18-12-2000 03:18									#91
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It is great that you are posting your ideas here, btw. Thanks!

------------------
"The future is that mountain."
- Bret Easton Ellis

GGS Website

	18-12-2000 05:34									#92
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The way I decided my groups was I looked at how the ages are in their relationship to each other.

42-49 are the rapidly aging middle class that are sort of exiled from computer work, but don't quite want to retire until 50-60. In past ages this age group was the oldest that it could be expected to live to.

quote: It is great that you are posting your ideas here, btw. Thanks!

	18-12-2000 19:43									#93
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I think culturally decided age groups should be totally avoided. Maybe in some other culture people would retire or begin working at other ages.

The age group system should be as objective as possible, and that is done best with 10 year groups. Then the cultural things will effect at what ages people begin to work, retire or die. And via the age groups the amount of people in each category could be found easily.

------------------
"The future is that mountain."
- Bret Easton Ellis

GGS Website

	22-12-2000 20:30									#94
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To comment on Chris' pop model program I think that it is really great. It is just what I had in mind. So great work, Chris!

It should be possible to use the things from that program in a more complex economy and pop program, where food per pop unit effects the mortalities.

Just one question: How do you decide the birth rate in the program? I went through the source code, and I couldn't find it. Is it just a constant?

------------------
"The future is that mountain."
- Bret Easton Ellis

GGS Website

	27-12-2000 01:45									#95
	Increase Your PM Length

Well, I just finished reading all of the posts here, whew! Here are a few random thoughts:

Warfare: Historically warfare itself had very little effect on population directly. In Hunter-Gatherer societies the population base and the concentration of populations were so small that warfare was usually ritual, with very few casualties.

With advanced agriculture (ie agriculture including grains, legumes and domestic animal proteins which can actually support life in the long run in a small area) came specialization and professional troops. While the population increased and the tempo and intensity of warfare increased with it, the low surpluses of early agriculture meant that the militarized percentage of the population remained small. Thus even a brutal casualty rate amongst the soldiery had very little effect upon the size of the population as a whole. Another factor to keep in mind is that the fertility rate is much more sensitive to the population of fertile females than it is to the population of fertile males. This would of course be more the case in a society which allowed multiple wives for men, or for mistresses to be kept, but is nonetheless true even in societies with fairly strict monogamy.

Warfare does have some effect upon population even outside of the fairly rare war of annihilation. This effect usually has two faces. In the first case, returning soldiers may bring home diseases which can ravage the weaker children and elderly especially. The other case involves stresses to the civilian population in the war zone. This can be caused accidently as civilians flee their homes and leave crops untended, and the weak are brought low by lack of shelter and deprivation, or purposefully as a policy of terror (particularly popular with the Turkic peoples like the Mongols, Huns etc.) to drive the population from the land through terror and physical devestation of the infrastructure. Siege warfare is another special case, where an urban population is cut off from it's lifeline to starve or surrender.

The wars of the past couple of centuries are the exception rather than the rule. I am talking about the World Wars, the Napoleonic wars and the American Civil War here, where huge citizen armies fought unrestricted total wars for enormous political goals (ie to completely vanquish their enemies). The norm throughout history is a limited war fought by small (usually professional) armies for a very limited aim (a border province, a city, loot).

What does this have to do with the population model? Well quite a bit actually.

1) The fertility index should be more sensitive to the number of fertile females than males. A fairly simple way to do this would be to calculate the fertility base as (The number of fertile females) - (X / Y) where X equals the difference between the number of males and females (assuming fewer males) and Y is a cultural factor where a low number assumes polygamy and a high number assumes strict monogamy.

2) Warfare on enemy turf should have very little effect upon the home front, with the exception being that disease may find a way home along with any troops who return.

3) Warfare on home turf may have a huge effect, as stressed populations may be forced from their lands (lowering production) and become refugees (and perfect disease vectors) fleeing into adjacent provinces. The effect of this will vary somewhat depending on the attacking force's culture and aims. Raiders will tend to use terror more than forces pursuing a persisting strategy (ie conquest), and nomads will also be more likely to devestate the land to create a low population area more consistent with their needs. Thus an agricultural neighbor with similar cultural traits bent upon permanent conquest of a border region may cause very little emigration from the invaded province, while Tamerlane could create a wave of panic and destruction behind your lines.

	27-12-2000 03:20									#96
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Dear Amjayee, Joker and others,

I would gladly help, though generally I am quite busy, so please don't expect too much. It will probably take some days before I will leave the house to visit the library. Yet I promise to try at least to do something.

