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Author Topic: Seperation of Politics and Culture  (Read 963 times)

BugbearSpearFighter

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Seperation of Politics and Culture
« on: August 18, 2020, 10:07:54 pm »

The more I generate worlds, the more it annoys me that each culture and nation are one-to-one. Even when a civilization conquers other sites, culture seems to instantly change from what I can gather, so practically every entity is a nation-state. I'd suggest separating Cultures and Governments. Each Culture would start with typically 1 settlement, just like the current Entity. Cultures will hold most of the work done by an Entity, such as values, permitted reactions, species, tissue styling, and material usage. However, Governments (not referring to Site Governments, but to the governing body of a nation), will be influenced by cultural values, and be generated in world gen, though perhaps some tags in raw could give a Culture affinity to governmental structures like a [FEUDAL] tag or [CITYSTATES] tag. Governments would handle holdings, nobles, and relations, and could have conflicts with other governments. Hopefully, eventually this could lead to governments crossing cultures, or splitting apart in civil wars. Additionally, it would tie in to the rework of allegiances, where Dwarves could have differing allegiances to their Fortress, Kingdom, and Culture. I think that these features could be implemented alongside the laws and customs, since they both strive to flesh out how entities function.
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Shonai_Dweller

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Re: Seperation of Politics and Culture
« Reply #1 on: August 18, 2020, 11:38:45 pm »

Politics and Culture is the huge arc after Mythgen. Game is a long way from being finished yet. It shouldn't annoy you that arcs not yet even started don't exist.

But, yeah, separating out culture and politics is a good thing to have.

« Last Edit: August 18, 2020, 11:40:41 pm by Shonai_Dweller »
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BugbearSpearFighter

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Re: Seperation of Politics and Culture
« Reply #2 on: August 19, 2020, 12:13:57 pm »

I read through and saw that culture and customs were in an arc. I may be wrong since I'm (sadly) not Toady, but I got the general impression that the laws didn't support things like entities splitting up and stuff. I could be wrong though, and I get that it's far off.
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Azerty

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Re: Seperation of Politics and Culture
« Reply #3 on: August 19, 2020, 02:41:01 pm »

It's an often made suggestion to separate culture and governments, so that we might get cultures encompassing several polities (Greek City-States) or present in several governments (Poles from 1791 until 1918) and, conversely, empires with several cultures (Persia, Rome).
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"Just tell me about the bits with the forest-defending part, the sociopath part is pretty normal dwarf behavior."

Shonai_Dweller

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Re: Seperation of Politics and Culture
« Reply #4 on: August 19, 2020, 04:16:36 pm »

I read through and saw that culture and customs were in an arc. I may be wrong since I'm (sadly) not Toady, but I got the general impression that the laws didn't support things like entities splitting up and stuff. I could be wrong though, and I get that it's far off.
Think of the large development arcs as rewrites of large parts of the game, not additions. If something's not supported, it's erased and replaced with something that can support it (see map rewrite in Mythgen arc).
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GOTOTOTOE

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Re: Seperation of Politics and Culture
« Reply #5 on: September 20, 2020, 05:59:07 am »

+1
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betaking

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Re: Seperation of Politics and Culture
« Reply #6 on: September 20, 2020, 04:25:28 pm »

Thinking about this it would help in a lot of areas.

furthermore having ""culture"" be something "flexible-ish" with the ability to split and mutate into different cultures from a "root culture" so you get things like tribes splitting and distinguishing themselves from one another.

Distinguishing culture from Politics also helps keep the world "alive" in terms of politics, even more so if economic drivers and technology and/or "magic" research/development are added in some way. (animal+plant breeding getting more work done on it would help in this area too).

the main way it would keep the world "alive" is by allowing "nations" or "civilizations" to break apart/collapse. Though I think for that to truly work goblins and elves need a lot of "Work" done on them to make them less "immortal".
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A_Curious_Cat

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Re: Seperation of Politics and Culture
« Reply #7 on: September 20, 2020, 08:18:04 pm »

the main way it would keep the world "alive" is by allowing "nations" or "civilizations" to break apart/collapse. Though I think for that to truly work goblins and elves need a lot of "Work" done on them to make them less "immortal".

Elves could freeze to death:P
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