Domesticating Plants and Animals

[Janes]

I am new to this forum and I don't know if this has been discussed before but has anyone though of simulating the influence of domesticating various plants and animals? They have had a tremendous influence in the real world. For example the Americas "developed" less then the Old World in part because they lacked large animals to domesticate and turn into pack animals and plow pullers. This also led to them having less diseases in which to kill Europeans. So if anyone has already talked about this please tell me, if not I have some ideas.

[Guildmaster]

I actually disagree partly. Although the classic mesoamerican civilizations did lack beasts of burden (To plow fields, etc.) there was never a shortage of potential. Bison could have been domesticated by central plains tribes, Lamas were in fact used both as work animals and as transportation animals in South America, albeit not nearly as extensively as in Eurasia.
Even at the time of Aztec mexico, Maze was far superior to wheat in terms of yield to acre ratio and also overal crop yield ratio. However, it didn't provide complete nutrition, a problem remedied by the Mayans use of Lime in the preparation process.

There are a number of theories surrounding why the Americas didn't develop as thoroughly as the Eurasians. In the case of the Mayans whom were in fact far more advanced at AD800 than the rest of the world was at AD1400 in all fields but metallurgy, it's a matter of climate and terrain. You see, the soil is very poor in that region, it's mostly tropical forest. In order to have agriculture there, they practiced slash&burn, in which you cut down a certain area of growth and burn it. The ash enriches the soil enabling you to plant there. This is an excellent technique, except that you can't grow enough food to feed too many people or else the ground can't sustain it. When the Mayan cities grew too populous and the technique was expanded, people starved and etc etc.

The Europeans developped very rapidly more out of necessity than anything else.

So why then, did the Mesoamericans never develop metalworking? They had copper tools, they did have. But they never discovered the use of Iron, whereas Eurasians first started using it around 3000BC.
I think this is a diffusion issue. If you look at a map, and point out where the most advanced ancient civilizations were, you find the first ones popping up in the Fertile Crescent and in Egypt around 10,000 years ago. From there you see them develop in India, China, and in Mesoamerica with the Olmec and Zapotec peoples along with a few others. Well what are these areas? They are all "bottlenecks."

Diffusion occurs when people get together and exchange ideas. That's when technology spreads and ideas form. You converse with one person, you take their idea and add your own to it. Soon enough, problems are solved, inventions invented, etc. It is most logical to say therefore that the most advanced of early civilizations are places where the most number of people meet each other. Now picture a primitive world where there is no civilization, and people are all wandering around nomadic. Key word here is NOMADIC. Now with everyone moving around the most likely place for people (two or more tribes) to encounter each other at the same place at the same time is a place where movement is restricted. For example, look at Mesoamerica, you have a small strip of land in Panama that is barely 50 miles across. You basically have only two directions to go if you're travelling through here. Compare that to the Great Plains where you have a vast field that stretches for thousands of miles in all directions. Now you have two tribes moving around, which place are they most likely to meet each other?
They meet, and exchange ideas, etc. You see the same thing happen where Africa connects to Asia, the same thing happens around the Indus river where you have the Himalayas on one side and the Ocean on the other, and again in China movement is restricted by desert and mountains. In Peru movement was restricted by the Andes and you see countless small civs scattered in the valleys and such.

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How will you make it if you never even try?
-Macy Gray

[The Joker]

Hmm...

I disagree with you, Guildmaster.

The main reason (the only reason) why the non Euroasiatic civs never got anywhere was because of geografic things.

Euroasia had far more domesticable animals than the other continents. The only domesticable animal in the americas was the lama. The bison was not domesticable (this is why it has never been - not even in modern times) like most African animals are not domesticable. And since the main axis of the Americas is north south, and not east west like Euroasia, it was really hard to exchange technologies with other people living there. It was possible to move technologies about food production and animal domestication over 10,000 kms in Euroasia, from the fertile crescent to China in just a few 1000 years, since the climate all the way over there was pretty much identic. But on the other hand the changing climates made it impossible to transport lamas from Peru to Mesoamerica. The same with plants.

