05-03-2002 22:10									#61
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quote: Originally posted by roquijad within-civ: For each province you compute a very simple index to define its attractiveness. Something like PCI_per_capita*incentives/land_utilization_ratio. You then find the least attractive and create a settler there composed with a fraction of all EGs present. You teleport it to the most attractive province and distribute the population there with a "smart" mechanism.

I don't think there should be only one migration per provice per turn.

This is my vision of the immigration model:
1. Calculation of each province attractiveness, much like roquijad suggest.

2. For each province a total of people migrating are calculated. This calculation would determine the amount of people leaving the province to seek a better life elsewhere.
Then this number of people are distributed to all the other provinces via a percentage based upon the attractiveness of each one and a dividing factor for distance + any other important issue.
That means each province gets some amount of people from all other provinces each turn.

This is within civs, outside civs I am not sure how to represent this. It could be the same model, and the amount of people to move from one civ to another is calculated in the in-civ calculation by adding another 'logical province' that represents interciv migration with an attractiveness calculation that is based on a little different criteria than the province calculation.

I think that would work very well and it does not seem like a lot of calculations to make.

The distribution of the total immigrated people within each province is another different calculation. Could be done in the same way as with the inter province migration. The people are distributed according to a simple attract factor.

Color

	05-03-2002 23:10									#62
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my thing is there should be 1 migration per square per turn...there may be an exception in a mass exodus situation hwhere the population flees in all directions.

I think its best to do it by square since non-forced migrations didn't rtavel very far very fast. There were exceptions, but these were usually massive migrations which would haveto already probably be handled speacially.

	06-03-2002 15:07									#63
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I like colorrr's proposal more than rodrigo's. As I said, one mugration per province per turn is too limiting. One per square per turn is acceptable.
We could compute targets as provinces, and inside the provinces, dispatch to the coresponding squares. Foreign provinces should be considered only if known by the civ. I am not sure it is worth complicating the algorithm by making a pseudo-province for foreign civs.

	06-03-2002 22:39									#64
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Hi All:

Color's proposal seems workable in general. I repeat that when we move the economy up to the provincial level there is Really No Point to having migrations done on a square basis. Any differences at the square level within a province would in general be lost in a few turns anyway. If we do things at a province level we can consider many potential target provinces in a reasonable way. At the square level a combinatorial explosion will make distance cutoffs critical. FE at the square level if each of 1000 squares considers 1000 possible targets (crudely meaning targets on the same continent) that is a Million evaluations. The player doesn't get much out of this!

My proposal would be that migrants are shared among cities (if more than one) in the target province. If there are better opportunities out in the rural regions of the province, then the intra-provincial economic-driven migration will take care of it in short order.

The only problem with this is if there is land that isn't partitioned into provinces. IMO there can be a default partition for such land into provinces that is done automatically. But in most cases in the developed Clash game there will already be people there in civs or minor civs, and thus provinces.

	12-03-2002 01:58									#65
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quote: Originally posted by Mark_Everson Hi All: Color's proposal seems workable in general. I repeat that when we move the economy up to the provincial level there is Really No Point to having migrations done on a square basis. Any differences at the square level within a province would in general be lost in a few turns anyway. If we do things at a province level we can consider many potential target provinces in a reasonable way. At the square level a combinatorial explosion will make distance cutoffs critical. FE at the square level if each of 1000 squares considers 1000 possible targets (crudely meaning targets on the same continent) that is a Million evaluations. The player doesn't get much out of this!

I think here your overcomplicating things...if we make it so that people can only move to ajacent/diagonal or costal squares (if the parent square is also on a coast) within X amount of space, then there are far less possible compuations.

Again this doesn't apply to rare special cases so we can bend the rules in those cases we need to.

Plus this makes for more interesting games for people who want to atleast in some areas or who have small civs get more detailed.

	12-03-2002 05:26									#66
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I rather feel that, historically, there were two kinds of colonization. These could be called "diffusion" and "spot colonization".

In diffusion, the people in a square will occupy any suitable, adjacent, lower population density, squares.

Spot colonization occurs when a power block (usually the government) or a dissident ethnic group (often a religious group) sent a colonizing group to a relatively distant point to set up a colony.

The way in which these operate is different, but I feel that both must be catered for. Both have been very important in world history.

