23-09-2000 09:36									#31
	Inflate your Upload Space

I will take my step at bridging the gap here, and probably make it worse .

Richard:

F_Smith as I see it is working at the basics underlying the system. Both for coding purposes, and because he thinks a 'good' object model is a powerful contributor to the design. He is mostly proposing (again as I read it) a foundation for the current (your) system in terms of objects. The details you are looking for, he means to substantially be the same as in the standard system. Obviously there would be some secondary changes resulting from his proposed approach.

As I see it, the major thing we've been discussing is the object that holds tech. (Putting aside this infra idea for the moment) F_Smith wants tech to be at the EG level, Richard (and me too) at the civ level, or at most province level. By putting an overall tech object pointer at the EG level we can have Both solutions. For the EG level model this means each EG has its own unique Tech object which does all the complex things F_Smith wants (and Enormous computational and other baggage IMO, but that is another discussion). Simply by having a checkbox that says 'Tech at civ level' you can instead have Every EG in the civ have its tech object pointer point to The Same 'civ' tech object. Then you would sum over what RPs are being produced in the civ could be applied once to the overall 'civ' tech. When that tech object changes all the EGs tech pointers point to the new modified object and things are basically the same as if there only Were one tech object, associated with the civ.

So to recap, there isn't much in F_Smith's posts since he is intending IMO to just use your system, but at a different level, or associating storage with different objects than you intended. I see no problem with a limited amount of this provided the 'standard' system gets coded along with any other options.

Hope this helps...

	23-09-2000 14:40									#32
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

Richard:

Your breakdown of the 'civilization' object is not how this will be coded, I'm afraid. I'm going to stick with the OO design I posted above. But it will allow that functionality, you can set all EG's in a civ to point to the exact same knowledge objects. You will have your tiers -- have no fear.

Just to reiterate, for your amusement:

[*]The 'tech system' will not belong to the 'civ' object.

[*]The 'civ' will hold 'provinces'. The 'provinces' will hold mapsquares. The mapsquares will hold EGs. The EGs will hold knowledge.

[*]Either the civ will hold a collection of 'theory' objects or the infrastructure objects in that civ will hold 'theory' objects.

[*]You will be able to define two different levels of 'theory' -- 'General Theory' (your level 1 tech) and 'Theories in a Specific Field of Knowledge' (your level 2 techs).

[*]You will be able to define any number of levels of 'knowledge' (your level 3 techs) objects -- and don't worry, we'll start with just one.
[/list]

Your system can be churned by this design.

I'm still not sure how ya'll are going to overcome some of the game difficulties I see when it's time to code that model -- but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. I still see changes required to reach the goals I know ya'll have.

Altho I could be wrong . . . this time.

For the moment, I'm going to drop this and leave ya'll to your tech system. I think it's time I got back to coding.

	23-09-2000 19:26									#34
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

F_Smith, why do you insist on making up new words for everything? The team has been using a certain definition of "theory" and "knowledge" for over six months now, and you come in and unilaterally change all of those definitions without any explanation. I went to the trouble of defining all of our terms so you could understand us, and then you just insist on using your own words without even giving a good definition of them. We will never be able to communicate if we are not even speaking the same language. Please start using words in the context that I defined.

quote: Your breakdown of the 'civilization' object is not how this will be coded, I'm afraid. I'm going to stick with the OO design I posted above.

	23-09-2000 19:52									#35
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

Richard:

First, please cut out the cynical taunting statements. They have no positive effect other than making you feel good for the few seconds you write them, and each has a chance of pissing someone off. When you tick off someone you not only reduce our teamwork, but possibly cause them to go away for awhile while the cool off. I lost an hour of productive work time this week due to just such a statement by somebody else. So please keep the discourse civil, and if you are taunting in a friendly manner use a wink or happy face to show that. We need all the goodwill among the team that we can manage!

I agree with your general statements, but there is one thing you have dead wrong:

quote: And this plan does not give the option to turn this detail off. F_Smith's system does not give players the ability to store knowledge objects at any level other than sqEG. If someone wanted to have one set of knowledge objects per civ, they would not have that option. Players are stuck with ten million knowledge objects.

	23-09-2000 20:38									#36
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

Sorry, I should have used smiles. I got rid of them after a few minutes because I finally realized they could be misinterpreted. Yet another example of my complete inability to communicate properly.

I thought that F_Smith said that knowledge would be stored in sqEG's, rather than having a pointer in there. Just like all the province objects are inside the civ, I thought he wanted all of the tech objects to be inside the sqEG's.

So my misunderstanduing of the programming language has caused yet another problem. I'm trying to learn the stuff, but I still cause trouble for everyone. Maybe I should just quit messing with all of this, go back to playing civ2, and let all of the programmers do things their way. I just seem to be getting in the way of the people who know what they are doing.

