for welfare programs.

Now take each religous faction. Sort the 1000 people into each faction based on their religous attribute. Then do the political factions, the militaristic factions, on and on.

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The number and type of people a faction has is its power in the city. Peoples religous, economic, etc. attributes in the sampling survey may change. Factions can try to convert people to their ways. This is analogous to the structure wars you were talking about.

In you western town example, maybe a farmer decides to become a rancher, or vice versa. A rich farmer turned rancher has alot of money to contribute to his new faction for lobying the support of political fations, etc.

Not a terribly difficult system to implement, but allows alot of complexity in action. Helps keep things intersting.

A good topic to discuss so here are my thoughts. :)

Faction stats:

Influence: The faction’s ability to influence events.
- Local - in the current city.
- Solar – in the current system.
- Galactic – in the galaxy.
The greater a factions influence the more control they have on events and their ability to aid or hinder the player. For example getting out of favor with a faction with high galactic influence rating could make things very difficult for the player.

PowerBase: The Factions resources pool.
- Armaments –Rating reflecting the number of and level weapons the faction possess.
- Wealth – Rating reflecting the amount of liquid assets the faction has accesses to.
- Fleet – Rating reflecting the size and power of the faction’s fleet if it exists.
- Resources – The special resources the faction has access to.
- Structures – The structures the faction controls.
- Followers - Rating reflecting the number of people who are active members of the faction.
- Popularity – Rating reflecting how popular the faction is with the people.
- Supporters – Rating reflecting the number of non-faction members who would support the faction or rally to their cause.
- VIPs – The VIPs in the faction. These are important individuals in the faction who also exist as game entities that can be interacted with. VIPs also control a percentage of the faction’s stats. If a VIP is lost the faction looses that percentage of its stats, like wise if a faction gains a VIP it gains what ever percentage of the other factions stats the VIP controlled.

Traits: Traits are special tags that a faction posses that determine special abilities, and how the faction is seen. Any faction can acquire a trait, but some traits are unique meaning that only one faction in a city can possess it. In order to gain a unique tag that is already been assigned the other faction must take it from the other faction whether by force, subversion, or popularity.

Example Traits:
- Police force - The faction is the local force in charge of law and order.
- Religion - The faction is considered a religion in the eyes of the people.
- Government - The faction governs the city.
- Rebel – Faction is seen as an enemy of the local government.
- Hate Group – Faction opposes a particular race and violently lashes out against them.
- True Faith – The faction is the main religion in the city.
- Smugglers - The faction deals heavily in black/grey market goods.

Hmm, interesting question. As far as I can tell, the best indicator of any population's happiness is the ecnomic growth of the area they live in. When there is a shortage of workers, they can demand better working conditions. Technolgical change happens faster - new labor-saving devices and entertainments appear faster, and people feel that life is giving them lots of opportunities and they are grabbing these opportunities and making progress. You are most lkely to get riots when a good economy like this suddenly turns bad, because high unemployment leave people time to rhetoricize each other to anger, and they are looking for someone to blame for their ecnomic problems - An economic situation like this set the stage for both black lynchings after the civil war and the holocaust.

Hmm, what else... governmental and law enforcement corruption, defined to be when laws and punishments are applied unevenly to the populace whether becuse of racial prejudice or bribes or whatever, is a major cause of rebellions, revolutions, and civil wars.

Cyberpunk style city factions:

Church of the Digital Messiah
A collection of dreamers, followers, and criminals brought together by the belief that evolution of computers will eventually give birth to a digital messiah who will lead the faith to a new level of existence.
Traits: Religion, Smugglers, Cyber
Abilities: Rally people, Spread the faith, acquire and sell black market goods,
Hates: The Purity League

Cappella Corporation
The worlds leading business conglomerate they control most of the worlds, resources, wealth and governments.
Traits: Government, Police, Business Empire.
Abilities: Pass law, enforce the peace, Acquire Monopoly
Hates: Daughters of Liberty.

