How many citizens rebel at a given legitimacy, and how much do the cops hold them back? Within a few ticks about 95 of the 180 citizens become red stars, and active-count stays near that level. There are no long quiet spells at the defaults.
Try this While it runs, drop government-legitimacy from 72 to 40; grievance is recomputed every tick, so it takes effect live. active-count jumps from about 95 to about 130 within a tick, then jailed-count climbs toward 30 and active-count eases back to around 110.
About this model Where it ends up
Joshua Epstein's agent-based model of civil violence (PNAS, 2002), via Uri Wilensky's NetLogo Rebellion. Citizens rebel when grievance against the regime outweighs fear of arrest, and cops jail the rebels they see. In this port activity settles quickly at a level set mostly by legitimacy, and citizens within sight of a cop keep quiet.
Each citizen has a random hardship and risk aversion between 0 and 1, and a grievance of hardship × (1 − government-legitimacy / 100). Each tick, free citizens and cops take a random step of length movement. Then, all at once, each free citizen counts the cops C and active citizens within vision (A includes itself) and goes active if grievance − risk-aversion × C / A is above threshold / 100, quiet otherwise. Each cop then jails one random active citizen in its vision for up to max-jail-term ticks. cop-density is a percentage of population (7 cops at the defaults). Only population and cop-density need a Reset; the other sliders are read every tick.
Differences from Epstein: his estimated arrest probability is 1 − exp(−2.3 C / A), while here it is C / A with no exponential, so it can exceed 1. Agents take a random step instead of moving to a random empty site in vision, jailed citizens stay on the board, and the cops are few: 7 on 1,813 patches. Most citizens rarely see one, and the punctuated outbursts Epstein reports don't appear at the default or preset settings.