In eight months, my sole "contribution" has been writing complicated and worthless design docs that scare off valuable programmers, and getting in pointless arguments that annoy and waste the time of the existing game programmers.

	23-09-2000 20:55									#37
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Richard:

Chill out man! You are a very valuable member of the project, and have done a lot of really great modeling IMO. And the model will work Great once coded, I'm convinced! Don't worry about a little oversite here or there. If I got depressed about everything I've overlooked or forgot about, I'd be disfunctional! You are learning the programming stuff to help out the project. Don't get rattled if you make mistakes, learning without mistakes is almost impossible.

Besides,after all these plans, I don't think you'd be happy going back to Civ2. I'm certainly not!

	23-09-2000 20:55									#38
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

I have kept a low profile for a little while, enabling you to discuss some of the issues I seem to have stumbled somewhat inadvertently into.

And while y'all, being entangled in the discussion, might think that you've been going nowhere fast, it has been very interesting and I think you've gained some ground. I will return to this later.

I thought about my last couple of posts some more and found several inconsistensies that points to a faulty object model. This lead to some rather surprising conclusions, that I would like to share with you here. They might be totally wrong, and definitely somewhat OT, concerning the economic model, the infrastructure model, the tech model, the population model and the general OOD, but since they are related to the discussion in this thread I will keep it here for the moment.

First, I assumed that infrastructure cannot hold people and is immobile. And almost in the same sentence I mentioned a type of infrastructure that must hold people and can move: Military units. I suddenly remembered seeing somewhere that military units would absorb some people when being created, they could loose people during combat and if put on reserve or disbanded the people contained would return to civilian life. It is obvious that military units are mobile containers of population. The more population, up to a certain limit, the stronger the military unit (military strength of the unit must of course also be based on some hardware, but lets put that aside for the moment). Since the unit of population is the EG a military unit must contain EGs. Actually I had pictured military units as 'moving mapsquares with military capacity' thus being able to hold people.

Next I took this reasoning further: Since some infrastructure objects obviously can hold EGs it is reasonable to consider if not all EGs in fact should reside in infrastrucuture objects of which the military unit is just a special mobile case.

The next thing that struck my mind as odd was the fact that I assumed that people have an inherent capacity of turning ressources into output. Such 'semi-magical' powers are suspect. Elsewhere in the model it is infrastructure that has this ability of transforming some ressource into another - in the presence of people. In fact I had given EGs some infrastructure properties.

A thought that had previously crossed my mind suddenly surfaced. I actually also mentioned it as an exception in the post mentioned: Nomadic civs or migrating civs. They are exceptions since they have no land, and yet they have to produce output or they could not sustain themselves - how should this be done? Having no land they are in fact invisible to the civ/interface construction I proposed which is based on possession of land. Again I had this feeling: If they were in fact 'moving mapsquares' they could both produce, have population and be visible to the civ/interface.

A further thing that had bothered me earlier also popped up: When I read the economic model the concept of sites seemed very abstract. I couldn't put a finger on it, it just seemed wrong: In nature there are no sites, there are ressources. The finite number of food and production sites are limitations in terms of how much of these ressources man is capable of 'harvesting': How much land is farmed, how many mines exist etc. Sites are more like infrastructure: a way of converting basic ressources into units. There should be two means of increasing production from a square: Increasing the output of individual sites (the improvement of sites as covered in the present economic model), and increasing the number of sites (farming new land, discovering and developing new mineral deposits etc).

And finally I had been worried by the lack of cities, which didn't seem to be modelled very well.

And a solution matured in my mind (I actually woke up in the night - it was almost like Descartes ). You may like it and you may not, since it will influence many models. It is primarily a programming term, and would probably never come to the attention of the player. It might even be very difficult to implement, but here goes:

Imagine splitting the mapsquare into two layers:
First the basic mapsquare: the geosquare that keeps the square in place geographically, and holds the basic ressources: terrain, farm land, forrests, specials etc. This would in fact represent the maximum possible yield of the land. You could still express this as sites, but these sites would represent the maximum possible number of sites that could be constructed in the square, given all technology.
On top of this basic mapsquare we could place a very basic infrastructure object: I have called it a Habitat in lack of a better name. The Habitat would hold the population and a number of sites representing how much of the basic ressources are actually developed - this number of sites is equivalent to the number of sites now present in the economic model. Sites might then be separate infrastructure objects held by the habitat. They could be built as every other infrastructure object upto the limit of the underlying mapsquare, provided the proper tech requisites were met, FE if an EG reaches a tech level that would allow for irrigation or use of certain minerals (FE uranium) it would be possible to build more sites, representing the plowing of new land or the opening of a uranium mine). I don't mean that we should have 'uranium sites', they would still be represented as production sites, but acheiving a certain tech level would raise the proportion of potentially utilised sites, abstractly representing the mining of uranium/titanium/whatever. The habitat might even be capable of holding other infrastructure objects, although these might be better placed in the geosquare.