Where can I find the demo? I read about it on the Forum but couldn't find it. By the way, when it's all in programming language I wouldn't need it, because I have no bent for the exact sciences, though I have some understanding of statistics.

For the moment the only advice I can think of is to search for one -or preferably several- of the following reliable studies:
D.V.Glass and C.Eversley: 'Population in History: Essays in Historical Demography'(1965)
E.A.Wrigley: 'Population and History'(1969)
C.M.Cipolla: 'Economic History of World Population'(1974)
T.McKeown: 'The Modern Rise of Population'(1977)
A.M.Carr-Saunders: 'World Population:Past Growth and Future Trends'(1936)
E.A.Wrigley and R.Schofield: 'The Population History of England, 1541-1871'(1981)
'United Nations Demographic Yearbook'
T.Chandler and G.Fox: '3000 Years of Urban Growth'(1974)
P.Bairock: 'Cities and Economic Development'(1988)
P.M.Hohenberg and L.H.Lees: 'The Making of Urban Europe, 1000-1950'(1985)
B.R.Mitchell: 'International Historical Statistics,1750-1988:Europe(1992)
W.H.McNeill: 'Plagues and Peoples'(1976)
W.H.McNeill: 'The Global Condition: Conquerors, Catastrophes, and Community'(1993)
T.McKeown: 'The Origins of Human Disease'(1988)
K.F.Kiple(ed.): 'The Cambridge World History of Human Disease'(1992)

N.B.: I do not know which of these titles will prove to be most useful. Some of them will doubtless refer to other literature. I am sure a well-assorted university library will have at least most of these titles.

By the way, your question for information about death rates of different age groups is more or less unanswerable, because many people weren't well-fed and there was almost always some contagious disease around. And hygienic conditions were generally bad or exceptionally bad, especially in the cities. Another problem are our limited data for the more ancient periods. Most population figures for these periods are just intelligent guesses, nothing more!

So you have to make the most of all information you can find. Also very useful are present-day data dealing with some developing country like India or Nigeria. I think when you would use all figures assembled by me, you have already something to start with. When you have figures for life expectancy at birth, average birth and death rates, infant mortality and some idea about the structure of the population pyramid, you can make a quite intelligent guess answering your question. My advice is to make a guess and to play around with your figures to see whether the result seems realistic. Afterwards you can control whether the development of the population after a century or more is in accordance with those variables you knew beforehand, like average life expectancy etc. Casualties of war are generally too few to influence events that much, though there are notable exceptions, like Cannae.

And to reassure you: I honestly think that as long as you use plain common sense you cannot err too gravely. This is only a first model, there will remain an opportunity to correct some details!

	27-12-2000 04:22									#97
	Inflate your Upload Space

Ethnicity, Language, Culture, Religion, Nationality:

This is a very complex set of circumstances. I can see why Civ opted to ignore these factors completely, yet by doing so they cut the heart out of the game. Perhaps a good starting point would include some definitions:

Ethnicity - from Greek meaning a people or a nation. For our purposes we can probably state that Culture + Language = Ethnicity.

Language - should generally be understood.

Culture - can be summarized as the values and traditions of a group. For our purposes this should probably not include religious values, which should be handled seperately.

Religion - a system of belief to explain and guide people through the portions of human existence which are not otherwise easily knowable. This should have it's own submodule, as it can obviously be very different from one Religion to the next. Along with Culture is the most important determinant of societal values.

Nationality - can be assumed to basically be ethnicity. When aroused by Nationalism, will tend to create a demand for a State based upon ethnic identity. This can have dire consequences for empires.

-----------------------------

I have noticed that a lot of discussion has been held regarding the tendency for groups to vary over time, and eventually become completely seperate groups with their own ethnic identity. While this is a valid and observable phenomenon, IMO it is in fact the opposite which is the dominant trend of recorded history. Do not be fooled by the current post-colonial and post cold war trend of irredentism. The fact is that since the dawn of history the number of languages, cultures peoples and states has been coming together (becoming fewer). This trend will continue in the long run, especially as communications improve. We are after all a group of people who speak many different languages at home who are working together over the internet in English on a project.

The tendency to pull together is stronger in some areas of human endeavor than in others. It is probably strongest in the area of technology, where Iranian Mullahs are just as happy to get Tanks and Missles as Israeli Rabbis are. They may well decry the evil of the societies which invented and perfected those weapons, and be very closed to other ideas coming from those societies, but the technologies themselves seem to cross borders free from judgements of this kind.

Language is another cross border traveller, though it does not travel as easily as technology, perhaps because it is part of what defines an ethnos. Nonetheless language does cross borders, whether in the form of a few words (like the word Tank for example) which travel along with a new concept, or in the form of a lingua franca which can be used far and wide amongst people of various languages for trade, diplomacy and exchanges of ideas.