The Purity League
People who believe that humans should remain the way they where born and oppose all modifications to the purity and essence of humanity.
Traits: Hate Group
Abilities: Incite violence, Raise hatred.
Hates: Church of the Digital Messiah

Daughters of Liberty
A violent rebel movement founded by a group of woman with single minded goal of bringing down the Cappella Corporation at all costs.
Traits: Rebel, Terrorist, Single Minded
Abilities: Organize the people, Raise fear, never swayed from their hatred.
Hates: Cappella Corporation

The people not counting as faction since they are considered assets that contribute to a faction’s powerbase.

Now for instance if there was a VIP CEO of Cappella Corporation who controlled 20% of all Cappella Corporations stats, and the Daughters of liberty assassinated him then Cappella Corporation would loose 20% of all its stats, at the same time since the daughters of liberty are a rebel group they would receive a bonus to either influence, popularity, supporters, or followers. Also since they single minded they would receive a bonus to supporters and unity for attacking their nemesis.

Ultimately all actions a faction performs would be aimed either alter their own stats or altering the stats of another faction.

The player could involve themselves in the dealing of a faction by being the instrument for an action.

Factions can have multiple traits as long as they are not mutually exclusive for instance you can’t be both the government and a rebel. But there is nothing to prevent say a religious and economic faction. In that case depending the factions personality would determine whether religion or economic was a means to an end, or a mutually partnership. One faction might consider religion a way to increase its wealth while another sees economics as a way to spread the faith and aid the faithful.

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Original post by Numsgil First of all, some factions should be able to exist on different levels. A religous faction and an economic faction usually exist on seperate levels. That is, they would probably hardly interect with each other unless they specifically decided to. This allows you to better alter the way in which factions realate to one another. A religous faction warring with another religous faction would probably use missionaries, while an economic war would be a price war.

This is an excellent suggestion if you want to model the current world. But think back to the ancient and medieval world where great churches controlled politics; or where bankers like the Bank of Germany where able to start and stop wars just by financing mercenaries!

I see the value in what you're saying in general, though. It suggests that there are different rules of interaction among factions in different ages. I'm not sure it's really worth it to get that complex, though. By not doing so, you can get some surprising interactions ("what are mercs doing in my temple?!?!")

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I don't like the idea of a faction's power being related to its control over structures. Faction power is the strength of the people in it. Without knowing what level of abstraction you're using, here's how I would deal with factions:

I wanted to avoid modeling the people directly, which is why I chose structures. This could be analogous to neighborhoods, as well, if you had to ask the question "who owns this city?"

Does a faction diminish in size if you destroy all their homes, stores and other facilities? Do they have as much political influence if they own no businesses or no significant neighborhoods (assuming this factors into rioting, protesting, voting, or other shows of strength).

But you're right, it is oversimplistic. So counting the numbers in a faction is important, and that's what Strength was supposed to reflect, because people usually have a base they operate from (even a vacant lot).

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Original post by TechnoGoth A good topic to discuss so here are my thoughts. :)

Thanks for the great detail!

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Influence: The faction’s ability to influence events. - Local - in the current city. - Solar – in the current system. - Galactic – in the galaxy. The greater a factions influence the more control they have on events and their ability to aid or hinder the player. For example getting out of favor with a faction with high galactic influence rating could make things very difficult for the player.

Great addition. How do you think this should work faction vs. faction, though? Let's say that a Local influence faction ticks off a Solar faction. What does influence give either the solar faction or the local faction?

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PowerBase: The Factions resources pool. - Armaments –Rating reflecting the number of and level weapons the faction possess. - Wealth – Rating reflecting the amount of liquid assets the faction has accesses to. - Fleet – Rating reflecting the size and power of the faction’s fleet if it exists. - Resources – The special resources the faction has access to. - Structures – The structures the faction controls. - Followers - Rating reflecting the number of people who are active members of the faction. - Popularity – Rating reflecting how popular the faction is with the people. - Supporters – Rating reflecting the number of non-faction members who would support the faction or rally to their cause. - VIPs – The VIPs in the faction. These are important individuals in the faction who also exist as game entities that can be interacted with. VIPs also control a percentage of the faction’s stats. If a VIP is lost the faction looses that percentage of its stats, like wise if a faction gains a VIP it gains what ever percentage of the other factions stats the VIP controlled.

