18-01-2001 14:05									#1
	Regions, Population and Improvements - model ver. 0.3 Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Region, Population and Improvements - model ver. 0.3

Note! This is an unfinished draft!

This is my attempt to create the system for modeling and building the human world; regions, population and improvements. This model has many aspects what I think will be characteristic for all our models; it has some very general ideas from civ, mostly it is completely new and unseen anywhere else, and it has lots of realistic features though great compromises have been made in favor of gameplay. I think this model will give the player lots of fun and interesting things to do, without restricting us to model the world realistically in other models. This model is the most basic aspect of the game, along with the map, so please pay attention to it and help to refine it and correct the possible mistakes. This is in no way final.

Also this is more a collection of ideas for the future model than a finished model. Many things need better declaration and fleshing out. But the version number is 0.3, so it indicates lots of things are yet to be done. I intentionally stepped over 0.2, because I think the progress has been larger than only one tenth. Also I think version 0.2 has been created in the thread of the version 0.1, but it was never published as its own model.

Please note!

This model is far from finished - even far from the version 0.3. I have been reading through the old population thread, and will add the things discussed there, but haven't finished that yet. Also in many places, especially population, I have lots to add. Just because this has already taken quite much time, I thought that it would be good to show you my work in progress so you can have an idea of what I have in mind, and possibly get some new ideas from it. Please tell me if you think something can be done better. I will update this model later, when I get it finished; though every time I have said this earlier I haven't done it. There's hoping this time I will. Also this rough draft is quite messy, and might not give the best vision of the future model, but I hope it's of use. Anyway, share all ideas with us, please!

Definitions:

Region = the basic unit of government; region is an area of land. It and its people are governed by a single authority, which is in turn responsible for a higher level authority. Region is a supergroup; depending on the status of the region within the empire and the way it's governed, the regions can be states, provinces, colonies, protectorates etc.

Population = a group of people living in a specified area, usually a region. Population contains all people living in the particular area, and classifies them with different properties to model the behavior of the people in the game situations.

Improvement = a human-made structure or a group of structures which improves the land it is built on. The improvements in GGS are specifically region improvements; they are built in map screen, within the area of a region.

Regions:

In the game, region is defined as an area of land controlled and governed by a capital city of that region. Player starts the game by choosing the location for his capital within a defined area, the land inherited from the ancestors of his people. There will be also other cities in the region, but capital city is the one that controls the land and people.

Player fights to increase the land area of his people, thus enlarging the region. Basically this is done by "conquering" tiles - adding them to the region, possibly by military power. Also as the player keeps building his region, its area grows, if there is free space for that. To be able to hold the acquired land, though, is a completely different matter. It requires military control (especially if the conquered land has got population), possibly building some roads and other things etc. Your tech level and region infrastructure (roads etc.) decides how large the regions can be without causing trouble.

So, region would be much like the city radius of civ2. There are many important differences, though. The region is basically considered as the city radius of the capital city, but there would be also other cities in the region, and all cities would be the same; this is explained in the Improvements section later. Also the region can have any shape and its area is limited by some factors, but can be theoretically as large as you like. Further, the player would improve the region by building improvements, but these work differently from civ2 improvements. This is explained later. So, basically the region idea is the same as city of civ2, but greatly enhanced, without losing the simple and attractive gameplay of civ. This fulfills quite well the philosophy I mentioned in the beginning of this text; we take the best ideas from earlier games, then we take the demands of realism we have created for ourselves. Then we combine both of these, making compromises as necessary, without sacrificing too much of neither. I think this is quite well achieved here, but I'm biased. Please be my judges.

I think it might be possible to have primitive people, by having regions without cities - so, only land areas with people on them - So they are not organized, thus simple to handle. Basically the land would have many tribes from the same "nationality" that work independently, but could evolve into a real civilization. This way, we could have nomadic and hunter-gatherer tribes quite easily... but we'll see.

Population:

This is the most unfinished section. The class stuff is missing, like also most population statistics... it has currently only some general things.

Population symbolises the people of one region. There could also be statistical populations for the civilization's population. Basically the population object holds info about the statistical properties of the people in that area. People would be categorized in several ways; first of all, there would be urban population and rural population. Urban people live in cities, and rural outside cities.

Then, people would have nationalities; this is the civilization to which the people feel to belong. Conquered people usually preserve their national identity for a long time. Also people would have religious affiliations. Finally, people would be classified according to their work and social status. Each combination of these can form a group, which fights for something; how groups work, belongs to the government model.

People would have also some general properties, that decide their productivity and reproductive rate. These would include things like age groups (0-10 years old, 10-20 years old etc.), workhours, nutrition, efficiency etc... I will work on these later

Then how should we store this data? My idea is, that we have a list of objects. For each combination of nationality and religion, we would add an object to the list. Each object would then have the total amount of people in it, and the amount (or percentage) of people in each social class/profession. Also in the population object would be stored the total amount of people in the whole population, and the the total amount of people in each social class. Then what about rural and urban people? Should we have a simple figure with the amount (or percentage) of people in each, or should we store the class etc. data for both? This area is the one that needs most discussion right now, since it is a little fuzzy for me. The general properties listed above, would be stored once for the whole population, because we can assume that those would be much the same for every group in the region. Though some properties could be useful to store for each group; this way we could model oppressive actions towards some group. For example, some group could be paid less for their work, or they could be demanded longer workhours. I think this system would allow quite well the group system proposed by VetLegion, though I won't touch that in this model; it belongs to the government model. I wish for some discussion on this matter, since it's the most unfinished aspect of it rith now.