Cheers

	12-03-2002 19:02									#67
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Gary, LGJ, you are both right. I believe that LGJ's approach is good for non-supervised migrations. I think it should apply at province levels with repartition in squares if needed. Checking these migrations would be done every turn. The other kind of migrations, leader-endorsed, would just mean adding a distant square/province to the list of available destinations inside one's civ.

	13-03-2002 02:39									#68
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Hello.

A suggestion: a square could be selected as a colonization center, and then the surrounding area (perhaps a circle?) is settled, more densely around the center, and thinning out the longer away from the center you get. Squares of special economic value and surrounding squares are also a bit more densely settled. Deserts are left almost empty.

Perhaps the effect will not be much different from settling entire provinces, so it might not be worth it to implement this suggestion, but I think economic and geographical circumstances often had a greater impact on where settlers choose to live, than how the government had divided up the land in provinces.

Btw. I liked demo 6. I think it will become a great game.

	13-03-2002 06:44									#69
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Hi RM, and welcome to clash! I am still hoping the provincial layout can be made "reasonable" enough so that things like your suggestion wouldn't be necessary. But we'll see. And thanks so much for the positive feedback on the demo!

Hey LGJ, I just don't think square-by-square is either adequate or efficient. The reasons are still those I mentioned above. I don't think you can do square-by-square using just adjacent squares. That would mean migrations would stop any time you run into a strip of water, mountains, or desert. Basically everything except military combat is geared to the provincial level. I just don't see any strong case for square-level migrations, and at best opinion is divided.

I agree with Laurent's short summary of how it should work. Although I think checking every turn may be overkill. But that is just a detail that we can work out later. I certainly support Gary's statement that we should have available to the player Both the people diffusing on their own (with or without inducements), and also the grandiose generalisimo being able to tell people Exactly where to go .

	15-03-2002 02:33									#70
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Well imo migration via province will ultimatly cause more problems than it solves. When you redistibute province size, however you do so, you need to know how many people are in each square. Also when transfering via province in the beggining might not make much of a differance, but later on you may have super-provinces which could span virtually entire continents. It also complicates things as we have EGs linked to the squares. If they are in multiple squares and some move to another provinces, you then need to make calculations to see which ones moved from where and by how much.

There are plenty of other reasons for using it, such as maybe deviding a province by enthnicity for revolts or whatnot, the fact there may be multiple cities and the migration of the population toward them and away from them in rare cases, etc.

Really i don't think we should skimp here and put it at the province level. The comp time, is less than what would probably be used for military and there are many people like me who would feel jipped at seeing the military area get the heaviest focus of detail when it comes to comp time and detail level.

	15-03-2002 05:10									#71
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Hi LGJ:

quote: Originally posted by Lord God Jinnai When you redistibute province size, however you do so, you need to know how many people are in each square.

I don't understand where you're coming from. We ARE keeping track of the people by square! Just about every issue you raise in your post is not an issue because of this false premise.

quote: Really i don't think we should skimp here and put it at the province level. The comp time, is less than what would probably be used for military and there are many people like me who would feel jipped at seeing the military area get the heaviest focus of detail when it comes to comp time and detail level.

I don't see why we can't enable players to micromanage migrations at the square level. All I was talking about was the Default method for handling migrations, which I still firmly believe should be handled at the provincial level. Then, following migration, the people will redistribute themselves to squares within the province as they find them attractive. A player might gain some small transient advantage from doing it at the square level, but I'm hard-put to understand why it would be worth it. But one person's micromanagement can be another's fun .


A side note:
I am assuming that members of a given EG will prefer to be togther for intra-provincial migrations since it is both a real-world effect, and can also keep down the number of EGs that an average square will need to have. What do people think?

	15-03-2002 05:56									#72
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Sorry, but it seemed you were saying that with very few exceptions all calculations would be done on the province level.

well if the default is the province level for keeping track that is fine, but that shouldn't disclude intra-province or square-to-square migrations, just the display of them for the player. Intra-province migration is in fact the key to the creation of many cities. I just think only calculating them at the provincial level will cause to many irregularities for the computational time you think it will save.

As to EGs tending to live together, i think that's a good idea, so long as encomic and social conditions allow legally and have descent oppurtunities. IE it shouldn't restrict some of them from moving because the grass is greener on the other side.