Interestingly, language does not behave in the manner often ascribed to it, where the further from the center of it's geographic center the more changed the language. It is in fact the opposite, that is to say that language changes fastest at the center, and these changes propogate to the periphery. Basically language changes at a rate based upon the number of speakers. Thus Latin changes very slowly, while English changes very quickly. Populations which are small and isolated change hardly at all, which is why Icelandic is very much closer to the Norwegian spoken centuries ago than modern Norwegian is today.

Religion is another concept which can spread quickly throughout a region without respect of borders. A model of religion might in fact have a seperate map superimposed over the political map where religions do battle over populations much as empires do. In many respects this is a fairly modern phenomenon. Religions seem to have developed like States and Warfare, from a very local and personal entity which was capable of cohabitation into global conglomerates which in some cases seek to encompass the entire planet and drive out all others.

---------------------

Why is any of this important to the Population Model in GGS?

Because people are often subsumed by Cultural, Technological, Linguistic and Religious factors with little or no action taken by political forces other than to react to these changes. Thus Greek and Roman traders bringing strange goods from afar offered many more things to a local tribe than the contents of their holds. They brought Laws, Coins, Cultural ideas, a language which allowed communications throughout a vast area, and numerous technologies. It was in this way that many tribes became Romanized, ready and sometimes willing to be fit into the fabric of the empire.

Conversely this Empire which straddled so much of the Western world was itself conquered by Christianity despite it's efforts to resist. The lesson is that strong ideas push out weak ideas. Boudaries of Religion, State force, Culture and Language can slow this process, but are rarely capable of stemming the tide forever.

	28-12-2000 04:00									#98
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Sikander:

Warfare:
Well, yeah. But it still has to be implemented. Even in ancient wars meant that many people were away from their land, which could cause food shortages and famines. So creating armies would take up a considerable amount of people. Many of them would return home, yes. But if they are away for years and years it would have some effect.

Polygamy:
Maybe this will add too much complexity. It wouldnt really have any huge importance.

Otherwise I agree. Great thoughts you have made.

Your second post:

Ethnicity etc:
I think to make it simple that language, ethnicity and nationality the same: nationality. Nationalities would have a number showing how similar they are to one another. If it is low then they are very similar, if it is high then they are not very similar. Religion would be handled seperately, with the religious leaders having effect on their believers. Culture I am not sure how to handle. Granted, it should propably have some effect on different thing. But what and how?

Assimilation:
Yes, I agree that the long run trend would be towards assimilation. But on the other hand it should be very hard to suddenly assimilate a lot of people. The Roman Empire did very poorly here, and was suddenly broken into loads of small civs. So colonies have to develop their own nationality. That is required for the rise and fall idea to be implemented.

I pretty much agree with all this. It is a very hard thing to implement in a game, and therefore it will require a lot of consideration from us, before we can make it work. These are definately some good thoughs.


S. Kroeze:

Thanks again for your help.

Demo:
Right now we are working on a more sophisticated UI to go with the demo, so it will be really playable. Right now we dont have any real demo. A few prototypes in different areas, but nothing playable. VetLegion made a textbased political demo/game, that is a bit playable. I could mail that to you if you want it. It doesn't have that thrilling gameplay yet, though.

Death Rates:
The thing is that we need some way to have a "basic" moretality, and then poor nutrition should increase this. The same with diseases.

But I hope you are right that with the right infant mortality rates and the life expectancy we couldnt go too wrong. I guess we will just have to play around with it, then.

------------------
"The future is that mountain."
- Bret Easton Ellis

GGS Website

	30-12-2000 05:18									#99
	Inflate your Upload Space

While tryign to chew this population model, the following thougth experiment came to my mind:

A player rules a smallish civ with only one region. However, the scarcely resourced northern tundra is obstructing the population of even the southmost cities from reaching an age structure which would allow concentration on educating the people. So, the player decides to divide his empire into two regions: the underdeveloped north and a few small successful cities from the south. Southern region would have more resources, and with proper social engineering it could use those resources for changing the age structure (or whatever property) to the civs favour.

The problem I see with this is that the player is not doing anything but changing the way the civilization's resources and population are calculated. Hmm. Maybe I didn't quite comprehend the model... what is a region exactly? Are there some limitations in regioning the civilization? Is it even up to the player? If not, how are regions defined?

	30-12-2000 05:28									#100
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I see 2 opposing trends here. The first moves toward complexity (emmigration, age groups, fertility, etc). The second moves toward simplification (avoiding player micromanaging). I don't think you can do both.