This is a much better definition than Strength. Do you think that all should be equivalent? If a faction loses popularity, is that the same as losing supporters? Or if they gain structures but lose resources are they pretty much net.

I think that VIPs should be a multiplier in both positive and negative ways. Maybe you have a VIP who's great at fundraising, so he multiplies the faction's Wealth; whereas a great military leader could multiply Armaments. Then, if you kidnap or kill them, you take a multiplier away from the faction.

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Traits: Traits are special tags that a faction posses that determine special abilities, and how the faction is seen. Any faction can acquire a trait, but some traits are unique meaning that only one faction in a city can possess it. In order to gain a unique tag that is already been assigned the other faction must take it from the other faction whether by force, subversion, or popularity. Example Traits: - Police force - The faction is the local force in charge of law and order. - Religion - The faction is considered a religion in the eyes of the people. - Government - The faction governs the city. - Rebel – Faction is seen as an enemy of the local government. - Hate Group – Faction opposes a particular race and violently lashes out against them. - True Faith – The faction is the main religion in the city. - Smugglers - The faction deals heavily in black/grey market goods.

Much more flexible! I was searching for a way to have a situation where, say a religious faction is trying to be the de facto law versus the police faction. By making it so that any faction can acquire a trait, you could have a see-saw conflict between the zealots and the cops, with the mantle of "police force" changing hands from time to time.

This makes me think: What qualifies one to have a trait? I keep going back to ownership of structures and resources as requirements. If you own churches or places to practice rites, you're a religion. If you have a jail and weapons locker and handle citizen complaints, you're a police force.

But what if you're a police station AND temple, as with a religious police? It seems to me the components of a structure confer some of the traits in some cases; but actions (like the hate group) confer traits in other cases.

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Original post by sunandshadow You are most lkely to get riots when a good economy like this suddenly turns bad, because high unemployment leave people time to rhetoricize each other to anger, and they are looking for someone to blame for their ecnomic problems - An economic situation like this set the stage for both black lynchings after the civil war and the holocaust.

Good points. I think you're right on about the unemployment situation or any major problem in general that can't be attributed to natural causes. Even "moral decay" can be blamed on a group (women in Salem, Mass in the 1600s for example).

An interesting theory I once read claimed that people may act out when things are bad but they do so at their own level. So they'll attack people near them, but not the government. The exception is revolution: People tend not to revolt against the government when things are really bad, but rather when things are reforming and then suddenly fail. This might explain how people cope with oppressive governments for decades or centuries, but then suddenly rise up en masse (French Revolution is a great example).

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Hmm, what else... governmental and law enforcement corruption, defined to be when laws and punishments are applied unevenly to the populace whether becuse of racial prejudice or bribes or whatever, is a major cause of rebellions, revolutions, and civil wars.

Corruption is a good stat!

But does corruption really cause rebellion? It seems that there have been many corrupt and stable governments throughout history. I'm thinking about the Gilded Age in America, for example, where you had massive political machines and lots of graft. Rome, according to critics like Cicero, was constantly infested with corruption and moral decay but stood for centuries (that's a vast oversimplication, I know, but just thinking....). Similar examples exist for Japan and China that I know of where famines or high taxes causes riots more than corruption (because corruption often is invisible).

I would say that corruption causes rebellion because a group which can't rely on the government will create it's own mini-government to protect itself (a gang, a militia, a mafia...) and ths government will naturally wind up in conflict with the original government and other mini-governments, resulting in coups, civil wars, and rebellions. Your example of the guilded age had unions and strike wars.