For each map tile, we would store the amount of people living on it. This feature has been debated a lot, but I think it is so vital for many things in the game, including production, diseases, and warfare, that it should be added. Though if we come to conclusion, that it is too much, we can live without it. But let me explain this.

The largest downside from this idea is, that it will consume lots of memory; with 2 bytes per tile, we could have only 65000 people per tile, so we could not have very big cities. 4 bytes is the next option, which would give us 4 billion people per tile, which would be waste of space. 4 bytes per tile with a million tiles would mean 4 megabytes only for storing the amount of people in each tile; and, most tiles would be uninhabited for all game (ocean tiles for example) so this would waste lots of memory. But I have an idea to reduce the memory needed. It is possible to make a system, where we have three tile types in population terms: uninhabited tiles, for which we would not store the population amount, rural tiles, for which we could use 2 bytes, and urban tiles, for which we could use 4 bytes to store the population amount. But would about 65000 people be enough for rural tiles? I don't know, but it should be fine for us. We could of course decide, that the tiles with more people than that are always urban.

Another problem in this idea is, how to inhabit the tiles with people. It could be really complex, and use lots of cpu time, if we want too much realism. So, I suggest that we use this system similarly to civ2 system, where workers were working the tiles and producing stuff. No, please don't freak out just yet - this idea in civ was ingenious, and quite realistic; people live in tiles and produce stuff in our world, too. We would just make that idea better. Instead of having only one population "unit" in each tile, we would have the real amount of people. Player would build improvements, that allow production of things; that would create employment for the people, and they would "move" to the tile, if there is no better work available elsewhere. So player would _not_ move the people around like in civ2, they would move on their own. Also there would not be a city radius, but the people could be anywhere within the region area, which could have any shape and (almost) any size. A system similar to this would be needed anyway to handle the production, so this way we can hit two or more targets with one shot.

Immigration: this is quite significant thing. Without it, it would not be very profitable to create new regions, since people multiply quite slowly. Basically there would be two kinds of migrations: inside each region, and between regions. Inside regions, people move between tiles in search for work, land or food. This would be quite simple to do, completely automatic and also quite logical. Immigration between regions is a more difficult matter. Basically we would have some (small) percentage of the people, that would like to move to another region. This percentage depends on how crowded their home region is, how much food is available, how much work is available, and what the tech level is. Some people of those would decide to stay in their original region after all; the others would move most preferably to other nearby regions of the same civilization; then farther away; then to closely related, nearby civilizations (if such thing is modeled); then to foreign civilizations. Everything depends also on how freely the target region allows the people to migrate in, and how willignly the source region will allow the people to go. But this is quite straightforward, it just needs some balancing.

Improvements:

Earlier civ games had city improvements and tile improvements. In our game the region is the basic unit, and they cover a large area of map, with several cities. So, in our game, we would have region improvements. They would be human-made structures, or groups of structures, which the player would order to be built and which his people would build to him, much like the city improvements in civ2; so, settlers would not be used. Instead, the player places the structure on the map, which starts a building project; this creates employment for his people. If there are workers available, they will start building the structure. The more people he can get to build it, the faster it would be built, though there would be an upper limit for each project, of course. Player could also force his people to build, or bring slaves to build it, but basically the people would work on their own.

Capital city of a region is the basic improvement. In the beginning of the game, the player chooses the location for his capital city, and it is built like other structures. To get more regions, the player needs to order the building of a new capital city somewhere on the map. For it to be built, some people will need to be willing to become settlers; they would move from their homes to a new area to build a new region. So, basically the game situation decides when the players can claim new areas of land; low on food, employment, living space etc. Of course the player could force the people to move, but that might also have its downsides.

There would be many cities in the region, all cities would be the same; tiles with urban population. Their improvements would decide how they work, and they would just produce stuff for the regional stockpile. Usually those cities would be created automatically around important player-made improvements, but the player could also build cities on his own, if he decides; those would be special improvements. The region capital city would have a special improvement, which would give a special position for it, but basically also it would be like all the other cities.

It might be a good idea to have "hit points" for the improvements, so they could be damaged by military attacks or lack of upkeep. About upkeep, each structure would require certain amount of workforce, resources and money to keep it in good shape. If the upkeep is not adequate, it will start to "recieve damage"; when the amount of hitpoints reaches a level which can be preserved with the current level of upkeep, it will settle down. Upkeep will also create employment for your people.

The "City" improvements could be called infrastructure, which would have a level on it. It will decide, how many people can live in the city comfortably. Building a certain level of infrastructure would create certain amount of employment. Also upkeeping it would employ the people. Cities could also have hitpoints, which would tell, how badly damaged the infrastructure is - damage would not decrease the amount of infrastructure. This would be useful especially in the modern times, when bombers can seriously damage the city's activity. Mostly the building of better infrastructure would be automatic, but of course the player would need to fund that.

A special kind of improvement could be "production capability". Instead of building factories or manufacturing plants, we would build production capability, which would include facilities to produce things and the necessary infrastructure for it. The capability would be an improvement, which has a level attached to it, quite like infrastructure with cities. The level of this improvement would decide, how much work would be available for laborers, and how much things can be produced. If we want to be extra fancy, we could have many kinds of production capabilities; basically for war machine industry. So, we could have "aircraft production capability" in a city, and you could go and bomb the capabilities of your enemy, to fight for air superiority! This might be an important strategical element in warfare, and we would not need very many of these capabilities, but we can live without it and have only one, if you think it's too much. "Production capabilities" would of course always have a city around them; so, cities would be the centers of production. Notice that the production capabilities don't necessarily mean factories; they can be also artisan workshops and such, so this is not only modern world improvement.