It is one thing to incorporate population changes according to age groups, etc, but it is quite another to make those age groups *relate* to player actions and other game factors.

The first idea broadens player options in controlling the play of the game (and many of them would be greatly appreciated by micromanagers). But the second is contrary to that. Several of you have mentioned that the human player will have only limited control over broad outcomes and that many functions will play out beyond player control entirely.

I suggest that you be cautious of frustrating a player too much by allowing a civ to operate too independently. As a personal example, I can assure you that if I get too frustrated by seeing my civ go in directions I cannot manage at least indirectly, I'm going to stop playing the game very quickly.

In other words, If I can control taxes, but not where the money goes (tech, food, religion, military, etc), I have no reason to play. It would be more like watching a computer-generated movie than playing a game.

Does that make sense?

	30-12-2000 18:06									#101
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Leland:

No, I think having a scarcely ressourced northern tundra would just make people move away from it. This would mean you would have a region where the vast majority of the population lives in the south. So it shouldn't become a burden to your civ to have an area without that many ressources, and dividing your civ into two regions shouldn't do any difference either.


Cavebear:

Although that makes some sence I think that it could be overcome by having the player be only the leader of the government. He would decide how much the tax levels would be, and what to use his money for. And he could do things to effect economy. But he couldn't control it. Population age groups are mostly just an effect of technology levels and food per capita (all depending on the overall shape of the civ, but not on small civ characteristics). Age groups is not only a cool spice to give to the game, it also makes some cool possibilities possible, like going to war would kill many young males, leaving a lack of labour or something. But it wouldn't be anything the player would have to micromanage, and most likely he wouldn't be able to.

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"Life is a lesson. You learn it when you're through."
- Limp Bizkit

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	02-01-2001 23:51									#103
	Put an end to popups!

About avoiding micromanagement, the idea was, that most things can be tweaked with; it's just that those options are usually handled by the AI, and the player can, but doesn't have to touch them; and after all dealing with everything would become quite tedious.

About player not having enough control over his empire, that will not be so... the player can choose the level of involvement he gets, by choosing his government style. And let's remember this is not civ, the game objectives will be different and will not require total control over all things. I'm sure it will be fun, it's just not easy to see it currently: and to be honest we are not helping it, by letting the design discussion sprawl around like this. Getting the design doc is a really great thing.

Well, when the UI and map are done, I'm sure everything starts to get easier. And in the alpha stage, we have overcome the biggest obstacles. Just stick with us and help us clear these things out, since we are still only mid-way to understanding the game system properly.

	03-01-2001 03:44									#104
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I agree 100% on the micromanagement issue; I was just a little bit confused what you were after.

But on the population mode I still have my doubts. It should not be region based if regions are defined by the player, that's just not realistic. If you have a multicultural nation and you just wipe off your province borders, the population doesn't magically become uniform. This is why I suggest that you use your original idea of "population units", but with the exception that they span over several tiles. Of course an array of these tiles will have to be stored and the memory requirement grows geometrically with the size of the population... but let's not totally bash the idea.


Let's estimate a civ with about 1000 different populations (quite possible). The characteristics (age structure etc.) of a population migth take up to 1 kilobyte (at least they won't take more?). Most urban populations, and thus most of the populations, since cities tend to be "melting pots", span only across one or a few tiles. The largest uniform populations might span across the area of tens of thousands of tiles, but their number would be smaller. So, let's assume an average population size 1000 tiles.

Thus

mem_requirements = number_of_pops * (sizeof_popdata + average_pop_area * sizeof_coordinates) = 1000 * (1k + 1000 * 4 bytes) = 5Mbytes.

Quite a lot. Is it doable? Can the number of populations be reduced somehow without resorting to the predefined regions? Can more efficient compressing schemes be used for storing the area populations are in? (I noticed I entirely forgot the number of people per each tile... it's going to cause an additional 2Mbytes or so to be used... darn.)

Population model seems to be one of, if not the most important model. Everything revolves around people. That's why I think the model should not be coupled with the regional/governmental models which in my opinion are higher level concepts. Also, now that I started rambling I migth as well say that the populations should *inherently* be capable of being mobile populations; i.e. there would be no difference between a mobile population and a "normal" population. This coudl maybe be achieved by letting the "controller" of a population to be a unit in addition to a city or a region?
[This message has been edited by Leland (edited January 02, 2001).]

	03-01-2001 07:12									#105
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Regions? Well, I think of a "region" as a geographically cohesive area. In the US, we have the Northeast (cold winters, cool summers), the Mid-Atlantic (cool winters, warm summers), the South (warm winters, hot summers), the Midwest (dry and hot), and West Coast (warm, temerate, and wet).