	20-03-2002 03:21									#73
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The actual implementation of this is getting quite close. This puts requirements on the model. The first thing to be decided is "How does the game start". CivX (menaing Civ1, Civ2, Civ3...) has a settler unit wandering around. If we take that approach, then it follows that we have to have a settler unit. The alternative is to have some people living in a fixed square, and start from there.

Some pros and cons:

1. Settler unit.

In favour is the fact that the player has extra choices, and can decide to start the civilization in the preferred terrain or position. It also gives the possibility, later in the game, of creating settler units and having a directed migration or colonization. Also the system does not exclude the method of colonization by diffusion.

Against is the fact that we have a rather odd unit added to the game.

In passing, I do not think that the settler unit should be militarily helpless. If you attacked 5000 migrating huns, you wouldn't expect them to just lie down and die.

2. Fixed possition.

In favour is the fact that the mechanism is simple.

Against is the reduction of options.

Personally I prefer option 1.

Settler units should have the option of being mono-ethnic, and have the possibility of being spontaneously created, and not necessarily under the control of the originating civilization.

As far as diffusion is concerned, any empty or sparsely populated square which is not owned, and which is adjacent to a square owned by a civilization is fair game, and will be colonized, if there is surplus population to do it, and added to the province of the adjacent square. If there is a choice of provinces, add to the province whose centre of gravity is nearest to the capital.

Cheers

	20-03-2002 04:08									#74
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Hi Gary:

Either 1 or 2 is fine by me. Just so long as doing the settler unit doesn't turn into a weeks-long project that is...

quote: Originally posted by Gary Thomas As far as diffusion is concerned, any empty or sparsely populated square which is not owned, and which is adjacent to a square owned by a civilization is fair game, and will be colonized, if there is surplus population to do it, and added to the province of the adjacent square. If there is a choice of provinces, add to the province whose centre of gravity is nearest to the capital.

How do you define surplus population? There is no such thing in the econ model at present. People can always be used in economically useful ways. There will need to be a (simple for now) evaluation of the economic drivers for migration. Your approach is also guaranteed to result in enormous provinces quite quickly if we start with an empty map. I guess some simple rules could handle that.

I still think its more satisfying overall to do province-based migration with automatically-generated provinces if needed. Requiring an adjacency to allow migration will result in the people missing too many opportunities IMO.

Cya,

Mark

	20-03-2002 07:06									#75
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quote: I still think its more satisfying overall to do province-based migration with automatically-generated provinces if needed.

I cannot imagine code to generate provinces being any easier than my old favourite of randomly generated terrain. At a guess, I would suspect several weeks coding and an unsatisfactory result.

quote: Requiring an adjacency to allow migration will result in the people missing too many opportunities IMO.

What sort of opportunities?

Cheers

	20-03-2002 07:54									#76
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Hi Gary:

Well, I can't see how it could possibly take several weeks to autogenerate provinces. We are not sending Actual people to those provinces, just pretend ones, and their standards for the attractiveness of a place to move into are a bit lower.

For dividing a map into provinces I would think a simple approach would work fairly well. Start at a point that is on a coast or on the border with an existing province. Everything within X ticks of movement by infantry is in province 1. (Picking X so you typically get 10-25 squares.) Rinse and repeat till done. There are of course a few details, like working out around a given province completely before continuing so that you don't get a lot of little few-square provinces. Estimated coding time 3 hours max. If you wanted to get cuter, you could take any annoying bitty provinces that ended up at the edges and have adjacent larger provinces donate 5 or so squares to make the appearance better. I'm not saying that this would be the final way to do it, but it would IMO be sufficient for a good long time.

However, there is a big flaw in the autogenerated provinces idea that I thought of shortly after my previous post. It would work fine for a single civ, but one could easily imagine collisions between two civs trying to populate the same hunk 'o' real estate. And having a minute number of settlers of the first civ to get there being able to have a lock on a big hunk of territory is just too silly to contemplate. (If troops are 'holding the fort' then it seems reasonable.) For now anyway your idea seems a good way to proceed since I've shot down my own favorite . I do think that once a province gets past a certain size that migrating people should start a new one. The size could be of order 20 squares or so for now.

I had always assumed that there would be certain limitations on province size based on transportation and communication technologies and infrastructure. But I suspect implementing those restrictions, provided there's sufficient agreement that they're the way to go, are best left for another day. I will provide a reference to where it's discussed if there's interest.