Another improvement with a level could be "energy production". It would work much like other kinds of production, and would be a key aspect in modern world.

So, basically my idea is, that about everything that the player builds on the map is improvements; they would be "building blocks" of the human world. What blocks there are, decides how the region works. Cities would not be like in civ2; they would be tiles with urban population. They would have an "infrastructure" improvement. They could also have other improvements, like production capability. Region capitals could have some kind of special improvement, like office buildings for housing the bureaucracies of the region. Also this could have a level to decide how heavy bureaucracies the region has, partly deciding how large the region can be. This system would be simple to do, simple to handle, and it would add quite high level of player involvement, though it would be easy to automate most things in it.

Here is a list of improvements I think should be there:

-farming areas or farming capabilities
-fishing -"-
-mining capabilities
-cities/infrastructure
-bureaucracies (kinda like the palace of civ2)
-temple/cathedral etc. (only the largest structures, really significant sanctuaries)
-perhaps a region-wide religious system could be built and upkept?
-academies and universities; these are significant, would work differently than civ2 ones
-perhaps large libraries in ancient times.
-in modern world perhaps a regional public library system could be built and upkept?
-perhaps also a public school system?
-roads (leading from point A to point B instead from being tile improvements)
-canals (likewise)
-dams, basins, large hydro plants
-large monuments, perhaps like wonders
-colosseums, theatres etc. could also be regional systems?
-water supply systems likewise? (aqueducts, reservoirs etc.)
-power supply systems likewise?
-military bases, garrisons, barracks, fortifications, naval and air bases

So, most improvements would be structures that would be shown on map as small icons in appropriate tiles. Each one would have hitpoint value, also perhaps an "armor value" deciding how difficult it is to cause damage to it with military actions, and some would have a level attached to them. There could be some improvements that would not be shown on map, but instead they would be regional systems. Basically only the largest structures would be on the map. Military bases could perhaps be constructed from pieces; they could be combined from a set of fortifications, accommodation room, training areas, radar systems, supply systems, storage space, defensive armament etc.

This system would make the cities the centers of production and government, and they could also be made centers of trade, but that doesn't belong to this model. But, the importance of all cities would be made secondary to the importance of the region. Cities would have some level of individuality, and they would produce things for upkeeping their own city and preserving their own lifestyle, but they would be subordinate to the region, and would produce things also for the common stockpile. So I think this system would solve most problems presented about regions and population, and it would also achieve all the goals set for it. It would be quite realistic, give lots of freedom for the creation of other models basing on it, and would have quite good gameplay. But that's what I think, please give me your opinions of it.

[This message has been edited by amjayee (edited January 18, 2001).]

	21-01-2001 18:38									#2
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

I wonder why noone has posted here yet...

But I will.

I actually agree a lot with the things presented here. All that I do not agree with I will comment here:

quote: So, in our game, we would have region improvements. They would be human-made structures, or groups of structures, which the player would order to be built and which his people would build to him, much like the city improvements in civ2; so, settlers would not be used. Instead, the player places the structure on the map, which starts a building project; this creates employment for his people.

	21-01-2001 18:41									#3
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

Oh yeah. This means that I don't agree with your list of improvements either. I just think that replacing it all with a regional and national system of budgets would make it less time consuming and free playing time for funnier tasks.

------------------
"If I sink to the bottom I can run to the shore!"
- Homer J. Simpson

GGS Website

	21-01-2001 21:17									#4
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

Well, I do think that there needs to be 'external' improvements, like farms and mines. With such big regions to control they'd have to be very easy to place, maybe even 'paint' them onto the map. C'mon, who here doesn't like the thought of admiring his mighty iron mines or seeing his vast tracts of farmland -he- built?

I think that Jokers system could be applied to the more internal of improvements, like religious buildings, education systems etc...as I don't think that any government ever would concern themselves with individual buildings, but would concern themselves with major projects like mines.

As for the tile system, I'm not sure I understood that amjayee...how do you propose we have 3 tile types? How would we know what type a tile is without it having at least 2 bits to tell it what type it is?

I think in terms of map size, each 1mb won't be a particular problem, and of course it can be compressed very well (as it's simple blocks of data) for sending over networks and being saved to disk. Personally I think we'll need several mb for the whole data set, even for empty maps...which won't be so big a problem in the future anyway.

Thinking in terms of game play time, each tile would need at the absolute least;

1. who owns it (1 byte would give 255 players, and 1 no-owner)
2. terrain type (possibly 1 byte, with some tweaking)
3. population (no idea of size, more than 1 for sure though)
4. external improvements and other stuff
[This message has been edited by chrispie (edited January 21, 2001).]

	22-01-2001 16:10									#5
	Got spare money?

I agree with Joker with that I got a little over-enthusiastic with the improvements. We should perhaps cut down on the list. But I agree with Chris that we need something to build; one of the greatest pleasures in civ2 (at least for me and Chris ) was to build things and watch the empire grow and improve. We cannot lose that, or our game turns into a spreadsheet program. There needs to be things to build, and you must be able to see your country improve.

Also another point; the player might have 20 regions in the end, but he would always start with only 1. Also he would build his regions gradually over thousands of turns, so it would not get very tedious, I think. At least if we make the system easy.

Yes, player doesn't need to worry about the worforce - and material costs. At least usually. He would just tell to build something, and the people build. If they don't have the resources, they will tell you. I just mentioned that to make it clear. Those things would be handled by the economy system as you said.