The geography of a "region" defines the lifestyles and culture to a significant degree. I think that 2 or more civs might split a natural terrain area, and each part might be a "region" for each civ, but I don't think that desert and jungle should be combined by player demand into a single region.

	03-01-2001 07:58									#106
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

That's a matter of definitions; in this context I've been using the word "region" to mean a player defined area, and that's the word used in the design doc. Perhaps we need new definitions?

How about calling a player defined areas territories or provinces, and an area with distinct geographical properties a region? (then again, we've used the word region so long that maybe we just stick with it. Definitions of term should be explicitly stated somewhere in any case, IMHO)

It's a valid point that geographical conditions can be used to division populations; however, there are also plenty of other boundaries between people. Urbanisation, religious and ethnic differences, social class, closed national borders and whatnot. It's a good point that geography should be used as one such factor, but it's similarly important to remember that there are other considerations and to come up with a model which treats them equally is a little bit tricky (or maybe I just want to make it tricky ).

	04-01-2001 11:53									#107
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About the definition of the region, it has been given - "somewhere". Onve again, there are so many threads that only the original members have somewhat good idea of what has been discussed. But yes, I was the one who invented the word region for us, and I've become aware that it's not the clearest word to use here. The idea is, that region is a supergroup for many kinds of political entities that make up a nation (or civ); states, provinces, protectorates, colonies etc. are all regions. What is the subgroup is decided by the government system; all those subgroups are different from each other.

So, region is a political thing rather than geographical.

About population; the reason why we decided to use regional population was the fact that we simply have to store quite much information for each population, so the amount of data would become too large if population units are used. Besides, most of the population units would be much like each other. So, we became to think of a way to compress the data; each region has one, and only one population. But, the population will not be at all uniform. We will store the amounts of people belonging to different nationalities, different religions etc. and all these can have their own effect in the game. So, in this system we would have much the same information as when using population units, but in a "statistically compressed" form. After all, the group of people will work much like one large individual with the average properties of the individuals making up the group. All this has been discussed long ago, but it's quite impossible to digest all the discussion we have had in such a short time. Just keep reading and asking.

	05-01-2001 10:23									#108
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Thanks for the info, I am slowly beginning to buy the idea.

However, as you said regions are a political thing whereas populations are not. That does nto sound good. I can think of all kinds of little "cheats" you can do when populations are tied to regions. What if you've got two regions and a mountain range between them to block migration, and you then set up a third region that covers the mountains? Let's denote the areas A, B and C and the mountains an m:

Before:
AAAAmCCCC
After:
AAABmBCCC

Now, let's assume that there is a pressure to migrate from A to C, but the mountains slow it down or stop it entirely. After setting up region B in between the people are free to migrate from A to B, and because B only has information abotu the statistics there is no way to stop people moving from B to C. Sure, there might be other things about the mountains that make region B impractical, but the player migth be willing to make those tradeoffs to momentarily boost migration.

I seriously don't think populations and regions should be mixed. Perhaps a better option would be to use some sort of virtual regions, that is regions which the player has no power over, and couple the "statistically compressed" populations with those. This would double the memory needed for the region info, but the populations would not be much different from your proposal.

Well?

	05-01-2001 00:09									#109
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You have a good point, but the flaw in it is, that people would not emigrate from region to region, but across land, from tile to tile. And also, the region the people will move into, must be quite lucrative so they will abandon their earlier life. So, there two effects combined would cause, that since mountains are not very good place to live, people are reluctant to move there. Also, the mountains slow down the emigration just as earlier.

All in all, I don't find any problem for using the region and population combination. After all, people are the target of politiocs, so it would be quite silly to have a political entity without people to exercise politics, and to be the target of politics. I don't quite agree that population is not a political entity, quite the contrary. We don't understand population as sciences usually - it is just a group of people with some geographical area they live in, and some political properties and affiliations the players try to rule.

	05-01-2001 07:37									#110
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Sorry, the word "political" was misleading... I meant that regions are *administrative* areas whereas populatons are not. I stand corrected about the migration plan, but I still don't think that populatiosn and regions should be mixed. It just sounds wrong! Let me try yet another example... (the idea is that if you can shoot down all my example situations, the model can be trusted to work )

Suppose there is a industrial small region adjacent to a larger rural one. In the small region there are about million people, most of which are factory workers; in the larger the population is around 3 million. To be exact, let's say that 60% of small region inhabitants are factory workers and something like 80% of the rural people are peasants (or field workers, doesn't make any difference here), rest of the classes being something else. The living conditions of the industrial area are getting bad: there is a danger that the workers will rebel. Since they are a mojority of people there it's likely that they are a powerful group. Now, the intelligent player sees the opporunity of riots and conveniently combines the two regions. In the resulting big region (actually, not much bigger than the previous rural region because of the relatively small land area of the industrial zone) there would be 15% factory workers and 60% peasants. Now the workers are a clear minority and have no political power to riot. Problem solved?

