Natives (aka. Minor Civs, Barbarians, etc.)

[alms66]

Originally posted by Lord God Jinnai
Well that is good to know, though still, this new civ won't have much in the way of infrastucture. Only those nations that had such were able to really operate to any good degree in the red for long without collapsing.
Yes and no. This should be modeled carefully because if the society is actually absorbed culturally into the expanding civ, such expansions aren't really biewed as such and may even be welcomed if they bring about an increase in the standard of living.

However if its just moving in and using the land while not really doing well at integrating the population into the system, that's another story.

Settlers moving into a tile would model the settling part, while the cultural assimilation code (which isn't there yet) would handle how well the Natives are assimilated.

Originally posted by Lord God Jinnai
I think you missed my point. My point was, just like a your non-barbaric natin, you don't have diplomacy with all his indivisual tiles, except perhaps under extreme circumstances, ie he's a conderation of fedual lord, so the same goes with these groups, if you intend to model them as multi-squared entitiies rather than single-squared ones.

Actually I intended to model Natives as one one giant entity that covered every square not owned by a civ. Laurent was the one who brought up the idea of breaking them down into smaller chunks. It would probably be better to do so, but it's in no way required IMO.

Originally posted by Lord God Jinnai
Agriculture of what level? Even those that don't use it eventually learn of it, and thus some knowlege of what it is. Some use it, but not as a primary source of food.

Well, like I said, this was for Empires In Time not Clash so...
What was required was Agriculture itself. Agriculture was a "breakthrough" technology. Breakthrough techs were on a tree similar to Civ's tech tree and were aquired by a direct result of education levels (plus the other variables I mentioned before - but EL was the primary force in the equation). Each breakthrough tech had a set of "skill techs" with it. Once you discoverd the breakthrough, your skills in the skill techs improved and were what the player could directly manipulate (to a degree), whereas breakthroughs were much more random and completely out of the player's control (not quite true but it's close enough for this explanation).

For example, Gunpowder was a breakthrough tech with associated skill techs such as "guns", and "cannons". Once Gunpowder was discovered, it never improved (again, not entirely true, but true enough for the explanation) - but the skill techs did. Guns for example would start with flintlocks and go all the way to machine guns.

Civs had a huge advantage over Natives technologically. They would start with Agriculture, whereas Natives didn't. This meant that, since Agriculture was a prerequisite for nearly everything else, by the time the Natives aquired it, they were certain to be behind technologically - but that didn't mean that they couldn't rapidly catch up.

I should also note that breakthrough techs were not researched by every civ. Once the breakthrough is discovered it is removed from the global list and at that point the only way for the tech to be learned is by diffusion. For example, using gunpowder again, once it was discovered in china, it wasn't also discovered in egypt, france and russia, it was discovered once in china and it's use spread from there. And finally I should also say that the diffusion rate of a technology was dependent on the tech itself as well as your education level (and all those other variables).

[demipomme]

If the natives are all lumped into one civ, how do you represent to technological differences that existed across the "non-civilised" world? How would you decide which squares contributed to unit production - surely it can't be the whole world?

To avoid diplomacy with 101 one-tile-civs you could just say something like "internal turmoil within this small and insignificant tribe makes negnotiation useless".

[alms66]

Originally posted by demipomme
If the natives are all lumped into one civ, how do you represent to technological differences that existed across the "non-civilised" world? How would you decide which squares contributed to unit production - surely it can't be the whole world?

Which is why, unless Clash changes its tech system, it is probably best to do as Laurent suggested and break them down into smaller groups.

Originally posted by demipomme
To avoid diplomacy with 101 one-tile-civs you could just say something like "internal turmoil within this small and insignificant tribe makes negnotiation useless".

Well that's certainly an easy way out of diplomacy, but you still have to store thousands of one-tile civs.

[Mark_Everson]

Probably the best way to model the "natives" would be to have civs that are ethnically homogeneous areas that are about province-sized (10-25 sq). They would be basically feudal with little-to-no central control. Once we have those modeled for "normal" civs, then natives will just be low-tech versions of those. Diplomacy with decentralized feudal civs will be limited in type since there is nobody to really enforce any deal.

What do people think?

[alms66]

That's certainly the easiest way to handle it.

[Lord God Jinnai]

That seems okay, depending on how we model feudal states that is.