Also I agree that the people would build the infrastructure and such. But; I think the infrastructure should be represented on the map with an icon just as other improvements; why? This way it could get damaged in wars. Also generally I think that the people would build most of the improvements (always, the player doesn't have the chance to change that) but the structures would be shown on the map for the player to admire, and so they could be damaged in wars. Take universities and cathedrals for example. The player would just budget some money in religion and education. With that money the people would build the regional religious and education "systems" that are not represented on the map. In some occasions, the people might want to build a large temple or university. The player could define, that the people have to ask him for confirmation in these situations, or they could build those freely. Or, the player might have the chance to ask the people to build a university, but nothing more. The same with most other structures, too.

	22-01-2001 23:54									#6
	Full PM-box? Change here!

Yes, I agree with that. Big things can be player build, smaller ones would be handled via a budget system. I just feared that we would be drawing cathedrals on to the map (Shudder ).

Roads, railroads, military improvements, watering systems, mines of all kinds and a few other things could be mapbased.

And I agree with amjayee that putting things on the map not only makes it damageable in wartime, but also gives the game a nice feel, and a sence that you are actually doing something in the game.

------------------
"If I sink to the bottom I can run to the shore!"
- Homer J. Simpson

GGS Website

	23-01-2001 21:52									#7
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Nice!

Good to see some agreement. I will make some corrections and focusing for the model.

	25-01-2001 15:55									#8
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I read the whole topic last night in bed (amjayee's first post was 6 printed pages long!) and I can comment to it now:

I mostly agree with Amjayee. All the things represented here looks pretty much as I had in mind. Only thing is the improvements.

I think we shouldn't graphicly display all the improvements, but only the big ones. However, they are there! So let's say you have:

Major region impovements: Large improvements like roads, 'wonders', dams, canals andy important buildings and they are diplyed on the map with a little graphic.

Minor region improvements: Improvements like universities, hydro plant, military bases and much more who are not displayed on the map graphicly, but which are still there (viewable in other screens).

I just have to come up with a better name for those...

	26-01-2001 10:21									#9
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

I like the idea of having settlers/workers improving the land, and having that improvement go to the city of their origin. Part of the fun of games like this is the management of the terrain, of designing your own realm. If this should not be done by units, but rather by ordering an amount of labor, that's fine. Available labor could easily be calculated based upon a city or region's population. So many people are needed to farm, so many to create basic items, so many to administer, etc. Population beyond whatever you decide to consider minimal to a city's upkeep could be banked as available labor and spent as the wise ruler sees fit. Wanna build a gigantic pyramid for yourself? Great, but you do so at the expense of building a fishing fleet, a road, or anything else. All civs were able to call up excess people, once there was enough food production to support them. Priests, warriors, scribes, masons, you name it. Also, be realistic about how many people an area can hold. A rural landscape will only hold so many people, no matter how fertile. Once urbanized, it produces a diminishing amount of food. Cities are, in reality, huge sinks for food. In return, of course, they cough up large volumes of goods. Urbanizing terrain should account for this.

	27-01-2001 16:22									#10
	Increase Your PM Length

It is nice that most of us agree that regions are better than cities (at least I think so). But there are still great bugs in the region model (like reducing social tensions just by changing some borders) that we need to fix. Any suggestions on how to do that?

------------------
"My whole cheerleading career has been a lie."
- Bring it on

GGS Website

	27-01-2001 17:04									#11
	Remove this text

Regions are not better then cities!
We are getting confused in linguistics here

What difference is between a region and a capital city and a city and its radious? None, its the same thing.

I am putting accent of importance of cities, because without it capital city, region practicaly does not exist because one can not administrate it.

Also, the region without an administrative center can not even become a region. People on tile X and tile Y belong to region Z because they pay taxes, go trade, riot, etc in its capital city.

The reationship between region and city (for regions with multiple cities) is unclear. What functionality does city have? etc.

Also, relieving tensions by changing region borders should be impossible. You should be able to affect economy with it, and perhaps create some social activity, but you should not be able to ease social tensions. This makes more and more sure that population should not be handled at region level, but at empire one.

	27-01-2001 18:48									#12
	Increase the size of your Attachments

Ok, just for once I thought about regions!

My opinion is this;

Player starts with 1 region, several tile's in size (1 tile is surely too limiting)

The player then expands this region with conquest or settling of tiles.

Once the region is of x number of tiles the player can split it into 2 regions...if he doesn't split it, the bigger it get's, the harder it is to keep control of.

Also, player's could probably be able to combine two regions but within certain limitations.

So, typically the trick would be to make 'perfect' sized regions, if they are too big they are too hard to control and if they are too small, then duplication (of administration) causes ineffeciency.

I think this makes more sense and is easier for us to manage than giving the player 100% ability to just resize and reorder his regions...

go on then, flame me

And Cities;

Player's need cities/towns/villages in order to collect resources and taxes from his regions. Without them he has no centralised control over a region, so it is effectively useless to him in terms of economics. The player would need to designate a capital 'location' i.e city/town/village. This would be where all the resources are taken, and 'things' built. Also to collect resources from a tile, the player would need to have a village/town/city within x number of tiles of it, cities can obviously reach further that towns or villages so collect more resources for the region. Maybe also if a city has a road connection to the region capital, it could collect more resources, or just be generally better at collecting them...i.e faster or lose less along the way.

Regions and Cities;

A city can change regions but only in the sense of a new region being created by splitting a region into two. I'm not sure yet how you'd handle someone taking control of a city within someone else's region though...Though maybe for simplicity the loss of the capital would also mean the loss of the Region. For that to work we'd need to make it expensive to move the region capital obviously, otherwise you'd just keep moving it when the other player gets close to it.

	27-01-2001 21:24									#13
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The difference, Vet, lies in functionality, dynamics and flexibility. A city and its radius means regions can't be changed, all regions have the same size and the whole system is very static.

