Where's all the farmers?

[DarkCloud]

What Dom?
I wasn't referring to that, I was just clarifying who posted what.
Sorry if I sounded as if I was insulting you or angry that you said "no one else contributed", I was merely noticing something that I should have responded to long ago.

[Dom Pedro II]

Don't worry, DarkCloud. I wasn't offended, and I didn't think you were mad. I was just apologizing for not giving credit where credit was due. Anyway, I haven't exactly generated the attention I was expecting from the new guys.

There is a lot of information covered here. My focus is on the rural population. I think migration and an agrarian populace is important. The rural population ties into many other issues in the game, so it would be good to get some reaction.

[Dom Pedro II]

Ok, I have more to add on how to accomplish the rural population migration. Each tile will be given a desirability ranking when the map is generated. That ranking is based on location (i.e. coastal not coastal). Having a river increases the tile's ranking. The type of terrain it is changes its ranking. If the tile has a resource which would provide a commodity, its value is increased, and the type of resource increases the ranking more.

So what does this mean? It means that after settling your first city, the rural population begins to appear. The tile with the highest ranking adjacent to the city will fill in first. That tile will have rural population of 1. Then the next hghest tile will fill in around the city until every square has been filled in (except ocean squares).

The population will then either increase in the higher tiles until they fill up and then into the lesser tiles or move out beyond the city limits depending on the tile rankings. The only thing that can't happen is that a tile can not gain have a population if there is no already occupied tile next to it. Every time a city increases in size, a population point is added to an already occupied square or an unoccupied square. The ranking system controls all of the movement so the AI does almost no thinking.