This way the present mapsquare object will be represented by one geosquare object and one habitat object. The combination will be indestinguishable from the original concept. The only extra thing is the possibility to build new sites up to a maximum provided by the underlying geosquare, but this could be left out - at least for starters.
'Well, so what' I hear you say.

Here it comes: A military unit is nothing but a mobile habitat! A mobile infrastructure object, holding people and a limited number of sites, representing the ability of the military unit to live off the land (of course the influence of this on other inhabitants of the underlying square would have to be decided). A further capability of a military unit infrastructure object is to transform the people present into military power. Similar a nomadic civ is nothing but a collection of mobile habitats.

Instead of having the empire consist of a collection of mapsquares it would consist of a collection of habitats, thus allowing the interface to 'see' nomadic civs, despite the lack of controlled mapsquares.

By making sites infrastructure, we avoid having EGs have inherent production capabilities, which streamlines the object model. The only object producing is an infrastructure object: For historical scenarios people would have to be present, but for SF-scenarios, fully automised, robtic assembly plants or mining constructions would be possible. Military units, being infrastructure object are no exception, allowing for cruise misiles and the like.

Other infrastructure objects could be seen as mobile or semimobile habitats: Particularly oceanic ressource collection could benefit from this: A fishing fleet would carry with it its own food sites (how do you like that Mark?), and likewise Oil rigs would carry production sites. The habitats wouldn't even have to be placed on the map, but could be abstractly off map, like orbital production facilities or mining stations on the moon!

Now it is getting really wild: You could imagine the same square having more than one habitat (akin to locations mentioned earlier). I am particularly thinking of having one rural and one urban habitat. The urban habitat could be constructed, representing the founding of a city. We would then have a way of modelling people moving from rural areas to urban areas. The city could have its own particular mix of sites, EGs, infrastructure objects etc. The implications are astounding!

All this derived from one object!

Off course I also have something to say about where tech belongs (basically Mark and I see it the same way), but I will post this now, and return later.

[This message has been edited by Beör (edited September 23, 2000).]

	24-09-2000 09:33									#39
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

Mark:

People will hold their own tech info -- 'knowledge' --(thru pointers, as you mentioned). But it is my analysis that there will also be the need to store tech info (theories) in 'infrastructure' objects. I think I've tried to explain why exhaustively.

I'm not willing to drop that for two reasons.

First, this is how designing a program is *suppose* to work. The programmers get the basic objects necessary from the designers, then design an architecture. The designers then work with that architecture to develop the business/game logic.

From the beginning, here, the designers have rejected that input without understanding it, insisting on architecting the program themselves. So I'm not convinced people have understood the design yet, since no one has given any OO reason for changing the design. People can't just say "we don't like this", or "I don't understand why this is this way" and convince me to change an architecture that is necessary (in my analysis). As long as it can support all the functionality you want seamlessly, I think it'll work fine.

And second, the 'ethnic group at the mapsquare' argument leaves me somewhat confident that I should stick with my guns.

If you can show me an OO reason to change it, I'm all ears. Otherwise, I'll have to remain with this design.

* * *

Richard:

From my standpoint, the only problem has been that you haven't been listening to input from more experienced people.

You're standing fast and arguing hard over program architecture decisions that you don't understand. A programmer told you 'it has to work this way' and you rejected that, insisting it has to be architected your way, even tho you have never even seen an object design or system architecture.

You're a bright guy. You're valuable to this team. You're certainly not the only designer that has been rejecting programmer's input over the last year. So don't feel too bad.

But we -- all of the 'designers' and the programmers -- are going to have to learn to work together. Ya'll are going to have to accept programmer input, and be willing to change from time to time based upon that input.

And yes, this design will support yours, mine, and even the old 'tech tree' type system (which I do think is more 'fun' than this abstract system ya'll have designed), if we want to add that as an option. I am saving my idea of the perfect tech system for an 'optional' system, just like I did for 'politics'. I also think we absolutely should include a 'tech tree' option, too. Those are fun, too.

That's the mark of a good design, being able to 'scale' to cover many different types of systems.

The system I have in mind actually is something fairly radical for a 'tech' system. It's actually heavily suggested by analysing the design itself -- Beor might see where I'm going to head. Tech will 'grow', like a living system.

I'm pretty sure there's no way I can explain this to ya'll in terms I can make clear, so I think I'll just code it later and show you.

	24-09-2000 09:48									#40
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

Beor:

Hmmm.

I'm not sure I agree with that analysis.

I was of a mind that a 'military unit' would just be another type of 'group'. Perhaps 'ethnic group', 'military unit' and any other 'mobile' groups of people would simply extend a basic 'pop group' object, or something like that.