Regions with dynamic borders and capitals means you can have a large region somewhere, where that fits, and a small one elsewhere. Or you could have a region that did not just have a round shape. Plus we can have much, much more realism, since several cities within each region is possible.

You are right about cities being needed to govern anything, though.

And population being handled at an empire level: Yes, it should be that as well. But empire level is in fact worse (in some sence) than region level. The point of handling pop at a regional level would be to allow a large minority centered in one part of your empire (maybe because the player has previously conquored another civ), and thereby let them revolt there. This has tremendous importance, and is one of the most basic things in the game. If we just do it at a national level there would be no information about where the minorities live, and this would make revolts much less cool.

Actually handling pop at a regional level is only because doing it at a hex level is unrealistic. We need as much info as possible about where people live, so we can have them revolt there, and have the player stationing troops in the area to avoid it.


And Chris,
I think it would make sence to start the game with the player rising as the leader of a civ just when it has become one. This means that the player would only control the very small area that the civ is on - the 50 km hex.

But it would be possible to get more hexes very early in the game, so it shouldn't be too much of an issue. I just like the realism thing, and I think it gives a cool feeling to start at the very beginning.

Of cause if the player chooses not to start the game right at the beginning he could start with a larger, more advanced civ.

When this is said I actually agree with the rest you said about regions. Freedom, but with some restrictions is the key.

Conquest of regions:
I have said this before. I think that it should be possible for a unit to conquor everything within it's action range (that's not the right word, but I can't remember that right now) by using a turn (or less than a turn) on doing that, as long as no serious resistance (like units and fortified cities) exists in that area. Furthermore, when a regions capital is conquored the region should go into unrest mode, at which the owner could not make a new capital for some turns, and nothing would be produced in the region really. This would make the region even easier to conquor.

I just don't like the idea of getting the whole region just by conquoring the capital. In many cases that would be the case, but not always.

------------------
"My whole cheerleading career has been a lie."
- Bring it on

GGS Website

	28-01-2001 19:36									#14
	Increase Your PM Length

lol, chrispie, I can see myself chasing some region capital in circles, no thanks

Agreed with what you said. I think region managment should be really fun that way.

I like the idea of loosing a region if a capital falls. If they are a basic game unit then they should be split under very limited set of conditions.

If you can conquer tile by tile and city by city then you need to store info on tile level or city level. If you do store info on city level, then region should only be used for trade and economy interaction, but pop and military should be done at city level, or tile level.

	28-01-2001 21:33									#15
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Hmmm, but the obvious problem is if we start with a populated world, but only store the race information on a region basis, how do we store the race info of people who don't start in a civ? The only way I see to do it is to start with some preset regions, that is where people live, as well as the starting civ's first region too..of course that's wonderfully conterversial...hehe go on...anyone got a better idea? God I hope so...

	30-01-2001 02:14									#16
	Support Apolyton

Yes, that is problem. I would like to avoid putting religion, work or ethnicity on every tile.

Having only one type of tiles (very small ones) begs for a larger structure to hold data

	30-01-2001 12:08									#17
	Tired of ads?

Lately there has been a lot of debate in the region and poll threads about world population and region issues. I gathered here some ideas that would be good in my opinion. I tried to make some good compromises between realism and gameplay. Judge for yourselves:

Human players' people would be the only people with organized government. So, all the civs in the game would be human-controlled.

Most tiles would have a population. These would represent the hunter-gatherer tribes, nomadic tribes and early farmer tribes. They would usually be small groups of people, each tile containing several of them, and they would have a tribal organization where every village has its own leader. So, they would show to the player only as a number of people in the tile, and would act only as minor resistance when the player tries to conquer the tile. The people of the tile don't have a "national affiliation" (there is no nation they belong to) so after a short period of time after the conquering of the people, the people will be counted to the population of the player's nationality.

This is not entirely realistic, but it would be simplest. But; I think we could create a system, in which the original inhabitants of the land, previously scattered, could form a simple "semi-civ" to oppose the human player. In GGS The Book, the organization of people was divided to four types: bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states. In the beginning of the game, all people would be organized in tribes. Human player's people would form a state. (Or perhaps we could start with a chiefdom, and evolve it to state when the player has gained enough land.) Facing a threat from external force, the tribes in an area could form a chiefdom; they would have an area of land, and they could organize military force against the human, but nothing fancy. Historical examples of this are the Native American resistance, and the Celtic Gallian resistance against Romans.

I will now explain a little the organizational terms. Tribes would be very simple and inorganized. They would be controlled by a strong man, a local chief or warlord. There could be three kinds of tribes: hunter-gatherer, nomadic, and farmer. The type would have only some economical importance, and would mainly decide how much food the people can extract from the land, and thus how many people the land can support. Farmer tribes would of course have some simple farm improvements on the land. We don't need to have the nomads moving visibly on the map; that, too, would be mainly an economic term. The nomads would have animals with them, and would live mainly on lands suitable for herding. Of course to model mongol invasions and such, we could have a system where the tribal people can form chiefdoms also without player affecting; several tribes would join forces, and the chiefdom could organize some military. The effects could be similar to Great Migrations; mongols forced other people in front of them to move westwards etc.