My statement about missing opportunities with square-by-square migration was meant to echo what I said to LGJ on the topic like six posts above. Specifically, I don't think you can do square-by-square migrations using just adjacent squares, and get anything like real-life behavior. By-square would mean migrations would stop any time you run into a strip of water, mountains, or desert. People are not that easily deterred. If migrations were handled by province-sized areas, then small intervening patches of "dead" area wouldn't shut things down.

	20-03-2002 13:50									#77
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quote: By-square would mean migrations would stop any time you run into a strip of water, mountains, or desert.

Well i should have expressed that mountains and deserts, etc would not be counted as far as moving speed in the sence they are 'barriers'. They might not have as many people living there, but that would be true even in a province-based approach.

Rivers i forgot about, but istead of acting as barriers, they should act as highways (they traditionally have) so in that case i'd say the population can move up/down river 2 squares.

I already explainded about oceans and seas.

	21-03-2002 01:56									#78
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In general I agree with LGJ's approach (mainly because it is the same as mine).

There seems to be a difference of opinion on the place of provinces. I know, Mark, that you are busy hard coding the economics model with provinces as a specific kind of ecomony. The administration system is general, and doesn't give any special values to the second level up (the one above map-square) because I always had the notion that a player (or AI) might find it useful to add districts, below provinces, or vice-royalties, above provinces. So I tried to make it general. I sort of assumed that the same approach would follow in the economics.

Anyway, I still regard provinces as an administrative decision, made by each civilization, not as enduring entities outside the control of the player or the AI. So, if a player chooses to have a single province for their whole civilization, they can do so. Alternatively, if they want each province to be a single square, they can do so.

As far as the colonization by diffusion is concerned, I would suggest that newly colonized squares are in a position where they have no actual administration (they can be called, collectively, the Marches), until the owning civilization assigns them to a province. Such squares are notionally "owned" bu do not contribute in any way to the economy of the civilization, until claimed.

I have been consistently against the notion of hard-wired provinces.

Another factor is that there should be migration within a civilization also. If some people from a square leave to colonize the next square, some of the loss would be compensated by movement from deeper in the civilization.

It is pretty important to realize that the population don't give a damn about what province they are in, and their movements will not be influenced by that. Since population is recorded at the square level, all this kind of migration is very easily handled.

As far as crossing rivers, mountains, deserts or seas, one must interpret the expression "adjacent square" in a relaxed fashion. It will be extremely easy to develop an algorithm to cover this.

Cheers

	21-03-2002 06:21									#79
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Hi Gary:

Well, we do seem to get ourselves into quite a variety of interesting circumstances between our respective assumptions and preferences...

quote: Originally posted by Gary Thomas In general I agree with LGJ's approach (mainly because it is the same as mine).

And I disagree with him for similar reasons. And LGJ, I can just wonder who you'll side with!

quote: There seems to be a difference of opinion on the place of provinces. I know, Mark, that you are busy hard coding the economics model with provinces as a specific kind of ecomony. The administration system is general, and doesn't give any special values to the second level up (the one above map-square) because I always had the notion that a player (or AI) might find it useful to add districts, below provinces, or vice-royalties, above provinces. So I tried to make it general. I sort of assumed that the same approach would follow in the economics.

Well, I don't know of a good solution for this. But I am now seriously thinking of just keeping the economy at the MapSquare level. By the time we have all the infrastructure kept track of at the square level the advantages of handling things by province are less than I originally thought. The only thing I might do at a higher level (according to my thinking of this moment) might be merchants. Perhaps to handle the general problem of administrations not knowing what things are handled at what level, one could have a set of globals that say what levels which things are handled at. These could be read in from xml. I have to admit that having the models being able to do what they need to do takes precedence in my mind over keeping the administration stuff super-flexible.

quote: Anyway, I still regard provinces as an administrative decision, made by each civilization, not as enduring entities outside the control of the player or the AI. So, if a player chooses to have a single province for their whole civilization, they can do so. Alternatively, if they want each province to be a single square, they can do so.