[yellowdaddy]

Totally opposed to "Natives" "Minor Civs" and suchlike, for the reasons I've cited at length previously:

here, and
here.

Although what I babbled on about then was a little unclear, the basic idea of having all populations start like a mixed bag of seeds scattered on the ground and then allowing them to grow to suit their environment into a myriad of "civs" or "states" with different kinds of and levels of connection with each other.

The whole idea of fixing major and minor civs in whatever permutation you like seems neither interesting nor progressive/original.
It also remains to be seen whether such a fixed hierarchy can work with all the other aspects of the game like the social and riot models.

I don't see any logic in populating all or most of the squares at 10,000BC. Population existence and density (another thing missed) depends largely on geography: terrain and climate.
More live near water sources (which also attract grazing animals and facilitate agriculture), less in dense forests and jungles.

A simple rule of at 10,000BC all populations having to live within 1 tile of a source of freshwater seems likely to produce much more logical and organic population dispersal; the larger the freshwater source, the greater the population density.
As all of us must know, civilisation starts along riverbanks; thus those who live furthest from freshwater (particularly major freshwater sources) must lag behind technologically - these are your "natives" and "minor civs" - populations whose choice of habitat restricts and/or disincentivises them from developing... much like pacific island peoples, desert nomads, forest dwellers.

Of course, the rules for population density can change as technology allows new sources of food and economy security.

This whole idea of "natives", second-class civs seems totally out of sync with everything in the game.
It may seem "easy", but it does not mirror reality, and seems at odds with the social model - do you intend to develop a seperate social model for "natives"?! I doubt it. Drop this "natives" idea, and treat them as populations who for specific, indentifiable, logical reasons fall behind technologically.

[btw, as a graphics artist, I still occasionally pop in, waiting to see the right time to start doing serious work... ironically, I plan to wait until the future when more of the nuts and bolts of the game look sorted out before starting my contribution the cosmetic side! - in the words of Mark "it's too early to think about that right now" ]

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by yellowdaddy
Totally opposed to "Natives" "Minor Civs" and suchlike, for the reasons I've cited at length previously

Nonetheless, as a practical matter, I don't think that we can support thousands of full-fledged civs in terms of processing power and possibly interface as well. YMMV.

It also remains to be seen whether such a fixed hierarchy can work with all the other aspects of the game like the social and riot models.

I think that this is ok, but admit that I haven't thought about it at length. there might be issues.

I don't see any logic in populating all or most of the squares at 10,000BC.

But it's realistic, if not at 10k BC certainly by 5k or so. Most squares other than desert or tundra should have at least 1k people even at pasoralist/nomad population densities. However, populated vs unpopulated squares is something that the scenario designer has control over, so if you don't like our assumption you can change it.

This whole idea of "natives", second-class civs seems totally out of sync with everything in the game.
It may seem "easy", but it does not mirror reality...

See my point above. As processing power increases we may well do as you suggest.

btw, as a graphics artist, I still occasionally pop in, waiting to see the right time to start doing serious work... ironically, I plan to wait until the future when more of the nuts and bolts of the game look sorted out before starting my contribution the cosmetic side! - in the words of Mark "it's too early to think about that right now" ]

Yeah, well, with Laurent the only one doing coding things aren't moving as fast as we'd like. C'est la vie. I hope we can get to the point where we can abuse your skills.

[yellowdaddy]

Nonetheless, as a practical matter, I don't think that we can support thousands of full-fledged civs in terms of processing power and possibly interface as well. YMMV.

My proposal doesn't include support for thousands of fully-fledged civs; my number (66 the initial maximum number rising to an absolute (but unlikely) maximum allowable of 66 x 6 = 396), there are about 220 countries in the world today, so whilst I may be after as big a map as the laws of physics permit, my desires for civ/eg/country numbers are more modest.

Civs can die out, or fade away through conquest or absorbtion.

I remember very well our chats about processing limits, how many civs are you envisaging?

But it's realistic, if not at 10k BC certainly by 5k or so. Most squares other than desert or tundra should have at least 1k people even at pasoralist/nomad population densities. However, populated vs unpopulated squares is something that the scenario designer has control over, so if you don't like our assumption you can change it.

World Population Estimate

This source cites a population of about 4m at 10,000BC
Most of these people live within walking distance of freshwater, mainly large rivers.