So, the next thing would be mobile populations. These would be like armies; they would have settler units and simple military units. Perhaps we need a system to store the technological level of the people in some area? I mean, many inorganized tribes did have the knowledge of bronze and iron working. So, the technological level would decide how strong military units the mobile tribe has. Of course they would be no match for organized army, but could cause harm if let unguarded. So, basically the mobile tribe would be like an army, moving on the map like the units do. The player could also turn his people into this kind of unit. This is quite historical; almost always the people living in some area today have not been the original inhabitants of the area. Greece was inhabited by Asian people invading the country from North some millennias BC. Also the current people of Finland have come from elsewhere and conquered the land from the original inhabitants thousands of years ago. So, the player would have some land for him, and he could live on it for some time, meanwhile exploring the surrounding area. If better land is available, he can "pack" his people and invade the area. I don't think this would need any specific technology. Usually the people could move to the new area within one or two turns. And yes, this should be profitable, and also quite easy for an organized tribe of the human player.

The basic idea in dividing the world into regions in the beginning of the game is, that this way we could store the statistics of the people living in that area. But it's true that this is a little overcomplicating issues. Perhaps we should have, that only those areas with government would be regions. But do we need some system to store the statistics of the population living outside the regions? At least for nationality we don't necessarily need it, as I said. Also for religion, the tribes would propably have each their own animistic or polytheistic religion. Also classes don't exist, so they are not needed. The only thing that comes to my mind is the technological level. What kind of system we could use for that? Or is it needed? I think for realism, it would be good. Perhaps we could just have an area of land similar to region, but we would just store some population statistics for that area? Ethnicity perhaps (though handling that might be tricky - how the ethnologies spread etc.?), tech level and some other things perhaps... should be quite simple.

About player being a nomad civ, I think it would be good. Also, I think it would be profitable in certain conditions. Nomadic civ with government would be no match for the primitive tribes in the tiles, and also it would have such a good military it could hold back against the agriculture-based civs, until it can find a better location to settle down.

These are my ideas. Any refinements to them? At least I think, that we need the tile population and the simple chiefdoms for realism. Also they should not be too difficult to make.

	31-01-2001 14:27									#19
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Vet: I think we don't need the pop properties in tiles very much, and it would be hard to keep track of them. That would simplify things. When joined to an existing population, the people would just gain the sate properties as the new population they belong to. But of course some kind of tech level would be good. Does anyone think of anything else we would need for tile populations?

	31-01-2001 21:32									#20
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That seems ok, but

It would work for conquering "disorganised" tiles, but how about enemy tribe (civ) tiles? Then, they become just your people, no unrest.

So, if we allow tile by tile conquering, it becomes necesary to have more data on a tile.

Also, questions of splitting the region, merging regions and expanding a region are still unanswered.

	31-01-2001 23:17									#21
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Hmm. This place has been awfully quiet the past weeks time. Sad.

But anyway. I think Amjayee makes more sence than all the rest of us (as usual ) in what he is saying. Disorganized hexes would only need to store the amount of people on them.

However, this should not mean that by conquoring them they would become of your nationality just like that. Even though we don't have to keep track of nationality in their case, they would still "get" a unique nationality when conquored by a civ. This would mean that you could not just conquor vast areas of land in very short time and hope to keep it. And when conquoring other civ's hexes these people too would keep their nationality and cause unrest and problems for vast amounts of time.

I am aware that the region definition thing is still an unanswered question. But I think that it is one that we can overcome, if we really work on it.

Although I have not have much time to check my sourceforge emails lately, I have seen the discussion of whether squares or hexes should be used. And in that discussion I vote for hexes. I think that they give way more sence than squares, removes the unfair diagonal unit movement and generally just looks better for terrain. Their only drawbacks are the dificulty of calculating their area (a 50 km hex has an area of some 600 sq km, or so I recall) and the potential dificulty of programming them. But the first is really not a big problem to me, and if you can get over the second I think we should stick to hexes.

One last thing: since I am stuck on these iMacs I have not had a chance to see the new UI in action. So could someone please give me a brief describtion of it? What does it do? Is it cool? Tell me, tell me!

Now if you will excuse me I am going to Alpe D'Huez (don't know about the spelling, though - those damn French) on a skiing trip the day after tomorrow. YEEEHAAA!

------------------
"If you are to hurt someone you better do it so good that you don't have to fear revenge."
- Machiavelli

GGS Website

	01-02-2001 23:38									#22
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Vet: that is true. But of course we could make it so that if you conquer a tile belonging to an organized tribe (civ) they would keep their national status from the old region... Though if it's a multi-national region, how can we know which of those nationalities is occupying that particular hex? Hmmm... do we need to know? I don't know if need to know or not.

Then also Joker makes sense in his message. Damn it, I know it would be good if we could store at least national info for each tile... IT's just that it would be so hard to control, and it would take so much memory... We need to decide what level if excactness and realism we want.

I have a possible solution to this issue, but it would change the whole idea quite radically. I remember Leland was referring to something similar a while ago. What if we separate nationalities, religions and such completely from the region system? We would have _nationalities_, (ethnical nationalities, not the civ nationality )that have an area assigned to them. Quite like the region's area. For each nationality we could store some info. The areas of different nationalities could overlap. Then, we would have a regional population which collects info about the people living within its area and stores it within itself. Class info and such would be stored only at the regional level (for simplicity). This would of course complicate things, and might bring some new problems, but this is one possibility.

This is a very problematic thing. Nationality and many other population properties are quite essential in the game. We need some realism in them. But we must not make the system very complicated, or it will be difficult to handle and thus would not serve its purpose. Also using too much memory and computing power should be avoided.

Then one possibility would be to make it so, that only one nationality can "own" the tile. We would store the "owner" of the tile either as an area of tile belonging to the same nationality, or directly in each tile. The latter system would take more memory. The "owner" of tile would be the dominant nationality in it, propably until that nationality ´has vanished from that region by the acts of the conqueror (in the case the tile is a conquered tile). There could live people also of other nationalities, but they would not be counted. Just the amount of people would be stored for each tile, and the amounts of different nationalities in the regional population. We would just not know excactly where some of those nationalities are situated... this is another possibility.