So basically the importance of animals and plants can not be underestimated, although you are obviously right about the bottleneck situations - that that is where civs emerge.


Janes:

The reason why I have some opposition towards implementing plants and animals are, that GGS should remain a game. And if we have animals and plants the abundance of these would be what decided who succeeded, and who never got anywhere. It would take the game out of the player's hands. Imagine playing a game on an earth map, and starting your civ in Australia! You would never be able to get anywhere. No domesticable animals, no plants. You would be stuck in the stone age forever. And that isn't much fun.

On the other hand I can see that implementing plants and animals in some way could increase realism, and maybe add new aspects to the game. So at this moment no decision is final. Therefore: Please, tell us about your ideas!

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"In America, first we take the sugar, then we take the power, then we take the women."
- Homer J. Simpson

GGS Website

[Janes]

Joker, I agree that the game could certainly lose a lot of its enjoyment if you could start in a position with no domesticatable species and little way to advance. What I was thinking is that instead of or in addition to a difficulty level you could have the option of chosing how many easy to use or already domesticated species you start out with. This would combine nicely with the idea of controlling your relative tech level that I saw elsewhere on this forum.

These next ideas on how to simulate it would require a lot of memory but I'm just brainstorming and I'll let the programers think about making it work. Possibly this simulation could be usely based on the disease model.

Each square would have a list of the major species inhabiting it. Each species could have a couple of major variables such has food yeild, other resource yeild(sheep wool, silk, ivory, etc.), disease carring, density, dependence on environment, ease of use by humans and breeding rate. Maybe there'd be another variable such as rideable so you could simulate horses.

This is sort of a side idea that would take more memory but it might be useful. You could have a small food chain that would allow for more realism, show the problems extinction causes, and to show the disruption of transporting species to forieng environments. Humans fishing or hunting would deplete populations and this could affect other species.

Back to the main idea. If you had a certain tech advance such as agriculture and a species in your territory you could domesticate it by reaserching it. Once domesticated the species density and ease of use by humans would be increased. You could then trade them and move them around your territory. Later you could breed them to change other traits and get more useful species.

So what do you think, is it useful or too complex? What could be changed? Any feedback is welcome.

[ElmoTheElk]

I think you are making this too complex. I'd rather see the general idea of this result in an extension of our disease model. Just add it to this model and it is even more realistic.

And escpacially if every square additionaly has an inhabiting-rate, we have even more calculations for our cpu's to do and we already have loads of them.

Feedback?

[amjayee]

Something like Janes proposed should perhaps be there, but I'm not excactly sure what. The scope of the game should be considered, as always. But domestication would be nice in some form, just that I'm already nervous about memory usage and cpu load... we'll have to see what's the situation when the vital components have been implemented.

[Guildmaster]

Almost all plants and animals can be domesticated over time.
One thing you have to remember is that cattle as we know and love them have been part of our lives for the past 10,000+ years. That's a very long time when compared to the half a century we've been trying to domesticate Bison. Even arctic foxes you would think cannot be domesticated, but in a matter of two generations trappers in Russia learned that not only can they be so, but they would have been better off not trying since the foxes ended up with bizarre hair colors instead of the usual snowy white.
A lot of animals in Africa could have easily been domesticated but for whatever reason we went with cows. Don't know why, don't really care.

I do agree, however, that it's not necessary to add it to the game although it could present some interesting scenarios from an environmentalist point of view.
Llamas could have been transported north to the great plains and it is possible to suggest they could have adapted to the heavy work humans put them through by growing bigger and stronger, and then we would have seen something odd: Try to imagine an Arapaho hunting buffalo riding on a Llama! heheh
Well I agree that climatic differences made that exceedingly difficult, same reason why horses never reached the southern tip of Africa.

What I think is this:
if it's not too hard to do (I don't think this one is worth it if it's not easy) we could add it as an option at the beginning of the game. Otherwise the technology equivalent of Civ2's "Horseback Riding" can be interpreted to mean you have sucessfully domesticated a local animal for use as riding transportation.