I wasn't aware that there will be no cities -- is this true? That's not good, I can't agree with that if that's the case. What kind of a wargame will that leave us with? Besides, I think Mark already told me that some infrastructure would be tied to mapsquares.

This is all why the basic architecture has to be done before we go any farther. The 'map' object hierarchy must be done *first*. Then the 'population' object hierarchy will have to be designed.

I would love to begin doing a basic OO on the map stuff, if you're up for it. In another thread, I should think?

	23-09-2000 23:16									#41
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

Beör:

No cities?!? Do you think you could actually read the economics page on the Clash web site before launching into such speculations? I think if you are going to try and make object models for the entire game that you need to at least understand the state of play of what is going on here... You have been with us about a month now, and it would probably be best for you to read some of the original sources rather than relying on secondhand things that were mentioned by somebody in a thread that doesn't specifically relate to the economy. Otherwise, you are just going to end up spreading misconceptions about how things work... I have seen a lot of great ideas come out of you, although I haven't had time to respond to many of them. Please keep up the good work. But also try to read some of the background material, it will help to put your ideas in context. The Econ web page is a little bit out of date, but most of the things are still fairly accurate. The only major difference is we have gone to a production function approach to figure out how much stuff is produced.

F. Smith:

Could you read the Econ model on the web page also? Sure it would take about 20 or 30 minutes, but these things keep coming up over and over again, and it is stated quite clearly how things are supposed to work on the web page.

Infra holding theory, etc...

If you end up programming technology you can IMO store the information anyplace you want so long as it doesn't change the model function (a la business model) without substantial group buy-in. Just like was done in the government area. I was simply trying to use your own methods, which despite trying I obviously still don't get. I still think using infrastructure to hold theory objects doesn't make much sense. That implies to me that Albert Einstein couldn't utilize or push forward the theory of relativity unless he was associated with a university, library, or some other type of infrastructure. Now of course its a game model, and so we don't need to be completely realistic. But I don't see what either the object model, or the player, gets out of this. Schools/Libraries (actually educational/research infra in the current infrastructure model) can affect knowledge production quite adequately without holding a theory obect, just as schools can educate people without explicitly holding people in the object model. Such a concept is clearly possible in a different civ-type or RTS game. I just don't see what it has to do with clash.

A quandary about object models...

I am beginning to come to the conclusion that it is useless to discuss object models. We just spend vast time discussing them, but the discussions have no positive results. Why not just use whatever object model you like from now on in whatever you code? Our discussions never change your mind about the object model, and never seem to really educate us about how to do this black art. And on the modelers side, we are rarely convinced of the blinding logic behind the object model and usually just want to stick to doing the model the same old way in gameplay terms. One thing I have gotten from these discussions is that you want the object model to be able to simulate almost any possible rules framework for a civ-type game. Given that that's the case, one application surely is the specific case of the clash models as they exist and will evolve.

I'll try and get a book, whatever you recommend, about how to do what you're doing. But until I read it, I can't say I'm getting much out of these discussions, other than finding out the kind of game you really want to program.

I'm not trying to be provocative about this, it just seems to me this exercise isn't getting us anywhere based on many months of experience. Last night I was patting myself on the back that we had finally reached agreement on a tech object model. In fact, I just realized that if you end up coding technology, it will be coded using exactly the same object model you proposed above (before many pages of discussion). And that the rest of us would be happy provided that your object model could put tech at the civ level. An analogous thing happened in the government model. Again, after extremely long arguments and misunderstandings. So why exactly are we having all these discussions?

The previous bit and the coming statements aren't meant to hurt your feelings, or attack you in any way. It's just as the project lead I have to try and assess what we're doing that's being productive, and what isn't... please don't take this personally. I hold you in very high regard, and also value your skills, and the "sweat equity" you have put into the project.

I am really starting to come to the conclusion that you just want a rather different game from the way the rest of the project has evolved. You look at our models, which you don't like, and ascribe the difference to the lack of a good OO model. I agree with you that your style of modeling is most likely better for coding purposes. But I'm beginning to suspect that there are differences beyond coding purposes driving this. Even though our aims are somewhat different, working together can still get us all where we want to go. I just don't want the path to be rougher than it has to be . Any thoughts?

What do you do at work when the business team says "We want this exact functionality, code it any way you want."? If you add "And we're happy to try out any alternative approaches to the functionality that you want to try." that seems to be what we are effectively doing.

-Mark

P.S. I sent you an e-mail earlier today. I thought I would mention it here since previously I had the wrong e-mail address and I want to make sure it went to the right place.


[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited September 23, 2000).]