I don't know the size of your squares (and I know it depends on scenario, and that you might not have regular sized and shaped tiles), but if from recollection you have squares of 200km x 200km in the Dawn scenario, and its a maximum of 64 x 128 squares (or 128 x 256 if 100km squares), and divide 4m by (64 x 128), that's 2,048 people per "square".

However, you need to take density and geography into account.
Celtic tribes in pre-christian Europe range between 5,000-10,000 or maybe up to 20,000; so I'll take 10,000 as a starting population - bearing in mind Catal Huyuk was about 8,000 people as well.

( if you start off with 66 tribes, that's about 60,000 per "tribe" - a bit too big; in fact a more realistic number would be 400 x 10,000, which matches the limit of 396 I proposed.)

So imagining you start off with one tribe originating in one tile, of your total 8,192 tiles, 7,792 or 79% are uninhabited.

You want to stick a 1000 troglodytes in each square as a minimum? that's 8.2 million people - double the world population!

You could spread your original populace around a bit, but the sums don't add up - even if you reduce all civs to 1,000 as an implausible starting population.

An assumption, yes; a realistic one? prove it!

I realise what I'm debating is the Dawn scenario, but it clearly has implications for the game in general, about how you are modeling population dispersal and growth - dismissing it as a scenario I can edit seems a bit evasive.

By the time the game looks ready for graphics, I'll have finished my Engineering degree, and might be able to help programme!

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by yellowdaddy
My proposal doesn't include support for thousands of fully-fledged civs; my number (66 the initial maximum number rising to an absolute (but unlikely) maximum allowable of 66 x 6 = 396), there are about 220 countries in the world today, so whilst I may be after as big a map as the laws of physics permit, my desires for civ/eg/country numbers are more modest.

I thought that you wanted a civ for each "native" group of people like the celts. In early days I'd estimate that's at least 1000 worldwide. FE the US, one modern country, probably had at least 50 reasonbly distinct native populations before Europeans showed up. (of course this is much later than 10kBC because of the relatively late arrival of humans in the new world.

A number like 66 seems reasonably feasible. However the big test scenario that Alms did that had like 100 civs ran very slowly. However there were lots of people all over the place in it, so the slowness could also be due to the number of populated squares in addition to the number of civs.

I remember very well our chats about processing limits, how many civs are you envisaging?

50 fairly early in the game seems reasonable. Maybe 10-20 in the later stages. This is just a shoot-from-the-hip estimate. I'm not terribly focused on these sort of decisions at this point since they are IMO better addressed when the timing costs of different game elements are better known.

This source cites a population of about 4m at 10,000BC

and it shows about 10x as many by 4000BC which is the earliest date I'm really considering in my comments. But the system should be able to accomodate 10kBC, admittedly with less population. Even agriculture wasn't all that widely spread then IIRC, so much lower populations for that time period make sense.

BTW do you have the article that refereced the link that you cited? I went to the web site, but coudn't figure where the original article was. I'm also interested in the estimates of historical GDP per capita that he cites.

[edit - add last para]

[yellowdaddy]

The reason why I boiled it down to 66 came from research I did into EGs based on language families, that's my criteria, so one doesn't need to guess, one just needs to decide what limits on the number of Civs one wants, and then one can look at language family trees to find a level that complies with that limit.
I may seem a little fixated on languages, the reason is because I see it as the most effective and fair (objective) way of deciding who one wants to include. (this is for the Dawn scenario, but the way you model the Dawn scenario effects all scenarios in my view).

You don't have Americans, French and British in this system, because they are nations rather than peoples or tribes - the third phase of the process.
This means that you can have two nations which are from the same People or Trie (they share the same EG).

The majority are basically accurate, some squeezed into the pattern for the sake of making it regular and thus easier to fit into the game, a minority are unrelated groups stuck together because it seems plausible to do so, and so that they are at least represented in the game, a few are made up or almost made up using as much relevant data as possible.

So it came down from an initial 72 to 66 ethnolinguistic groups, which I assigned the term "people" to. Then each could split into any of a group of six names for the second phase "tribes".

