29-03-2003 00:00									#1
	Modelling Geographic History Enter the AD-FREE zone

How do the people here do so?

Let me elaborate. Throughout history, the situation a particular area of the globe faces changes over time. Egypt and Mesopotamia used to be breadbaskets of civilization, now they're little more than rivers running through desert with lots and lots of people.

Certainly modelling that sort of change is easy... lots of flood plains, not much production. Generally, the cities are huge, but become useless (at least production-wise) later in the game.

What about other situations? How do people represent those?
I'll give people a few examples to gnaw on: the Germanic dominance of the 19th century (Germany's population doubled, while France's stayed the same over the period of 40 or 50 years, making Germany much stronger during that time). The archaic portions of southern Italy (serfdom until 19th century), the near uselessness of most of Russia - you'd think with a country that big, it would be a superpower throughout history, but it wasn't for obvious reasons. How do you model this in Civ? The great production capability of Flanders and northern Italy, the economic and production might of Japan or Britain on a small island, etc.

There are many examples and these are just a few of them. I have my own ways of modelling these sorts of things, but I wanted to see how other people address these kinds of issues. What resources does an area have? What buildings are in the cities? What techs does the ruling civ have?

	05-04-2003 08:57									#2
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

Give Germany lots of wheat, and they will grow fast when they build hospitals (right around 19th century).

Southern Italy - give them lots of plains and/or non-bonus grasslands, and no coal. It will be difficult for Italy to build railroads and increase production, like in real life.

Russia - make a lot of it tundra and tundra forest. This isn't 100% accurate, but close enough. Keep the bonus game down too.

Flanders and northern Italy - some hills, cows, iron, and bonus grasslands should do the trick.

If you were making a scenario, you could give western Europe railroads between all the major cities and lots of improvements, and roads on every radius square. Then give eatern Europe only a few major railroads, and don't road every square. Also, leave out improvements such as the Bank and University in the smaller cities.