	24-09-2000 02:10									#42
	Increase Your PM Length

Mark

Well excuse me…

I knew you probably wouldn't like it

But I think you ought'a read what I posted rather than hold both hands up in defence. I never claimed that there were to be no cities, that was F_Smiths interpretation. I claimed that the modelling was rather vague. And contrary to what you think I studied the Economic model - and most of the other models - in some detail. In the following I have quoted everything that pertains to cities in your Economic model on the webpage:

quote: The main economic action takes place in provinces, which consist of groups of map squares. A capital (usually city) square is the economic and administrative center of the province Provinces in Clash will consist of a group of map squares and one or more cities. Cities are the administrative and trade centers of provinces. Because of these important functions, the population density in cities will tend to be much larger than that in the surrounding countryside. Cities present both opportunities and problems of their own, due primarily to their increased population density. Squares designated by the player (or the people themselves, TBD) as cities grow faster (~50%) in population and development than the countryside, and the administrative center of the province (capital) grows 2x as fast. This factor represents some migration within the province. However city growth will slow, or even stop when the city/urban squares have insufficient water / health infrastructure to support their population. For now, I will focus on how of the province as a whole functions, omitting those features which are specific to cities. Also, the handle city is used loosely here. It means a place that is an administrative center, or has significantly larger population density than average, or a key trading location. In the modern era there will really be cities all over the place, but only those that are especially large will be treated as cities for game purposes. One element I want to add at the square level that relates to cities, is a bonus for the amount of production that takes place in a square. In the transition during and after the industrial revolution, when supply chains in production became possible, concentrating production into a small area like a city could provide big benefits. This type of effect was generally only very small before the industrial revolution. To capture the importance of cities as production centers during this period, concentrations of productive capacity will get a bonus. For a really big city around 1900 my guess is the production bonus should be of order 25%. Anyone with a better guess is encouraged to state it ;-). I don't have the details yet, but this effect will push city growth in the way that happened in the real world. As the economy beomes even more developed, the bonus will gradually shift to being derived from the production in the whole province. Suggestions are welcome as to how to fit cities into the rest of the world model structure in Clash in this or other ways. The main criterion for whether a square can be part of province or not, is the ease of transportation from that square to the central city of the province. Right now I'm working with the notion that any square that is less than one movement point from the capital city (or could be with road construction) qualifies for membership in the province. Squares with better transportation connections (roads, canals, etc) to the administrative city of the province will get small bonuses to their economic productivity in all the sectors The bonuses I have in mind is to average the road quality to the adminstrative city … So a city with 100k people will require a much larger amount of infrastructure than the same number of people spread out among 20 squares

In my opinion this is rather vague. There will be cities, but they are really just either an administrative center (which BTW doesn't have to be a city), a square with many people in it, a key trading location (whatever that is) or a square designated by the player or AI as a city. A province have to have a capital, but it doesn't have to be a city. On the other hand a province have to have a city ('one or more cities'). Cities will grow faster 'in population and development', to a limit primarily caused by a combination high population density and lack or presence of certain infrastructure. Cities will have a bonus to production. (Or is it any concentrations of productive capacity that will get the bonus?). Cities play a role in determining how big a province can get, (BTW is 'the central city' the same as the capital (which doesn't have to be city)). Squares that have easy access to a nearby city square will have increased production.
If terms like '…omitting those features which are specific to cities', 'the handle city is used loosely here', 'I don't have the details yet', 'Suggestions are welcome as to how to fit cities into the rest..' does not imply a rather vague modelling so far, I don't know what it suggests.

What are cities? Squares with large population, squares designated by the player/AI to be cities or what? Are they infrastructure or special mapsquares? The production benefits seems to indicate that they are really some kind of infrastructure. There will usually be many people, but are they in the mapsquare or in the city-thing? If the player can designate a city, are there any prerequisites to doing so? Can he designate a city if only three people are present? Cities obviously have effects outside their mapsquare, which makes them rather unique - at least I don't think any other infrastructure object has this capability - but I might be wrong? This has serious implications during gameplay, particularly when dealing with conquest. What happens if a city acting as a capital is captured? What happens if another city is captured? Will the production benefits disappear, since the city is deprived of its surrounding land areas, or will there be sufficient production in the 100x100 km square to sustain the city?

All these questions seems to imply that the modeling of cities is by no means detailed. This is OK, but then you shouldn't bawk, when somebody comes with input that might provide an interesting approach (or even not so interesting?!), when you in fact asked for it yourself. At least you could discuss the issue. If the idea stinks, its OK with me, but stick to the point will'ya .

	24-09-2000 02:19									#43
	Remove this text

Beör:

You said "I had been worried by the lack of cities". Your English is so good, I had figured that was exactly what you meant! Of course now I notice you mention explicitly later in the same post that you read the econ model. If you want to discuss this, please copy your city post to the Econ thread, and I can delete the above and this current post... and respond there. You can find a link to the main econ discussion on the web page.