The second of those links above has the full set of permutations, but a summary of the only bit of my current list posted here goes:

Asians: 16
Sumerians (includes Elamites, and some semi-made-up ones)
Semites (Akkadians, Hebrews, Arabians, Phoenicians, Ethiopians)
Persians (include Scythians/Sarmatians, Kassites, Afghans, Kurds)
Indians (aka Aryans)
Dravidians (southern Indian aboriginies)
Tokharians (an Indo-European group)
Turks (and related peoples of western central Asia
Mongols (and related peoples of eastern central Asia)
Tibetans (include Chinese, Burmese and Tibetans)
Hmong (Miao-Yao/Hmong-Mien)
Mons (includes Khmers)
Tai (Thais)
Malayos (Austronesians - Asia-Pacific islanders)
Paiwans (Taiwanese aborigines, other half of Austronesian fam.)
Kija (includes Japs and Koreans)
Chukchi (a group of unrelated east Siberian people, includes Ainu)

The rest, you can imagine, but every race and continent has a contingent.

Amerindians are boiled down into far less than 50 groups, as I'm defining a single group as a language family, so lots of famous ones get subsumed into one group, and can only pop up in later stages as "tribes" or "nations".

I think it's good to have a rough guide anyway.

The links

The article

This one looks interesting too

You've got 4m at 4,000BC, and 19,000 at 10,000BC - a reverse extrapolation from UN figures.

Interestingly it states that a population of a 1,000 is not enough for a sustainable population (i assume it refers to non-agricultural peoples), I think about 5,000 would be the natural minimum for the first civs.; 150 is certainly the absolute minimum for any hunter-gatherer tribe.

I've got a small book called "The Economic History of World Population" by Carlo M. Cipolla, which seems perhaps a little useful.

I don't world population growth was much more than about 1.2% from antiquity to the industrial revolution (or c.1750 anyway), so as you fellers say "do the maths"

It seems that the idea of having every square populated puts both a drain on performance for no justifiable benefit, and does not appear to have any basis in history as having happened; it doesn't make any sense from an economics POV either. Population density and existence is surely a function of habitat and food sources.

I suppose you can have a thing (in the early stages only?) where there is a critical mass point of 5,000, which if a civ drops below it, it disperses (becomes extinct, and people revert to tribal groups of 150-ish), and likewise, a new civ can appear if there is a plausible stimulus for population growth - i.e. a fertile riverside/lakeside location.
Civs should crowd around freshwater areas competing like weeds, not suddenly appearing up a mountain, by the sea, or in a desert... so you have some real and realistic Darwinian dogfighting for survival and control of resources.

These are not "minor Civs" though, this a fluid, not a restricted stratified system.
Tribal peoples and nomads like bushmen still have to originate in fertile areas, but get forced out by more successful peoples, and are forced to live in these small groups (c. 150) in harsher environments where competition for resources is less or almost nonexistent; if they came across spare fertile (riparian) land, then they can act like a settler and sprout a new Civ (I suppose as long as the max is not exceeded). (I s'pose by implication this means reducing the number of civs as the game progresses equates to "tribalising" other civs - and occupying/controlling as much fertile land as possible.)

A "minor civ" seems like a less successful Civ, but one that could still acquire technology and pose a threat - so you can't really seperate them from other Civs, especially when you look at how the riot model is going to work.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by yellowdaddy
The reason why I boiled it down to 66 came from research I did into EGs based on language families
(snip)
I think it's good to have a rough guide anyway.

Sounds not unreasonable. I'm sure that we could use some of these. I expect however that many will want civs named for historically successful countries.

Thanks for the links.

It seems that the idea of having every square populated puts both a drain on performance for no justifiable benefit,

I mostly agree with you here, just on a practical basis. The level of population in deserts, high mountains, and tundra especially are probably not really worth modeling.

...and does not appear to have any basis in history as having happened; it doesn't make any sense from an economics POV either. Population density and existence is surely a function of habitat and food sources.

I disagree but don't really want to argue in depth about it. Several sources that I've looked at said there were people virtually everywhere that was marginally habitable at least by 1000BC. My real interest in playing starts about then, when you can start having decent-sized civs. That difference in fundamental viewpoint may explain some of our differences in preferred stated approaches (before reality of clock cycles and such comes in).

Because things run slow for large maps and we can better spend the clock cycles elsewhere I don't mind sacrificing areas that have low levels of population by setting them to zero. Lets see what others think.