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How will you make it if you never even try?
-Macy Gray

[The Joker]

Hmm...

Yes, Janes, I can see that using animals and plants as an extra dificulty level could be a cool adition to the game - although it should remain an option.

But I don't think the huge amount of properties that you suggested would be required. I don't really care much about whether some square has deer in it, since deer are not domesticable. So if we should do this all we need to know is whether a hex has an animal on it or not. And then keep track of the 15 (?) important domesticable animals, and have the possibility to add new ones. Of cause the spread of animals would depend on their enviroment preferences and such. But I don't think we need to know whether some animal provides more food than others.

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"In America, first we take the sugar, then we take the power, then we take the women."
- Homer J. Simpson

GGS Website

[Guildmaster]

PErhaps instead, draw a region on the map based on climate and terrain. We can assume that it won't take very long for the animal to spread itself across all suitable terrain then all hexes in that area we can assume have that animal.
When a civ trades the animal to another region not previously reachable by that animal then it woudl respread itself to cover the new terrain.
eg.
Horses are assumed to cover most of eurasia, being bordered by the Sahara desert for the most part. They would thrive in the open plains of North America, but for whatever reason they don't exist there. Once introduced, a few escaped and began to proliferate in the wide open plains. All of a sudden horses are a part of North American native culture.

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How will you make it if you never even try?
-Macy Gray

[Ramo]

Guildmaster:

quote: I actually disagree partly. Although the classic mesoamerican civilizations did lack beasts of burden (To plow fields, etc.) there was never a shortage of potential. Bison could have been domesticated by central plains tribes, Lamas were in fact used both as work animals and as transportation animals in South America, albeit not nearly as extensively as in Eurasia. Even at the time of Aztec mexico, Maze was far superior to wheat in terms of yield to acre ratio and also overal crop yield ratio. However, it didn't provide complete nutrition, a problem remedied by the Mayans use of Lime in the preparation process.

Although corn yielded more food in a given land area than Eurasian crops, such as rice or wheat, the lack of domesticatable animals was the primary reason why American civs were not as advanced as Eurasian ones. Yes, llamas were domesticatable, but llamas were far weaker than large Eurasian mammals, such as horses or cattle. It was not practical to use them for working in fields for purposes such as plowing, meaning the requirement of significantly more manpower than in Eurasia. That meant that Americans farming maize reaped a much smaller crop than Eurasians farming wheat.

quote: Almost all plants and animals can be domesticated over time.

Not really... Only select few animals are domesticatable... After all, Africans, in several select areas, have lived with agriculture for several milennia. They've had plenty of chances to domesticate the plethora of large animals in sub-Saharan Africa. If an animal is domesticatable, it would've already been domesticated. Since so few animals are domesticatable in Africa, it seems unlikely that the bison will be domesticatable.

[XWaste]

Maybe the situtaion can be simplified a bit by not focusing on the specific animals and plants but rather the terrain itself. Instead of having just one farm and thats it, you can have terrain specific improvements ie farm grassland, farm tundra etc. This way a civ that has had it good in plush grasslands for a while have to research new ways of agriculture etc when they want to expand into the neighbouring plains because they just don't know how to exploit the native conditions/animals. A civ on tropical islands may never learn about desert ecology etc.

Additional complexity - specific ecology farms, eg Australian grassland, African grassland etc to represent contintal differences.

Other notes - applies when moving into empty territory, when conquering then unless the native population is wiped out they would know how to work the land.

[S. Kroeze]

Why Animal domestication was one of the most important developments of human history

'They provided meat, milk products, fertilizers, land transport, leather, military assault vehicles, plow traction, and wool, as well as germs that killed previously unexposed peoples.'