Obviously something like that would not happen in the real world because workers and peasants live in different areas defined by the available resources (factories and land). How would the region-tied population model solve this? Hmm...

I'm still opting for my solution: don't let the player arbitrarily define boundaries for populations. The government can impose laws forbidding migration or use other means to indirectly control migration, but in the end it should be people who decide to move or not. I'm not sure how much memory/processing power regions will require (in purely geographic level), but giving the populations a chance to have their own "regions" (meaning, the area where the population lives) would only double this and have no cost on the populational memory requirements. Regions would then have truly statistical information: a weighted average of all populations (also partial) on their area.

Conclusion: as you said, population "is just a group of people with some geographical area they live in". Why should that area be *arbitrarily* defined by the player by just drawing a line on the map?!? Makes no sense to me.

(I'm having this gnawing feeling that I may be so utterly wrong that once I realize it the paradigm shift will tear me in half... until then, prove me wrong. Anybody. Or prove me right, that's also welcome. )

Leland
[This message has been edited by Leland (edited January 04, 2001).]

	05-01-2001 07:47									#111
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I'd just like to apologize that I sound like an old record... I can be vey stubborn at times. It just occurred to me that even if the final decision will be to use regions as the section where populations live, there should be a back door left in implementation level: use an abstract notion of "area" and have both region and population refer to it instead of the population referring directly to the region. So if the populations are from the beginning built to be associated with geographical areas, they can still be implemented according to your plan and be connected to regions, yes?

Not that I'm giving up a fight or anything...

	05-01-2001 20:07									#112
	Increase the size of your Attachments

I don't know how to put this, but I simply can't see the point in your idea. In real history, there has been boundaries and borders for regions, that have been independent states or chiefdoms, or parts of larger empires. Similarly in the game, we would have restricted areas on the map, whose borders are drawn by player or decided by computer. That area has a population, that lives inside that region, thus being the population of that region. I can't possibly see, where else the population could live, without being a population of another region. It's all in the definition of the population - it is a group of people, that live in a certain region! I can't see any other sensible way of handling this system. Having population and region separated would result in a system where population doesn't mean anything sensible. Region is about administration, but that requires people to administrate, and also administrative people.

Also the situation you described would be no problem; first, only very rarely we would have entirely industrial region, and besides, even inside regions, rural and urban areas are considered different, for various reasons, largest being that cities have been hugely different from countryside through all history. So, in your scenario, industrial people would be concentrated in cities, and we could have a system, where certain cities could have riots because of those industry workers.

All in all, I think a better way to solve the problems in a good and realistic system is to simply make a rule or system that actually solves those problems, instead of creating an entirely new system, which doesn't have that particular problem, but causes new ones and is perhaps also less realistic and good. And the latter seems to be the case in this particular idea.

[This message has been edited by amjayee (edited January 05, 2001).]

	05-01-2001 20:30									#113
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amjayee I suggest you make Population Model v 0.2.

I would like to get more involved in the discussion, but many things have been discussed and I am not sure what "state" is the Model in right now, with modifications and all.

	06-01-2001 10:37									#114
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Oookay... I think I have to bend in this matter since I'm being the only one against the idea of regional definition of populations. However, I think that your original model had some minor flaws in addition to that (the definition of cities, the relationship between cities and regions, is there a capital city, refined migration model... and all sorts of things that would be better commented if you made another draft. Besides, I'm afraid I scared all other posters away with my endless gripe about regions, so a new thread is in place anyway) so you need another version of the population model anyway.

But let me make one last commentary on this topic (okay, I'm not promising its the last one, but I'm starting to accept the idea, at least until I see it implemented):

quote: Originally posted by amjayee on 01-05-2001 10:07 AM In real history, there has been boundaries and borders for regions, that have been independent states or chiefdoms, or parts of larger empires. Similarly in the game, we would have restricted areas on the map, whose borders are drawn by player or decided by computer. That area has a population, that lives inside that region, thus being the population of that region.