I don't think that there is any problem with "minor civs" and the riot model. If there is we'll quickly see that when we get to that point. I would prefer not to need minor civs in the design. So far it's done the way that you prefer though, in the sense that all civs are "full" civs, and it may well stay that way.

[yellowdaddy]

Sounds not unreasonable. I'm sure that we could use some of these. I expect however that many will want civs named for historically successful countries.

As stated, I think it could be boiled further to your 50 - or any number (especially because all the Indo-Europeans should actually be in one group instead of seperated into Celts, Italics and Slavs etc...), the point is less about the names and numbers of the Civs (though I want to see them as a default setting), but more to look at how civs behave to model them in a nicer more realistic way than in other similar games.
The best way I can think of of doing this is to model on the basis of playing on a map of Earth.

I also wanted to see (using language as an objective way of categorising the peoples of the world) what proportions of populations from different racial phenotypes looked like, and how many exist - this relates to that face designer which has loads of little facial elements so you can generate faces that "look right".

This approach, I think, helps to build a sound "chassis" upon which you can place any bodywork you like - including scenarios and games with historically success countries, (as well as insert a rande of engines - to beat the metaphor to death!).

- - -

I appreciate entirely that you want to think of the "consumer" - i.e. mostly people from developed countries, especially yours; but I reckon most people who play are going to be interested in countries other than their own when playing the Dawn scenario, as well as when playing specific scenarios like the Punic Wars or the English or American Civil Wars etc...

- - -

I notice that you changed the date from 10,000BC to 4,000BC to 1,000BC, which probably would mean that more of the Earth could have small populations, but what about population density?
I won't go into it right now, but the following sources look helpful:

You might find this interesting - it comes from the same source I gave you earlier.

(Agriculture & population dispersal)

This PDF looks like a great source about population density and civilisation - some good economic data for you, and not too wordy, and has pop data which match the DeLong graph.

Density looks like 10-30/sq km from Bronze Age to Industrial Revolution - looking at the figures for Egypt and contrastind Chinese provinces, it looks like around the rivers pop density is around 100/sq km - roughly ten times the probable non-riparian population.


Can I see the sources that lead you to believe that most of the world was inhabited by 1,000BC?

---

When I talk about these "non-civ" pops, I imagine pops of 150-4,500, and of nomadic or semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers - behaving a bit like units.
If they behave as units, does that take pressure off the game running speed?

Who thinks the game "needs" minor civs? and why?

That difference in fundamental viewpoint may explain some of our differences in preferred stated approaches

I don't think we disagree that much - I want to play scenarios from all periods.
What I do want to see is a more "liquid" game that has enough simulation in it to make the AI more sophisticated, and make playing it a bit more than just a race through the tech tree to acquire military technology to obliterate the other civs - that aspect of Civ I found boring, because it was too predictable.

I like the internal struggle potential of Clash - as I also liked it in "Civilisation" when a barbarian Civ could appear from overthrowing part of your empire, it creates interesting tension, hence the idea of all civs being equal - and allowing "hunter-gather" or "-ised" Civs to suddenly sprout into new Civs or more modern guerilla movements.

But yes, we do differ in that I find human simulation aspects to the game more interesting than you probably do; I think that they will make growing your Civ and conquering other Civs more interesting, because of the less predictable results that can make the game more of a challenge than Civ or AoE.

- - -


So in summary:

No to "minor civs", and yes to Civs turning into primitive "hunter-gatherer units" (HGU) [rather like a combination of Civ's "Barbarian" and "Settler" units] when they drop below a certain population level.
You can have two types/sizes:
- large HGU - maybe 500-5000 semi-nomadic subsistence farmers (more like the "natives" you mention); and
- small HGU - 0-500 (can become nomads/bushmen/gypsies)

and these HGUs can sprout into fully blown Civs if conditions allow, and their population exceeds 5000?

This means that when you conquer a Civ, it spawns HGUs, and you have to destroy all these HGUs in order to prevent the Civ ever from making a comeback.

these (for want of a better name) HGUs could also behave as "criminals/bandits/guerillas" as you might expect.

They can act in a territorial way if large enough, but it doesn't seem plausible that you would have every or most game tiles (even fertile ones) populated with them.