Yep, and I still regard them otherwise. I think the "a single province for their whole civilization" idea that you want is undesirable for the following reasons:

1. If the economy is at province level then in the case of the old British Empire the productive capacity of a globe-spanning power could be used to flash-build tons of military units in, say, Auckland. This is also true if we have a square-level economy and military unit production is pooled at the province level as it is now.

2. The government model has embedded in it the assumption that there will be my sort of province AFAIK. All this talk of distance of provinces from the capital in the main govt doc, section VIII. "Administrating the Empire". If there is one whole-civ province that won't work. I think there are other issues for the govt model, but I'm running out of time, so I'll let Rodrigo speak for himself.

3. I think that unless Nothing in the game is actually done at the province level, there will be varying game results by size of the province that we would need special rules to work around with your approach. Whereas at least with a defined lid on province size (that could change with technology and infrastructure) there would be a limit on the damage that needed to be controlled.

The single-square limit on the small side for provinces doesn't bother me. Its the single-province Mongol Empire that makes me shudder. All the above said, to reduce micro-management I wouldn't have the province size cut-off be too sharp. But past the limit I think small negative effects (the governor is 300km away) should start to accumulate, meaning the player would probably Eventually want to split a province that "too big" (too big by my definition of course).

quote: As far as the colonization by diffusion is concerned, I would suggest that newly colonized squares are in a position where they have no actual administration (they can be called, collectively, the Marches), until the owning civilization assigns them to a province. Such squares are notionally "owned" bu do not contribute in any way to the economy of the civilization, until claimed.

Thanks for trying to be accomodating, but I liked your earlier suggestion better. Seems to me this approach just will require moderately large amounts of micro-management. But I'm not against trying it, since it wouldn't take much to give it a test run and see what everyone including me thinks. And the micro-management wouldn't be too bad for anything we're likely to do in the future.

quote: I have been consistently against the notion of hard-wired provinces.

Well, I don't have much desire for them either... I was just trying to save a pet idea!

quote: It is pretty important to realize that the population don't give a damn about what province they are in, and their movements will not be influenced by that. Since population is recorded at the square level, all this kind of migration is very easily handled.

I agree with this at a theoretical level. But am worried about clock cycles etc. But plenty of time for that later.

quote: As far as crossing rivers, mountains, deserts or seas, one must interpret the expression "adjacent square" in a relaxed fashion. It will be extremely easy to develop an algorithm to cover this.

Agreed, but that is where a combinatorial explosion can begin... But since you're doing the work, go ahead and give it a shot. We can always change it later if it doesn't work out.

	21-03-2002 08:42									#80
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Um i'm not aware that we ever fully decided what a 'province' stands for other than groups of squares, ie simple adminstrative tools to reduce clockcycles or actual political devisions that compete wiith each other.

	21-03-2002 21:52									#81
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Hi LGJ:

Yep, looks like we need to have a detailed discussion on what provinces are and aren't at some point. I'll start a dedicated thread that can give the topic the discussion it needs sometime soon. IMO we don't need the detailed spec until after D7 though.

I don't understand what you're saying about provinces competing with each other. In what sense? Like in a feudal civ the different provinces in a civ could be hostile to one another or what?

	22-03-2002 02:54									#82
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quote: Well, I don't know of a good solution for this. But I am now seriously thinking of just keeping the economy at the MapSquare level. By the time we have all the infrastructure kept track of at the square level the advantages of handling things by province are less than I originally thought.

I agree with this approach, provided micromanagement is minimized. In particular, I do not feel that government orders are properly part of the economic model. Implementing them may be, but issuing them is a government matter, imposed on the economy.

quote: I think the "a single province for their whole civilization" idea that you want is undesirable

I don't want that, but it should be an available option. There ought, however, to be a parameter indicating the dispersion of every province, with crippling handicaps if it gets too big. If you say "no, you cannot have your whole civilization in one province" you invite the reply "but I only have one square, how do I split it?".

On the other hand, I feel that too small a province should also be handicapped by a lack of scale advantage, as well as the cost of multiple administrations.

You note here that I use the word "handicap", not "forbidden".

quote: But am worried about clock cycles etc.

Wow, is that out of character!

On another tack (the implementation approaches) we have to decide on what creates a city, as opposed to an inhabited square.

Cheers

	22-03-2002 05:48									#83
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Hi Gary:

Looks like we're more in agreement than it appeared. How do we always manage to do this to ourselves?

I have sent you an email on the economic orders issue.