After WW2 Germany was split into east and west. This is an instance of forced and arbitrary setting of regions; however, I don't think that this action made the two populations as two distinct populations. In your model, the populations would become two populations but with exactly the same statistical properties, right? Okay, after fifty or so turns this regional division is broken. Now the populations have become differentiated by fifty years of different government styles and laws; but what is is exactly what happens to the population when they are again united? Does the new unified population just have the weighted average of the two previous populations? In real world, there are still great differences between east and west germany in populational level, in social structure, in economy, infrastructure (okay, not part of population model I guess), education, ... but the way I see it, the game cannot handle these differences because the only information stored is either statistical or some sort of ad-hoc rule.

Of course, East and West Germany both consisted of several regions of their own, but it need not be so in a similar game situation with smaller areas.

quote: I can't possibly see, where else the population could live, without being a population of another region. It's all in the definition of the population - it is a group of people, that live in a certain region! I can't see any other sensible way of handling this system. Having population and region separated would result in a system where population doesn't mean anything sensible. Region is about administration, but that requires people to administrate, and also administrative people.

I've said it many times: drawing lines on a map does not change populations in real world. In Scandinavia there is a big population of "lapplanders" (or whatevery they are called, can't find the english word rigth now) in northern parts of Finland, Sweden and Norway, as well as on Russian ground. You can't make that population disappear by redifining the territorial borders within any of those countries.

I am not advocating that there would be populations that are not withing any region, that would of course be impossible. It's conceivable to have uninhabited land that is not part of a region, but once a population moves in it automatically becomes part of a civ, and if civs are divided into regions then the population by necessity exists within regions.

quote: Also the situation you described would be no problem; first, only very rarely we would have entirely industrial region, and besides, even inside regions, rural and urban areas are considered different, for various reasons, largest being that cities have been hugely different from countryside through all history. So, in your scenario, industrial people would be concentrated in cities, and we could have a system, where certain cities could have riots because of those industry workers.

Oops, forgot about the distinction between cities and regions... that cities have populations too. Well, the difference need not be between urban and rural populations: there could be a dispute between farmers and hunters for instance. Think of the North American Indians. Or religions and nationalities. To make special rules for all these things would in my opinion result to a very incoherent system.

quote: All in all, I think a better way to solve the problems in a good and realistic system is to simply make a rule or system that actually solves those problems, instead of creating an entirely new system, which doesn't have that particular problem, but causes new ones and is perhaps also less realistic and good. And the latter seems to be the case in this particular idea.

I have a tendency to rant about minor details and not see the big picture. To counter that, I'll try to revise the differences between the original pop model and the changes I proposed, that way I will clarify it to myself as well as for the rest of you, and open myself up for comments and criticism.

First, each population would have a fundamental property: the area they live in. This would be stored in the same way as the area of a region. Within this area, each tile has a number telling the amount of people living in there, just as in the current model. One problem I see is that this way there would be a possibility of areas within a population that have exactly 0 people; this is certainly counter-intuitive, but it should be possible because a) defining areas with one boundary is easier to implement than more general areas and b) this could be used to allow the distinction between rural and urban areas. Cities would be populations within larger rural populations, and the amount of rural population would be zero in the city tiles.

Now, each population would have rest of the properties as in the old model. Goupings, age structure and all that. Regions, however, would not contain this information directly: instead the statistics for a region would be obtained by calculating the weighted average of the populations residing within it's borders. Thus, regions would truly have only statistical information and changing the regional limits would make absolute no difference to the populational structure.

If a population happens to be located in two regions, and the borderline of these have certain limiting properties (for instance, the government decides to close the borders of it's regions to stop unfovourable migration, or that the taxes in two regions differ), this would of course have to be taken account in the population's properties somehow. There would also have to be a way to simulate the separation of a population to two different populations and a the assimilation of populations. However, I think that the region simulation has to cope with similar algorithm's as well when calculating the economy, production and the assimilation of conquered areas. Still, this is probably the biggest fault in my proposal... I'd like to see some scenarios or examples on specific problems associated with this line of thought.

Migration would happen tile by tile as in regional models, with the exception of population borders: the border's might either change (when a tribe moves to an uninhabited area, for instance) or there will be diffusion between two adjacent populations. I don't see any problems bigger than those associated with regions in this respect.

That was maybe not very clear... question's are welcome. Anyway, I thougth about one of my previous posts and the example of two regions separated by mountains. I don't think tile-by-tile migration solves it really... allow me to re-explain.

At the beginning there are two populations, A ja B, with different properties (say, religion X is predominant in A and religion Y is predominant is B) and there would be a natural diffusion between the two populations if there weren't mountains between them:

AAAmBBB (m meaning the mountains)

Now, the player sets up region C between A and B so that the mountains fall into that region:

AACmCBB

Now the properties of Region C would be an average of A and B; hence the religion Y would have greater following in it than in A, similarly religion X would have greater following in it than in B. If the game attempts to be realistic, there should be diffusion between A and B as well as B and C. This does not mean that the population (that is, the number of people) in C would change: the followers of X would simply move to C and the followers of Y to A until there is an equilibirium. Same thing should happen to B. The only migration woudl happen around the borders; there is no need to cross the mountains!