In truth I skimmed most of your post because it was mostly OT. If everyone goes OT the discussion degenerates very quickly. And it is later impossible to find anything. Perhaps you should start a new thread on your overall idea, because OO design for the whole game really doesn't belong here...
[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited September 23, 2000).]

	24-09-2000 02:46									#44
	Put an end to popups!

This was originally a post scolding Mark for not reading my post, but it took me so long to write it without being unnecessarily abusive, that he beat me to it . Really annoying to have people apologize to you before you get a chance to point out to them that they have been unfair .

So this is a modified version:

No, Mark, I am not particularly interested in discussing cities - at least not at the moment (beware I will return ). So by all means delete the two posts above, I will refrain from copying them to the other thread. Feel free to do so if you think the points provided will contribute to the discussion. I will, however, not participate in that discussion for a while.

I would much rather hear your thougths on sites really being infrastructure. In a way the most basic infrastructure that actually provides the interface between people and the land. Am I completely of my rockers or does it actually make sense?

And what are your reactions to the fishing part, which you keep mentioning, but never really seem to have found a solution to.

In a way I understand F_Smiths reaction to military units being habitats: It is rather unconventional. And at least he considered the idea, and the implications.

Another really important point was that it would suddenly be possible to control nomadic civs without handling them as exceptions. They would act as any other civ.

And regarding OT. I admit this is not very related to tech. So far I have refrained from starting new threads, not wanting to intrude too much in your forum. But I guess I have made quite an impact anyway, so why not. I'm starting a new thread related to the basic OOA/D of the map, population, infrastructure and tech.

Is this the time to ask to be formally included in the team as 'COPITB' (Clash Official Pain In The Butt) ?

[This message has been edited by Beör (edited September 23, 2000).]

	24-09-2000 03:34									#45
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

Beör:

I think I had that title before. But I will gladly leave it to you. You are much more inventive and clever than I ever was, and will do a much better job of helping build the game. The Habitat proposal is brilliant.

	24-09-2000 04:40									#47
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Beör, an official welcome to the team! But we're mostly pains in the butt here, so I don't think It'd be right to nominate you as the official one ...

Please take a look at the team page on the web site to see what info we usually post for members, and then put it in the "Web request" thread so Chris can post it.

I'll comment on your issues in your new thread.

	24-09-2000 05:03									#48
	Got spare money?

Mark, Beor:

Sorry, I did misunderstand Beor. I thought he saw something new I hadn't. I've read the econ info (I've read everything -- there's just so much of it and it's all over the map it's impossible to keep it all in mind).

I will respond to some of these threads late tonight, but most of my time after the kids go to bed will be spent on beginning to lay out the basic architecture for an 'alpha prototype' we'll call Demo 5.

I might have some simple screens to share tonight, too.

	24-09-2000 06:16									#49
	Increase the size of your Attachments

Some more comments on the 'Can knowledge belong to infrastructure thing'. Some of this is a crosspost from my new thread, but very relevent here.

F_Smith insists on keeping Theory objects in infrastructure objects. But somewhere in all this there is an opening that I don't think anybody else spotted:

quote: Originally posted by F_Smith september 23rd in tech thread Just to reiterate, for your amusement: The 'tech system' will not belong to the 'civ' object. The 'civ' will hold 'provinces'. The 'provinces' will hold mapsquares. The mapsquares will hold EGs. The EGs will hold knowledge. Either the civ will hold a collection of 'theory' objects or the infrastructure objects in that civ will hold 'theory' objects. You will be able to define two different levels of 'theory' -- 'General Theory' (your level 1 tech) and 'Theories in a Specific Field of Knowledge' (your level 2 techs). You will be able to define any number of levels of 'knowledge' (your level 3 techs) objects -- and don't worry, we'll start with just one.

	25-09-2000 09:39									#50
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We have agreed in the Overall Project Issues thread that standard definitions are needed. I provided those definitions in the September 22 thread. They are the accepted definitions used by the tech team and the spreadsheet instructions. Please use them. The stuff stored in libraries is information, not theory. Theory already had a definition before this discussion started.

	24-09-2000 23:25									#51
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I recently realized that I had neglected to include diplomacy based tech transfer in the tech model. The players should have the option of trading or stealing techs.

These would not give the tech level directly, but would transfer a certain number of RP's of the proper type. These RP's would be added to your RP pool in the first step of the tech change system. This is somewhat silly, as you could get the tech even though your civ is doing nothing to research it on your own. But I think it is the only good option.

I thought for a while that these plans from others could multiply RP production rather than adding to it. It would make sense to do this, as you would have to be doing research on your own to gain the benefit. But then I realized that could be abused. Players could make their RP production surge on the turn that they got the other tech, thus sending their tech higher than the other civ's. So we should probably stick with the addition even though it makes less sense.