I hope we can get some sense in this. I will think of this some more.

About tile shapes; hex and square are quite equal. Hex is a little more difficult to program, and it would look a little more confusing because it is a more complex shape than a square; squares have less realistic movement, but that is not an issue since we are planning to not have tile-by-tile movement. Overall, squares are now my favored tile shape; they are neat-looking, as easy as possible to program, and the most convenient. So I think they are quite appropriate for us. But if everyone else insists, hexes can be used too. But I would prefer squares.

And have nice there in France!


[This message has been edited by amjayee (edited February 01, 2001).]

	02-02-2001 20:33									#23
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Yesterday in our meeting we got some new ideas for the region system. I will summarize a little those ideas and possibly refine on them. I promised to send this earlier; sorry that I couldn't do it until now. But here goes.

Region system would be re-defined. We would now have regions, that are solely governmental elements, and populations, that contain people data. Each government region could have a number of populations, each having their own area; each tile can belong to only one population, so they cannot overlap. Region borders (political borders) would be freely definable, but population borders the player could not change. When a population is divided by a political border, the population would be split into two of course, so each population can belong to only one region. But of course the split populations would remain quite similar for a long time, so within certain time the populations could re-unite if the get a chance - i.e. if they belong to the same region again. Even after being split, the national affiliations of the populations would remain, so that might cause problems for the conquering player.

This system would solve all the problems dealing with players changing region borders; since populations remain intact, no actual benefit can be received from changing randomly the political borders. Also this way we can create all the population features we have wished for. With this system, the world would be inhabited from the beginning, and it would be covered by populations; so we would always know all the stats for all people in the world. If the populations are not governed, they would show simply as "Celtic tribes" or something like that. Regions on the other hand are created only by the players, and they contain some populations in them, and govern them. I was earlier concerned with handling production, but that would be no problem actually, if we split the population along the political borders. We would only need a system for handling the population spreading and other things like that, but they should not be too tough.

With this system we can make all kinds of cool features. Including:

-hunter-gatherer, nomad and farmer tribes outside player's regions and as extra challenge in conquering

-possible uprisings of primitive tribes; each nationality would have a region. In a dangerous situation (threatened by the player) or for other reasons, like lack of food, they could unite under one strong ruler for a short while. This kind of group could organize military and better defense. This would be similar to the barbarian unrest in civ2, but with some more realism.

-spreading of diseases would be more realistic, and using germs as weapon would be easier.

-etc... I will think this more when creating the model.

I'm quite assured that this system would be good. I have made a just simple summary of it here, but I will refine on it for the model. If we now can agree on this, I could have the model ready soon! Please comment on this and make new suggestions and ideas, so we can finally decide on this system; it is after all one of the most basic things, and will affect most other models.

	03-02-2001 06:16									#24
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I think this solution is quite elegant and appropriate. VetLegion asked me about the city node proposal I made three weeks ago, but as amjayee pointed out back then, it was a little bit too complicated. However, my previous idea and this population model aren't mutually exculsive: I believe that one of the benefits of the new model is that it can be refined later on, for instance, by giving the city network a more prominent role. But for now, just having regions and populations is sufficient, since those are the elements that the player interacts with.

I'm glad that his particular problem seems to be solved, but it would be too optimistic to think that everything is settled. Among open items are

- how to handle migration
- what rules apply to the formation and/or evolution of populations and the land area they occupy
- how to balance the number of populations so that they neither become unmanageably numerous or assimilate into uniform masses
- the rules applying to population properties
- the role of cities and urban populations in the new model
- 1001 other issues I haven't thought of.

I'm a little bit concerned about the initial state of the earth: if we would be realistic, each tile would have its own population and that is unacceptable. So we'll have to group primitive populations (those that are not part of any civs) into large "population pools" from which the players conquer new territories/subjects. The military action by nomadic tribes can be modelled as a combination of spontaneously arising military units (strong leader) and migration within the area where the tribe originates: the unit serves as a magnet which attracts people to migrate. Since migration is assumed to be relatively free within populations there is no risk of having a military unit without a population, unless it decides to attack another population such as your friendly neighbourhood civ.

From the gameplay point of view the regions would be far more visible than the populations. However, it should be possible to have a population map which could be used to determine appropriate region borders. Maybe this could be done automatically in order to spare the player from tediously drawing lines across continents. But of course this should be optional, and the player could draw the borders himself and split the populations as he desires. I'm not quite sure how visible foreign populations should be though... maybe it depends on the tech level, maybe there could be different stages: no information, rough statistics of overall population, detailed statistics of overall population and rough statistics on regional populations, detailed statistics of national and regional populations and rough properties of individual populations, population borders well known, and complete information. Or something similar.

As for terminology, I believe that we need to make a distinction between statistical properties and concrete properties. The word "statistical" suggest a set of properties that are derived from a lower level: this regional and national populations would be statistical because their properties are determined by the concrete populations. In order to avoid confusion, I'll define the terms as follows (based on amjayees definitions):

Population: a group of people living in a specified area. Populations are disjoint: no two populations may occupy the same tile. Population classifies it's people with different properties to model the behavior of the people in the game situations.
Region: the basic unit of government; region consists of one or more populations. It and its people are governed by a single authority, which is in turn responsible for a higher level authority. Region is a supergroup; depending on the status of the region within the empire and the way it's governed, the regions can be states, provinces, colonies, protectorates etc.
Regional population: statistics describing the properties of all populations in a given region.
National population: statistics decribing the properties of all populations within a civilization.
Tile population: number of people living in a tile.

