Making Ideology Physical news

As I’ve mentioned a few times in recent entries, I’ve been working on how nations vary and how the game keeps track of the various beliefs of each nation. In the past we had a “policy” system, but that wasn’t really working how I wanted it to, and it was proving rather simplistic, so I’ve made a bunch of major changes, both to how the system works and defines itself, and also to the impact(s) which ideological choices have. Firstly, I decided to change them to “ideologies” instead of “policies” to move them a little bit away from the Civilization-esque model of a policy being something which affects a nation in an abstract way – greater taxation here, reduced freedoms there, etc – and rather use the term ideology to emphasize something which more structural, reproduced throughout the nation, and which has imprinted itself on many aspects of national life. So this week I’ve been working on updating these and in the process adding a huge amount of new variation to the nations in the world, and adjusting NPCs and their behaviour appropriately in the new nations. So, the impacts of ideologies on both the outside world, and the castle in the capital of that nation, are now as follows. I realize lists of this sort have appeared on the blog before, but I’m pretty confident now that this is the final system:

Religious
Collective Faith: churches spawn in towns, but not cities.
Organized Religion: churches spawn in lower- and middle-class city districts. Chapel spawns in castle.
Religious Freedom: capital city contains district housing all religious buildings; towns contain no religious buildings. Many small chapels for each religion spawn in castle.
Zealotry: churches spawn in every lower- and middle-class city district and every town. Chapel spawns in castle, and holy books spawn in many rooms.
Monastic: monasteries spawn outside cities. Monk quarters in castle.

Military
Conscription: barracks spawn in towns. Conscript training area in castle.
Standing Army: military bases (larger, and containing barracks and armouries spawn in all towns). Large garrison in castle.
Militia: many citizens carry weapons of some sort.
Pacifism: there is no military district in the capital city.
Vassalage: in towns there are manors instead of village halls, and there are a large number of lesser noble families (beyond those living in the city), each of which controls a town and its surrounding area. Hall filled with banners of lords/nobles spawns in castle.

Foreign
Exploration: cartographer shop spawns in market district. Map room spawns in castle.
Isolationist: towns have walls around them. Extra defensive walls spawn around castle.
Internationalist: towns contain diasporic communities from other nations. Foreign tribute room spawns in castle.
Interventionist: Spies and informers spawn in other nations. Secret vault/room with espionage information spawns in castle.
Imperialist: colonies owned by the home nation appear on the world map. Trophy room of captured items from other nations spawns in castle.

Intellectual
Traditional: biographer shop spawns in market district. Super-rare biographies spawn in castle.
Mathematical: architect shop spawns in market district.
Mechanical: mining shop spawns in market district.
Literary: bookseller shop spawns in market district. Super-rare books (of any sort) spawn in castle.
Antiquarian: historian shop spawns in market district. Super-rare histories spawn in castle.

Leadership
Representation: parliament spawns in city centre; delegates are assigned to an appropriate mathematical distribution across towns, monasteries, colonies, districts, families, religion, and the military (depending on other ideologies/factors). No throne room spawns, but rich quarters for current elected ruler spawn instead.
Stratocracy: barracks in every housing district. Military-focused throne room with heavy guard spawns in castle.
Monarchy: large graveyards with crypts spawn. Regal throne room spawns in castle.
Theocracy: crypt with archives spawns under cathedral. Throne room with altars and holy texts spawns in castle.

Trade
Free Trade: all city districts are free to enter. Well-guarded cache of foreign money spawns in castle.
Mercantilism: cities cost money to enter/exit (and towns if also with isolationist policy), but there is no cost for movement inside.
Planned Economy: each district in a city costs money to move through.
Protectionism: inferior prices for selling foreign goods; increased prices for selling domestic goods. Well-guarded cache of domestic money spawns in castle.
Barter: black markets spawn in lower-class districts and towns.

Cultural
Hegemony: racial background affects relations with NPCs and other nations.
Aesthetics: jeweller shop spawns in market district. Art gallery spawns in castle.
Venatic: fletcher, bowyer and crossbowyer shops spawn in market district. Hunting trophies are displayed in castle.
Wisdom: linguist shop spawns in market district. Super-rare philosophy books spawn in castle.

Justice:
Vigiliantism: bounties for wanted individuals are listed on posters, and may be acquired from a central bounty office in the city centre. Heads on pikes spawn outside castle and/or in castle grounds.
Gladiatorial: arenas spawn, both for entertainment and punishment of criminals. Information about champions spawns in hallway in castle.
Frontier: pistolmaker, riflemaker and powdermaker shops spawn in market district. Rifle armoury spawns in castle.
Ordeal: punishment is by ordeal, the nature of which varies from nation to nation. Torture chamber spawns beneath castle.
Penitentiary: prisons spawn in lower-class districts. Dungeon spawns beneath castle.

The idea here being that these aren’t “abstract” changes, but physical and structural changes that the player should see in each nation they visit, and which in turn will be reflected in the kind of people you meet in each nation, how they behave and talk, and so on. Perhaps one can learn about the ideologies of distant nations in other ways – a book about a nation would only mention a famous fight in an arena if that nation has the gladiatorial ideology, for example, or a painting would only depict a nation invading another if they were (probably) imperialists – and perhaps plan out one’s path around the world, at least in part, based on this; at the same time the player should be able to have a decent idea of what they’ll find in a nation before they set foot there. Here are some examples – some of these already exist in 0.7’s world generation, but some of these variations are very new. We have here a town with walls and various military facilities and a mansion (and no town hall, since a town with a manor is ruled from there instead), a city centre with a parliament, a town with a diasporic community, and a new marketplace of a sort redesigned for the next release:

Many of the ideologies are however smaller in scale – certain shops spawn, or people behave in a certain way, and so forth – and are therefore not quite as easily represented in a nice blog entry screenshot. Equally, I’m also going to add a new set of variations which aren’t really “ideologies”, per se, but rather things like: regular statuary at junctions and alongside roads in cities, gardens in every district, writing everything on tablets instead of books, having developed gas lighting for their streets, and another two-dozen or so ideas I’ve got along these lines (using prayer mats instead of chairs in religious buildings falls into this category of non-ideological variation). Just more and more stuff to be developed slowly but surely in the background to further add to the variation and difference in each nation.

Next week we’ll have a big coding update. It has become apparent that I’ve stacked up quite an impressive list of bugs and issues and small things requiring fixing over the last few months, and I think it is wisest to deal with all of these in the coming week before starting anything new (i.e. getting NPCs moving around correctly according to their abstract schedules in the physical world). It is reaching the point where I just have too many things 95% finished in the next version to really keep track of, so the focus before next weekend is in clearing up and optimizing a huge number of things coded in the past couple of months, in order to free up a bit of cognitive space to then proceed with finishing off NPCs. Equally, apologies for two not-progress-heavy blog posts in a row; coding is going on in the background, but there’s so much on my plate at the moment (full-time research, book proposals, papers, etc) that I’ve been inevitably focusing on smaller coding tasks than larger ones which require serious focus for several days on end. Anyway – see you next week, at which point a bunch of papers and other tasks will have been concluded, and so coding should accelerate once again!