When trading tech, the number of RP's would depend on the tech level difference and the generousity of the ally. When stealing it, the diplimacy model determines the success of the spy operation. I think that there are already plans for that.

	25-09-2000 02:51									#52
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Richard:

Sounds reasonable to me.

All:

Here is my first stab at responding to some of Beör's stuff regarding tech. I have responded to the other stuff in his monster thread . This is just a cut-out of that discussion put here since its the primary area of this discussion. When I quote something it should be understood that it is a comment of Beör's unless it has someone else's name in front of it. I am going to try and be brief, because otherwise my comments could run on forever

Quote] Knowledge is persistent. You do not have to maintain it. [/Quote]

Well in fact, knowledge levels have declined many times in the history of the world. I believe that even though an aqueduct exists, the people may have lost the ability to make a new one, and so I would consider the tech level responsible for creating an aqueduct to have been lost before the last aqueduct disappears. I think the Tech model does a reasonable job on handling this. Although the details aren't quite there yet.

quote: If the square is conquered the knowledge passes to the conqueror and is lost to the original owner.

I disagree with this statement. If the conquerors are not receptive to the knowledge that people have, or simply slaughter them, that tech should never be transferred to the conqueror. I think it is better to handle this similar to Tech transfer, as an acquisition of RPs that is weighted bicultural and other factors just as intact diffusion.

quote: Theory objects don't need to be stored in infrastructure, they can be stored at the civ level, which is an entirely different concept. This is much more like the original idea of the tech system where there is a civ level amalgamation of knowledge. The next step would then be to consider how this civ level tech level is derived.

This is the result I am more comfortable with also.

	25-09-2000 03:36									#53
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This is the Technology Glossary. The rest of the summary will come after we finally decide how things will work

Technology Model: The mechanism that changes the potential abilities of the civilization.

Technology: Any specific discipline responsible for changing the abilities of the civ. There are three Tiers of technology. They interact with the game in slightly different ways, but all of them have the same equations and should be treated the same way.

Tier 1, or Theory, includes abstract studies like Physics.
Tier 2, or Field, includes more practical disciplines like Optics
Tier 3, or Skill, includes specific processes like Lensmaking.

Technology Level: A logarithmic scale for measuring technology. All technologies grow in a continuous fashion, and the civ's mastery of the technology is defined by the technology level for that civ.

Applications are physical objects like military units. The civ's technology determines what applications it can make and how good they are. Application is sometimes called Tier 4 of tech system.

Knowledge: The ability of a person to do things. Also, the combined ability of the society to do things. This can only be a characteristic of a person or group of people. In the spreadsheet equations, knowledge is the linear scale of Technology.

Information: Any data that is stored outside the mind of a person. It can include books, blueprints, and working devices. It is used to transfer knowledge from one person or group to another.

Research Points, or RP's, are responsible for changing the technology level. RP's can be obtained through experience, teaching, invention, experimentation, contact with other civs, and the study of Information from other civs.

	14-12-2000 07:42									#54
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Alright, this thread has been dormant for a while, And it doesn't look like it has really been resolved to me.
I propose a compromise between storing information between people and infrastructure; Here's a quote that seems the most related to what I'm going to say:

quote: People will hold their own tech info -- 'knowledge' --(thru pointers, as you mentioned). But it is my analysis that there will also be the need to store tech info (theories) in 'infrastructure' objects. I think I've tried to explain why exhaustively.

I propose that the majority of technology is stored in people, but I belive certain buildings such as librarys, in addition to creating RPs, should store some technology. While technology lives without buildings, buildings do help keep it alive and allow more widely spread knowledge of some subjects. I have come up with a few ideas that would work:
A) When you lose a building, you can lose a certain (somewhat random) percentage of some technologies, but the people still retain the majority.
B) Relating back to A, maybe the 'store' technologies more so if they haven't been used much. For example, if a technology is simply staying at the same percentage, not raising or lowering much, you can lose a small % of it when you lose some librarys. If the technology is going up and is very widely useded by the people, a loss of a library won't have much effect on that technology. And of course a technology thats already in decline would nearly vanish if nearly the only record of it (a library, continuing the example) were destroyed.
C) Another possible use/effect of library-like buildings could be to significantly reduce the lost % of a dormant, unused technology. It may not be public knowledge, but the knowledge still exsists and is accessible, therefore it won't vanish as fast.

I think any of these ideas (or combonations/variations of them) would work in the game fairly well and be a fairly nice compromise for both sides.

Now on to another related topic, not as important:

quote: I must disagree with the analysis of the results of killing the Inca rulers. IMO their leadership role was more important than the science role. They were basically the government, so when they were killed the result was chaos. Most of their civ's practical and productive techs, like farming and making weapons, were unaffested by their deaths.