'In human societies possessing domestic animals, livestock fed more people in four distinct ways: by furnishing meat, milk, and fertilizer and by pulling plows. First and most directly, domestic animals became the societies' major source of animal protein, replacing wild game. Today, for instance, Americans tend to get most of their animal protein from cows, pigs, sheep, and chickens, with game such as venison just a rare delicacy. In addition, some big domestic mammals served as sources of milk and of milk products such as butter, cheese, and yogurt. Milked mammals include the cow, sheep, goat, horse, reindeer, water buffalo, yak, and Arabian and Bactrian camels. Those mammals thereby yield several times more calories over their lifetime than if they were just slaughtered and consumed as meat.

Big domestic mammals also interacted with domestic plants in two ways to increase crop production. First, as any modern gardener or farmer still knows by experience, crop yields can be greatly increased by manure applied as fertilizer. Even with the modern availability of synthetic fertilizers produced by chemical factories, the major source of crop fertilizer today in most societies is still animal manure -especially of cows, but also of yaks and sheep. Manure has been valuable, too, as a source of fuel for fires in traditional societies.

In addition, the largest domestic mammals interacted with domestic plants to increase food production by pulling plows and thereby making it possible for people to till land that had previously been uneconomical for farming. Those plow animals were the cow, horse, water buffalo, Bali cattle, and yak/cow hybrids. Here is one example of their value: the first prehistoric farmers of central Europe, the so-called Linearbandkeramik culture that arose slightly before 5000BC, were initially confined to soils light enough to be tilled by means of hand-held digging sticks. Only over a thousand years later, with the introduction of the ox-drawn plow, were those farmers able to extend cultivation to a much wider range of heavy soils and tough sods. Similarly, Native American farmers of the North American Great Plains grew crops in the river valleys, but farming of the tough sods on the extensive uplands had to await 19th-century Europeans and their animal-drawn plows.'

'Several domestic animals yielded animal fibers -especially wool from sheep, gaots, llamas, and alpacas, and silk from silkworms. Bones of domestic animals were important raw materials for artifacts of Neolithic peoples before the development of metallurgy. Cow hides were used to make leather.

Big domestic mammals further revolutionized human society by becoming our main means of land transport until the development of railroads in the 19th century. Before animal domestication, the sole means of transporting goods and people by land was on the backs of humans. Large mammals changed that: for the first time in human history, it became possible to move heavy goods in large quantities, as well as people, rapidly overland for long distances. The domestic animals that were ridden were the horse, donkey, yak, reindeer, and Arabian and Bactrian camels. Animals of those same five species, as well as the llama, were used to bear packs. Cows and horses were hitched to wagons, while reindeer and dogs pulled sleds in the Arctic. The horse became the chief means of long-distance transport over most of Eurasia. The three domestic camel species (Arabian camel, Bactrian camel, and llama) played a similar role in areas of North Africa and Arabia, Central Asia, and the Andes, respectively.'

'Of equal importance in wars of conquest were the germs that evolved in human societies with domestic animals. Infectious diseases like smallpox, measles, and flu arose as specialized germs of humans, derived by mutations of very similar ancestral germs that had infected animals. The humans who domesticated animals were the first to fall victim to the newly evolved germs, but those humans then evolved substantial resistance to the new diseases. When such partly immune people came into contact with others who had had no previous exposure to the germs, epidemics resulted in which up to 99 percent of the previously unexposed populaton was killed. Germs thus acquired ultimately from the domestic animals played decisive roles in the European conquests of Native Americans, Australians, South Africans, and Pacific islanders.'
(source: J.Diamond;'Guns, Germs and Steel',1998)