I will defer discussion of cities until I launch a "provinces and cities" thread sometime this weekend. More fun issues... what makes a city is a tough one.

	22-03-2002 06:47									#84
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quote: Originally posted by Mark_Everson I don't understand what you're saying about provinces competing with each other. In what sense? Like in a feudal civ the different provinces in a civ could be hostile to one another or what?

Well that is one sense and one of the most extreme competitions, but there can be more subtle types for ecomics that are used today. Generally these aren't veiwed as bad as ecomic competition with other nations though.

	26-03-2002 07:48									#85
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We have a minor problem with settler units. The system only allows military units which are part of the command structure. So a settler unit will have to have a command as part of the military structure all the way up to the high command.

Unfortunately this will be required of all units. There is no provision in the code for any mobile units to exist outside the military model.

This leads to a situation where a choice must be made among the following options:

1. Make the settler a military unit.

2. Provide the infrastructure in the program for non-military mobile units (a lot of work).

3. Teleport the settler.

As they say, choose your pick.

Cheers

	26-03-2002 08:06									#86
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1, which was the way I wanted to go in the first place

Settlers, since they would be mil units could have defense and even small attack value. Certainly settlers in the US had non-neglibile attack strength. Also settlers being a mil unit has other benefits. To escort settlers, you'd just make 'em part of a TF with one or more 'normal' mil units.

If you feel strongly that 1 is bad long-term, then 3 is my next choice. The diffusion stuff will be doing that anyway.

Last edited by Mark_Everson on 26-03-2002 at 08:18

	26-03-2002 08:06									#87
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Unless only nomads are allowed them, definatly not A.

What do you mean by #3?

	27-03-2002 01:53									#88
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quote: Settlers, since they would be mil units could have defense and even small attack value. Certainly settlers in the US had non-neglibile attack strength. Also settlers being a mil unit has other benefits. To escort settlers, you'd just make 'em part of a TF with one or more 'normal' mil units.

I assumed that the settler units would be armed. The settlers in the US were hugely smaller than a Clash unit of around 5000 people. For our purposes they are better simulated by option 3, since the settlement took place as a very large number of quite small units, this, in effect, is diffusion.

I do not know of any case where a unit sized (5000) settling effort was ever intercepted or destroyed en route, so providing for that possibility is pointless.

My preference is for option 3, on the grounds of reducing non-productive micromanagement.

quote: Unless only nomads are allowed them, definatly not A.

What do you mean by A?

quote: What do you mean by #3?

The teleport option just plants the settlers in the target square at some point after the decision to build the colony is made. There is no actual unit to move.

On another related topic, as far as I am aware, every directed colonization of this type involved founding a city at the site of the colony. I propose that we do that also.

Cheers

	27-03-2002 02:47									#89
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Hi Gary:

quote: Originally posted by Gary Thomas My preference is for option 3, on the grounds of reducing non-productive micromanagement.

But didn't you Need a settler unit for your preferred kind of start? And also, on keeping things Simpler, I think a Settler approach (just for initial settling of a province) will be both more gratifying for the player, and more intuitive. I think this is the sort of micromanagement that people actually Like (provided it doesn't need to be done more than a score of times in a given game). But since you're doing the work if 3 is where you really want to go, I've got no problem with it.

quote: On another related topic, as far as I am aware, every directed colonization of this type involved founding a city at the site of the colony. I propose that we do that also.

Well, there are cities and there are Cities. As I put forward in the other thread, only big cities should count on the Clash scale, or every square on the Italian peninsula would be a city... But I have no objection with trying it your way and seeing how it turns out. Certainly gives us a way to create cities with minimal overhead.

	27-03-2002 03:54									#90
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quote: But didn't you Need a settler unit for your preferred kind of start?

I had forgotten that. However, thinking about it, the only reason for having the settler at the start is to explore a few squares before deciding where to plant the colony. This could be done in other ways, but then we get other problems (delayed colonization will have to be provided).

I have been working on an extension to the Order system, called a SpecialAbility interface. This will allow a unit which has special abilities to do things like colonize. This is pretty much in operation, so I will go with option 1.

Laurent: I would like to use this system with engineers too. This will enable a gui to give "build" or "fortify" orders. It will also allow some elements (like those in Roman legions) to have the ability to build a camp.

Cheers