I know the story of what happened, so I'll try to paraphrase it here:
There was a ruler whom the people didn't care for very much. He was a cruel ruler, and no one liked him much. At one point, some villagers/councelors got him 'drunk' on cactus juice and other such nautral drugs, and made it to look like he had 'slept' with his sister. He was incredibly ashamed when he woke, and left the city. But he vowed he would return, and gave a date. On his way tword the coast, he cut Xes in trees so he could find his way back. Well, about this time, the Europeans were sending people over twords the 'New World.' As the day The 'bad' ruler was supposed to return approached, the new ruler has people keep watch and wait for his return. When the day came, it just so happens that Cortez landed his ships there, with their white sails with red crosses on them (Cristianity). The look-outs went back to the village and told what they saw: clouds with Red Xes on them... The current ruler got very afraid, and gathered gold and native food. He thought "If he really is 'Mr. Bad Ruler', he will recognize these as Incan gifts and accept them. Cortez also happened to roughly fit the appearance of 'Bad ruler', and when gifts of valuable gold and fresh food were brought, he instantly accepted them. Eventually they led him and some of his men back to the main 'castle'; Cortez ended up killing the current leader and his council. This is how 500 men conquered a population ov 8 million: Fear.
And there you have it, the main reason was neither government nor technology: It was their complete fear for the returning 'bad ruler'
(Sorry for the dumb name of 'bad ruler', I couldn't rember his real name.)

And one last quote to respond to:

quote: Besides,after all these plans, I don't think you'd be happy going back to Civ2. I'm certainly not!

Just because Civ2 isn't as realistic as Clash will be doesn't make it less of a game. Really the main thing I look for in any game is gameplay; and Civilization has a very good and fun 'gameplay engine', therefore I will still like it for years to come. (I still play Civ1 sometimes--Its old enough where I have to underclock my already slow computer for it to run right =)

Well, I covered most of what I wanted to say, Sorry if I said anything that has already been said--I read through most of this thread, but for someone who just came here, it's quite daunting.

	15-12-2000 05:29									#55
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Hi Twinge:

I kinda like your points B & C reasonably well, and maybe we can use them. Lets see what Richard and the others think. Just to warn you, F_Smith was really talking more about code organization than game mechanics in that bit... although clearly he sees them as intertwined in this area.

Thanks for the ideas!

	15-12-2000 09:12									#56
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Thanks for looking over this, Twinge. Your analysis looks food. Those are, in fact, the kind of results we are looking for in the tech model. Sounds like a good plan.

	19-12-2000 00:39									#57
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Thanks. If you find anything else don't hesitate to respond, just don't make the common error most newcommers do and post 20 things at once.

	16-02-2001 17:56									#58
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At the risk of opening a can of worms... and then having to eat them

I've been thinking about one major tweak to the technology system that IMO could increase the game play value while admittedly adding a bit of complication. I think we've talked about it before, but it was shelved. While I was looking over the Guns Germs and Steel forum, I noticed that was the way they are planning to handle technology, and it seemed worth reappraising on our end.

The idea is to add a limited set of breakthrough technologies that are one shot things that you either have or don't. So in one sense it's like adding a small contained amount of the Civ2-type system to the more continuous one. I'm thinking of something like 15 or 20 of these for the whole period of history.

The advantages would be that it would give players a set of important targets to strive for, while not overloading the system, or requiring that all technologies be one shot deals. I guess my quintessential example would be "Invention". Before the widespread notion that you can actually strive to invent something new with a purpose, technological advancement is of necessity slow. After this one idea takes hold, I could easily see the rate of progress doubling. I don't have any independent figures to back this up, but even if it's not realistic, I think it will be Fun.

Of course, this idea also has some disadvantages, and it puts in those large nonlinear things that I've been striving to keep out of the game so that writing the AI is easier. It would also possibly complicate the interfaces for technology a bit. But I'd like to hear at least what people think about the idea, especially Richard and LGJ.

BTW I hope to start coding on Tech in a few weeks, a little after we release demo 5. That is, I'll do it unless someone else wants it more!
[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited February 16, 2001).]

	16-02-2001 20:03									#59
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If all these breakthroughs, like Invention, are social or they change the people's way of thinking, go for it. This kind of thing is what I imagined social rechs would be. Social techs were going to be different because they were surprising and nomlinear like that. The social tech system is still under construction, and this would be a great thing to add to it.

But if they are mechanical or knowledge based kinds of things, it wouldn't work very well. I don't like the idea of planning for an evnet that doubles engine knowledge overnight. But don't forget that inventor characters will built in that could result in rather large advances.

So basically, it would be great for people's attitudes to shift overnight, but the body of knowledge should not change that drastically.

	16-02-2001 21:34									#60
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Hey Richard:

I hadn't thought about it in-depth ahead of time, but I certainly agree with your point. These breakthroughs should only change the rate of change of other technologies, not their levels.