24-08-2001 00:18									#1
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Hi, I am the new guy...

I have not found the subj in yor website. Does that mean that it does not exist? Following I present some thoughts about it.

Sorry if I have missed smth already existing or repeating someone else's thoughts.

I would like to make the game more square-based compared to fully city-based SGs.

I have always anticipated the model of civ growth in Sid's Games. In SGs, first of all a city is founded and then surrounding landscape is taken into use by the people in the city. That works fine for colonization, but under normal circumstances, the process goes the other way round in reality. There should be two ways of expansion -- first, with an EXPENSIVE city founder unit (like in SGs) and second, in citizens own initiative, like in most cases in history. If there is a certain population growth, the people should try to claim free areable lands in the neighbourhood. These lands should appear irrigated or smth like that, the borders should autom. enwiden to contain the new settlement and they should be administratively allocated to the closest city. BUT -- farer the squares are, higher the corruption is and lesser are the taxes that gvt gets. That factor depends on gvt type. If there was enough of these squares considerably far off from the nearest city, the most central square would be converted to a new 1 size city automatically and all these squares would be allocated to that city, resulting in corruption cutback and increase in gvt revenue. The gvt can speed up the process by founding that city with city-founder unit, of course. The number of squares needed for automatic city creation also depends on gvt type. Under primitive gvt type lots of populated squares are needed for birth of a new admin centre and the corruption is high until that. That results in large, but rural countries with tiny central budgets under ineffective gvt as we know them from history. It will have a desireable side effects as well as the player is spared from another task of micro management, the city founding.

The second issue is that in SGs, it is just a point and click job to move the people from one working location to another. Well, I would like you to raise your cattle over there, 500 km-s from here, please start walking. Yes, Sir! But instead of walking, we'd better teleport... It just does not make sence. My suggestion is: only people, who make resources (these shields in SGs) should be subject to that. I would just deny the player an option of freely move around farmers. Here I approach my most important point.

The pop should be split to two -- the farmers and the rest. Farmers would do everything as they like, settle where thay want and raise their crops where they want to raise them. All others are subjects to all kinds of gvt orders, including "From now on, mine that mountain over there, do not lumber in this forest anymore!" and so on. The farmers have a lot higher birth rate, the others often have it even negative. The children of the farmers have three options -- a) go to the nearest city and get a job there; b) go and settle in free lands in the neighbourhood as described above; c) emigrate to the most friendly (closest us by race and culture, not in war with us, richer than us, supports immigration etc) civ that has free lands or free jobs in the cities (a friendly civ with a small pop and advanced gvt is very suitable). There they would preserve their ethnic background and be subject to everything described in social model. Every civ may either encourage or discourage the immigration or set quotas for it.

As the tech advances, less and less farmers are needed in the rural areas and more and more of them will choose option a) and less and less will choose the options b) or c). As the urbanization grows, the birth rate drops, resulting in processes similar to the Western world of today. The percentage of farmers choosing option a) depends on gvt type, development, economical indicators and regional policy of the gvt (an option to allocate cash for regional subsidiums).

	24-08-2001 04:52									#2
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Hi Kristjan! And official welcome to the forum!

We already have something similar to your first paragraph, although the details are a bit different. If you skim the Economy model you'll see that while cities aren't unimportant they are not the Only economic element as in Civ. People will migrate, both under their own impulses (social model) and government orders if govt power is large enough (govt model). There has also been some discussion of migration recently in the Economic Model II thread.

One thing that draws people are economic incentives like 'free land' or subsidized production, just like in the real world. Since there is a simulated real economy in Clash the farmers' children automatically 'go to work' where they are paid the most, unless the government restricts mobility in some way (details TBD) or if the economy is rigidly traditional (I do what my father did...)

From your suggestions I see you have the same general thoughts as the rest of the group!

-Mark