(It should also be noted that the word "population" can refer to either a group of people or the number of the people.)

Now for some comments about your initial proposal.

Tile population: Why is it necessary to know exact number of people occupying a tile? The land area of a 50km across tile is about 2000 square km, surely it's unimportant whether there are 4678 or 4679 people living in it? In another thread S. Kroeze pointed out various population densities of nomadic peoples; if I recall correctly, one person per a couple of square miles was common, though there were exceptions. However, for the purposes of this game I believe that knowing the number of people in each tile with the accuracy of, say, 200-250 people is sufficient. This way two bytes can express 13 to 16 million people. Hmm... maybe it's not enough. I'm not sure about the population densities of modern cities, but aren't they in the same ballpark?

Another solution would be to use different multiplyers for urban and rural populations, maybe by using one bit of the number for this purpose. This double standard would make migration a little bit tricky, so I'm not so sure if it should be used.

The advantage of having a fixed number of bytes instead of varying number is clear to all programmers: referencing an array is a lot easier if it's uncompressed. Naturally, we'll be using various compression schemes for network and save data, but those are programming and not design issues. I apologize if I have bothered you designers with such trivialities.

Improvements:

I think improvements should be clear distinguished into two groups: tile improvements (those that have a clear position on the map, for mines, harbors and very important monuments) and region improvements (such as public schools). There is, however, a problem with roads and canals: should they be tile improvements (two connected points on the map, or a path of adjacent tiles) or regional ones (a general "road infrastructure")?

Also, the problems formerly with populations and regions are now present as regards to regions and improvements. If a region has a water supply improvement, you chop off a piece of the region and connect it with a neighbouring region, does the neighbour gain water supply as well? Tile-based improvements don't have this problem, obviously, but it is clear that regional improvements are needed.

Another thing I'm unclear of is, how customizable are individual improvements? Will/should there be an "improvement workshop" where the player can build his churches and schools and military bases, or should the customization be achieved by grouping improvements? For instance, can the school system be made militaristic by coupling it with military bases, or religious by coupling it with temples? (Just some wild ideas...)

Micromanagement (a response to Joker):

It's true that people playing SMAC rarely use the automated units or governors. At least I don't. But in GGS I think the option of micromanagement should still be present, but not as a default. If a player wants to micromanage, a bunch of difficult statistics will be thrown to his face and it should be possible to get away from it with one click of the mouse. In the beginning of the game it is particularly problematic to keep the players from touching the micromanagement option: there is inevitably less to do on the macro scale, so bored players will explore the details and may not want to let go once the game progresses.

I think it's not a bad thing to have some micromanagement on demand: I for one would like to build my capital region more closely than other regions, but I would gladly let the AI take care of all military actions. Some other people want to do the opposite. It's not a bad thing to have this sort of options; however, to make the game playable and fair to those who do not want to have certain levels of management, the game mechanics and AI should be balanced so that there is little to be gained from fiddling with the details.

Conquering regions:

Well, the new population system solves this issue. When a chunk from another civ or a nomadic tribe is conquered, it splits off into a separate population within whichever region is closest to it. Maybe by default it could be it's own region. If you conquer back an area, the people would not automatically become one with their original population because the whole event of being conquered and then re-conquered surely changes the population properties enough to distinguish them from the unconquered people. How this happens exactly is to be defined later.

About the next version:

Perhaps the model should be cropped to a pure population model and leave the region stuff to the government model? I anticipate that just the population property stuff will be quite complex if you dig into it. Also, anyone writing models should pay special attention to the connections with other models. I believe that population model is, after map and terrain, the most fundamental thing in the game. Group interaction model and government models are built on top of this, so the questions which are addressed there should be outlined in this model.

And finally, about version numbers: I've always been more accustomed to thinking of 0.1 as the first step instead of "one tenth finished". So, in my opinion the drafts/proposals could be number 0.4, 0.5, ... , 0.9, 0.10, 0.11, ... ad infinitum without worrying about finishing. When you reach a version which everybody can agree with (well, the majority at least), say 0.X, you just label it as 1.0, upload it to the website and consider it done regardless of X being 9, 29 or 229.

Not that it looks very probably that drafts above 0.9 will be needed... I'm pretty sure we can reach a concensus of the basic functionality before that. This thing has to be programmed sooner or later anyway.

Leland

	04-02-2001 04:53									#25
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Amjayee and Leland,

Good work, and seems ok now.
If I still think that in the morning, we have a deal

	06-02-2001 04:41									#26
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Ok, verified

	14-02-2001 10:52									#28
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I agree that we don't need the excact number of people. Anything to reduce the complexity even a little!

I really should finish this model. I'm afraid that cannot be done this week, because I have an important deadline to meet, but then ít will be the next thing to do.

Edited:

Ok, my school work is done, and I will start going through this model again. Hope to get some results soon, during next week I guess.
[This message has been edited by amjayee (edited February 15, 2001).]

	19-03-2001 16:03									#30
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I don't know about the population growth thing... it is a problem and has to be solved. Though your suggestion sounds like it would take too much memory. Of course for really small populations we could store the amounts x1; when the amount grows to exceed the boundaries, it could automatically change to x10, then x100, x1000 etc. We'll see could this work... If we use this system, I think we would have to use 2 short ints per tile, and that would not help us save memory...

About the tile properties, it gave me an idea; perhaps we should have geographic regions, that could store the areas that shares the same terrain properties? Perhaps also other system to store the areas with the same climate? This could help us to save the memory needed for the map.