Perhaps the current model can solve this somehow... maybe there is no diffusion of this kind. But certainly there would be diffusion of other kinds: in technology level (though I'm not quite sure how you are going to arrange that.. not my specialty), social structure (say, A need farmers and B needs craftsmen) or economy (product R is cheaper in A, but P is cheaper in B).

There would actually be quite a simple rule to work around these problems: forbid the player from defining regions. But this is out of the question. I cannot foresee a simple rule to make the region based population to work without compromising with diffusion and realistic social interaction. Of course, now that I've been writing this rant for some time, my point of view is terribly biased and unrealistic itself; that's why I urge all readers to give comments. Am I nuts or what?

Amjayee, I'd like to see some examples of specific problems with the system I proposed. I am too involved in this to see them myself.

Leland
[This message has been edited by Leland (edited January 05, 2001).]

	06-01-2001 04:46									#115
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"Province" seems the right term for a player-defined area. It suggests an artificial construct, whereas "region" seems geographically independent of player intentions.

	06-01-2001 05:04									#116
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Agreed, but everyone has consistently used the word "region" to mean a user defined area and I think it would be too much of a hassle to change the definition. As an alternative solution to disperse confusion I suggest that someone gathers a definition of the game terminology and puts it on the website. As a newcomer I've bumped into this sort of confusion, so I could probably do it. But not yet, I have a few things to deal with.

Anyway, I think that the player should not see all the regions as the same. Depending on their status and the government model, they could be called "provinces", "colonies", "states", "territories", "zones", "districts", "chiefdoms" or whatever. Some of these would have distinct properties, some could be added only to spice up the game.

Leland

	08-01-2001 15:29									#117
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First an amusing out-of-topic note: you used once "ja" instead of "and".

Ok, now I start to see what you are meaning with your idea. But there are some points I have to say about it. First and most critical is, that in your system it would be really hard to find out the populational properties of the people living in particular region. Region population is a totally essential thing so that economy and government models could work properly. We have always to remember that all models need to work also together. Some compromises have to be made to allow that.

I admit now that I understand your ideas better, I see how that could make certain things more realistic and better, but as I said, its largest problem is the fact that it's mostly "populational" and ignores the other requirements of our population model.

So, in your model, would each population consist of only one nationality, or what? And that group would have an area of land? I can see how that would allow a more realistic system of immigration and nationalistic clashes. But also I can't help seeing how difficult it would be to handle; there could propable be dozens of populations in some hexes. And is it really so important to know in what hexes excactly each nationality lives?

We could of course have two populations - region population and then those kinds of populations you suggest. But wouldn't that be over-complicated? Would it really be so helpful? I mean, in any case we need the region population for economy and government. Combining that from the other populations, that could be very many, and each of which could span several regions at once. How on earth we could find out the amount of each nationality in each region unless we save the amount of people in each hex of their area for every population? That would mean lots of memory. I'm not so convinced the system would be so good this would be acceptable.

I really wouldn't like to make a bad impression here. Your system has its potentials, and I don't have time to argue my points very well right now. It has brought us to see some problems that might arise from our model, and that's good. We just have to see now, that we don't have the resources to get a perfect model which could model everything. What we noe need to do is to sit down and think how to settle this issue.

I'm willing to admit that our model is not perfect, and that your model is good, though might be hard to implement and execute as you proposed. Also I will stick to the fact, that region population is absolutely necessary for economy model, government model, and for the situations when regions change possession; until recently, people in different countries have not had the possibility to travel freely between countries, if those two countries are hostile. So, in most cases the populations would be split in two or more parts. This is handled easily and adequately well with regional populations, in my opinion.

What we now need to do is to find a compromise. Arguing is rarely a good option in these situations, when we know that neither one of this models is perfect. We need to decide now, what things the population model needs to model, and what kinds of situations it needs to be able to handle. We cannot achieve everything - we will need to find out what are the most essential properties for the model, and the rest just needs to be dropped out, if they prevent us from achieving those essential properties.

I can make the new version of the model. I'd just like now some discussion about what is needed. I will myself come back to it later. Then, I will design the new model, hopefully that's done soon.

	23-08-2001 01:03									#119
	Remove this text

Since in this rather ancient thread many issues associated with the economy, like consumption and health of the population, are discussed I thought it might be useful to bring it to everyone's attention again.