[LDiCesare]

First of all, I'm not clear what the best way to handle areas of low population is, independent of computing power.
Units all need a civ to which they belong. That civ may not be full-fledged, but will units of a given civ require some processing power in order to store their knowledge of the world, plans to do something, etc. The more separate units of distinct ethos the more power needed. Currently, the time spent is about equal between ai processing and the economy, which depends only on populated squares, while the former depends on number of task forces (and of civs to a lesser extent).

This means that when you conquer a Civ, it spawns HGUs, and you have to destroy all these HGUs in order to prevent the Civ ever from making a comeback.

Currently, you can get units of that civ created by the riot model. I'd have to allow them a "Migrate" order so they would take settlers with them and move away rather than try to conquer the square. This order is available to the player but the ai doesn't use it yet. It could also be used to regroup units and people in one place (might help simulate the creation of the Israel state).

[yellowdaddy]

First of all, I'm not clear what the best way to handle areas of low population is, independent of computing power.

Doesn't the economy model have population density as well?

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

Units all need a civ to which they belong. That civ may not be full-fledged, but will units of a given civ require some processing power in order to store their knowledge of the world, plans to do something, etc. The more separate units of distinct ethos the more power needed. Currently, the time spent is about equal between ai processing and the economy, which depends only on populated squares, while the former depends on number of task forces (and of civs to a lesser extent).

If we set a working maximum number of civs at 50, and if we include the possibility for some of these Civs to exist as HGUs ("stateless" civs), then surely it can work?

Given that a game map seems unlikely to exceed the biggest map on the latest Civ game (250x250 tiles I think?), you might not really want more than half of that maximum to be fully-fledged Civs most of the time, but you'd at least have the room to allow game events which lead to a sudden flourishing of nations (like a collapse of an empire event).

Do you know of a thread that details what data (and what size range of data) you need to store each Civ?

It sounds like a "HGU" Civ wouldn't take up too much processing power - they needn't have more than one unit (because they won't have task forces - or only 1 of 1 unit), and they could "lose" knowledge as part of the process of being "troglodised" - basically, could a Civ becoming a "Hunter-Gatherer Unit" equate to pressing the reset button on the Civ? (reducing them to the smallest amount of data required).

[LDiCesare]

Doesn't the economy model have population density as well?

Yes population matters for the econ, but is it worth running econ for a pop of 1000 in a square? And having a civ going along with it?

Do you know of a thread that details what data (and what size range of data) you need to store each Civ?

No. It depends a lot of what features we have. There's data that depend only on the squares (economy), or the amount of units. Then there's the number of provinces, which is likely to be higher when we have many civs than when we have few. Provinces don't hold much info.
Each civ has a world view (map knowledge) with explored/unexplored squares, seen units, ownership of the square, economic value of the square when last seen, and, in case of terraforming or whatnot, generally duplication of all possibly changing terrain data for every square.
The civ then has plans and a military ai, plus datai to handle its internal policies and government info, and various other stuff which are of fixed size.
The biggest points are the military and per square cost, the squares including squares not owned by the civ.
Then you have inter civ relations and diplomatic data, which is not yet coded. And you also have all tech levels.
It's pretty hard to give any accurate figure of what a civ costs, but mostly it costs by the fact it sees things around it, so its holding territory hardly affects its cost or size. Units and the amount of fog of war that's been lifted are what metter in terms of processing power/memory consumption..

[alms66]

Originally posted by yellowdaddy
If we set a working maximum number of civs at 50, and if we include the possibility for some of these Civs to exist as HGUs ("stateless" civs), then surely it can work?

IMO, your number of civs is rather low. I should note that I generally hinge my definition of 'civ' in these types of games as being equivilant to 'empire' or 'nation', if you use some other definition, you're sure to come up with different numbers. I would shoot for having a modern-day number of 200 civs (approximately the same as the number of real-world) nations. The number of 'civs' in that light, has only lessened over time, so it would not be inappropriate to consider that there were at least twice as many civs in the ancient world, or a minimum of 400 civs. If you want to include 'stateless' civs in that, you can probably safely double it again.

For EIT, Native populations was one way to reduce the number of civs, by filling the voids of the world with the danger of spawning a new, hostile civ - keeping the early civs from expanding too rapidly. Not to mention the fact that expansionist civs generally ran into native populations wherever they settled, in nearly all time periods, and then proceded to absorb them, so the idea of native populations is rather appropriate.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by yellowdaddy

Doesn't the economy model have population density as well?