And I found the following interesting post made by Theben in November 1999:

quote: Another thing about the book- and I don't know if it's intentional or not- is that it clearly demonstrates why Eurasians wound up as world conquerors, and not anyone from Africa, Australia, or the New World. And it does this in a highly scientific, non- racist manner. In fact, it has enough information in it that any racist willing to listen should change his/her mind and accept that the races are intellectually identical. 3 things to get you started: -33 out of 56 of the world's best crops started in Europe and West Asia, as opposed to 11 in all of the Americas -The continental axis as described above -13 out 14 of the animal domesticates were in Eurasia, while only one of 14 was available in the Americas (and due to the north-South axis, the llama stayed in the Andes). In a nutshell, the Eurasians got lucky. As you can see, any one of these has great potential to cause widely varying tech/cultural gaps between societies. With all 3, the populations of the Americas/Africa/Australia didn't stand a chance (and these 3 weren't the only things against them!). This whole thing has got me thinking (and I know I've strayed from Religion, but I'm good at that in real life too ). Right now the difference in the civ game levels involves giving the AI "cheats". Why not use the above to limit players? FE, Chieftain level: You start out in a location very similar to the Fertile Cresent (ideal location for tech diffusion, many crop plants, many domesticable animals, including horses, east-west axis)... to Deity level: A climate and/or continent very similar to Australia. Few crop plants, NO domesticable animals, complete isolation from other nations, so little chance for tech diffusion. Try winning that!

I like this idea!
What do you think, Joker, Amjayee and others?

[amjayee]

Very good post once again, S.Kroeze! That quite clearly shows us that domestication is definitely needed, in some way or another.

About animals being domesticable or not, I'm not so sure that it is impossible to domesticate some animals. If we take the most calm and obeying bisons and use them for breeding, after several generations they should become calm enough to herd them. Well, assuming bisons still have enough "calm genes" left for that, I don't know... I think we could well assume in our game that there are domesticable animals or not.

About difficulty level, that would be good. But of course it would not be everything. I think it would be good if you could choose among a wide range of "disadvantages" to rise the difficulty level and increase your point yield. That combined with the point system discussed in another thread, and the game should become quite interesting.

But it is true that it would be tough to win if you start on a small continent like that. The only way to win might be to build ships (or boats) to contact other people, and to expand elsewhere, possibly transfer animals and plants to your own land, etc...

On civ2 I started a deity game, and I got a pitiful small desert island. Nice. Rushed for mapmaking and got far from that place as quickly as possible...

[The Joker]

Interesting...

Yes, I think that if we use animals and diseases to effect the dificulty level of the game then using it might actually be really cool!

So let's do it!

Should we include crops as well? I don't think so. Animals are more important than crops, and I think having to think about crops all the time as well as diseases and animals might become too much. So let's stick with animals and diseases.

This does, however, mean that we will have to figure out a way to implement animals to the econ model. We should just stick to the 14 big ones, and add the posibility to create "custom" animals, too.

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"In America, first we take the sugar, then we take the power, then we take the women."
- Homer J. Simpson

GGS Website

[Guildmaster]

Let's look at each animal and how it would effect gameplay.
eg.
How would domesticating Bovine differ from domesticating North American bison? And then how would that make actual gameplay different? I am guessing that 10,000 years ago when the first cow was domesticated, it was about as easy as it is now as we try to domesticate buffalos. Interesting enough, the method of hunting prior to that event was the same: chase them off a cliff.
How would the three kinds of camels differ from place to place, especially since they were used for the same purpose?
Of course even the same animal served different purposes in different areas:
In Alaska and North Canada, dogs were used to pull sleds while reindeer were used for the same purpose in North Eurasia. Not that dogs couldn't have been used, they just weren't. Are not alaskan sled-dogs better suited for this use due to their keener sense of awareness?
Trained pigeons add an excellent means of communication, trained falcons add a luxurious trade good for nobility.

While I don't have any scientific evidence to support this theory, I believe that the ancient egyptians saw the small desert cats as perfectly suited for hunting mice and rats and therefore were a perfect solution to keeping vermin out of the temples. When people saw the cats in the holiest of holy temples and such, naturally they concluded that cats were to be worshipped as gods.
At least that's my theory, the cats were brought to the temple to get rid of the rats, cats in the temple, cats are therefore gods.
Elephants are big and powerful, and obviously more intelligent than most animals. They are also kind and gentle unless you piss them off. Kind of like the character traits on early Indian gods (?) another one of my theories.

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How will you make it if you never even try?
-Macy Gray