Yes, well actually it just has total population in the square. The only breakpoint right now for processing power is zero population. As the econ model exists a 50-person square takes the same comp resources as a 5,000,000 population square.

Do you know of a thread that details what data (and what size range of data) you need to store each Civ?

No. But it is the clock cycles used for AI and econ that is the limiting factor, rather than data per se. Once we get diplomacy and diplomatic AI fully functioning I anticipate that that will also be a clock cycle hog.

It sounds like a "HGU" Civ wouldn't take up too much processing power

It certainly could be done in a cycle-lite way. How much coding it would take to make them work with the rest of the system, I don't know. We obviously need to compare how fun HGUs are for the work involved and the resources used vs some sort of minor civ approach. It may be, FE if civs without central control end up using much less processing power than centralized ones, that "natives" can just be full-fledged civs with little centralization. Like the Celts that gave the Romans so much trouble, especially early on.

[yellowdaddy]

Thanks for such helpful replies everyone.

LdC: Yes population matters for the econ, but is it worth running econ for a pop of 1000 in a square? And having a civ going along with it?

LdC: ...mostly it costs by the fact it sees things around it...

M_E: Yes, well actually it just has total population in the square. The only breakpoint right now for processing power is zero population. As the econ model exists a 50-person square takes the same comp resources as a 5,000,000 population square.

M_E: ...civs without central control end up using much less processing power than centralized ones, that "natives" can just be full-fledged civs with little centralization. Like the Celts that gave the Romans so much trouble, especially early on.

I should point out, I envisage two categories of acentralised "civs" - the HGU (Hunter-Gatherer Unit) and SFU (Subsistence Farmer Unit).
The idea is that you have HGU->SFU->CIV.


So the size or density of population makes litte difference with the economy model, because you have to have to allow a similar range of things for each civ or population to "see"?

Could you create more simple econ model that applies only to HGU/natives? - Subsistence Economy Model? and Hunter-Gatherer Economy Model? - I mean, what do you need to model in that?
Do you really need sectors for this kind of model? (unless you count witch-doctors as service sector, smithy as a mfg sector) They don't need sites of arable land for HG Economy, though they do for Subsistence Farming Economy; they don't build permanent farms or invest long-term; they don't build permanent buildings of any kind (ok, wooden semi-permanent shacks for the Subistent Farmers), they don't have provinces, they take only from the tile they live in; they don't really need productive capacity, because of the lack of any market for goods.
They fit in that empty box just above "Early Civilisations" on you table on the Econ Model page.

Therefore, could the solution lie in the division between real (settled) civs and primitive units (HGUs and SFUs) that don't permanently inhabit or "own" a tile?
i.e. the economic model only has to function for squares that contain a settled, civilised population; meaning that all other squares have a population of 0, but can contain HGUs and SFUs, who equate to having a populated square?

Do you catch my drift?

Imagining a Dawn Scenario, the first turn, starting with 20 civs and 30 HGUs. You have only 20 populated tiles (populated in terms of the various models: econ, soci, riot), the rest are completely empty, except for these HGU-Civs (limited to say 20,000 max per unit before they have to split into two or evolve into SFUs).

Could this solve the problem? You can have most of the squares of the game "populated", but populated by single-unit HGU/SFU-Civs, who don't require the same detailed modelling as a settled CIV.
Does this not actually simulate human history in a satisfactory way, whilst utilising memory efficiently?

As for fun factor, well, lots of irrational, unpredictable HGUs and SFUs could add to the challenge of the game, by spoiling the plans of settled civs. Couldn't you perhaps use this HGU model to model (as alluded to early) guerillas, bandits, pirates etc... ?

For EIT, Native populations was one way to reduce the number of civs, by filling the voids of the world with the danger of spawning a new, hostile civ - keeping the early civs from expanding too rapidly. Not to mention the fact that expansionist civs generally ran into native populations wherever they settled, in nearly all time periods, and then proceded to absorb them, so the idea of native populations is rather appropriate.

Maybe you could actually have a lot more "civs" in the game, by turning most of them into trogs? I want to see loads too (my number of 396), but I want to have a realistic view of what the hardware can do.