Announcement

**The Joker** · August 5, 2000, 08:27

I have briefly gone through this and it looks great. I don't have time right now to give a complete list of comments, but I think I will tomorrow.

**S. Kroeze** · August 5, 2000, 16:43

Dear Amjayee and Joker,

There are a lot of elements in this model that I like very much and would advocate in any new Civilization game. Bravo! Good work! And I want to thank the Joker for his very kind words. I hope I will be of some use; I cannot program, unfortunately.

Yet I also have some rather critical remark: I think this model strongly underestimates the importance of the availability of food and the relation between population growth/shrinkage, food, famine and diseases. Nutrition is mentioned rather casually, but in the opinion of most historians it was always the most important influence on population growth in the long term. I'll give some quotations:

quote:

'Throughout the agricultural period, rates of population growth were determined largely by the availability of food. Before the nineteenth century most people were chronically undernourished, and exposed at intervals to the devastating effects of famine. France, a relatively privileged country, is said to have had '10 general famines during the tenth century, 26 in the eleventh, 2 in the twelfth, 4 in the fourteenth, 7 in the fifteenth, 13 in the sixteenth, 11 in the seventeenth and 16 in the eighteenth.' Conditions were at least as bad in other countries of Europe and much worse in Asia.

The last major famines occurred in England in the 1620s, in Scotland in the 1690s, in Germany, Switzerland and Scandinavia in 1732, in France in 1795 and in Ireland, with the failure of the potato crop, in the 1840s.

In his general examination of demographic changes between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries Braudel stated: "A balance between mouths to be fed and the difficulties of feeding them, between manpower and jobs, is re-established by epidemics and famines (the second preceding or accompanying the first)." The point is well illustrated by experience of the Black Death, which was preceded by serious food shortages that spread throughout Europe between 1308 and 1318. "Famine was never an isolated event. Sooner or later it opened the door to epidemics."'

source: T. McKeown: 'The Origins of Human Disease',1988

Another economic historian, Cipolla, wrote in a general introduction on the subject:

'Agricultural societies began very early to be interested in the numbers of their members, either for military or fiscal reasons.

However poor, the material available seems to justify some general conclusions. Compared with the data of the Roman era, medieval mortality conditions derived from Central European paleodemografic sources do not reflect substantial changes. Any agricultural society - whether sixteenth-century Italy, seventeenth-century France, or nineteenth-century India - tends to adhere to a definite set of patterns in the structure and movements of birth- and death-rates. Crude birth-rates are very high throughout, ranging between 35 and 55 per thousand and the average number of children born to a 'married' woman (using the term 'married' in its broadest connotation) by the end of her fertile period (at the age of forty-five or fifty) is at least five. Within the above indicated range, the actual value of the birth-rate in any given agricultural society varies according to numerous factors: age and sex composition of the population, sanitary and economic conditions, the prevalence of war or of peace, and, last but not least, socio-cultural factors such as the attitude toward marriage, the attitude toward birth-control etc. Death-rates are also very high, but normally lower than the birth-rates - ranging generally between 30 and 40 per thousand.

The population of an agricultural society is characterized by a normal rate of growth of 0.5 to 1.0 per cent per year. To give a meaning to this figure I can quote an exercise in astronomical arithmetic by P.C. Putnam: if the race had sprung from a couple living not long before agriculture was discovered -let us say 10,000 BC- and if its members had expanded at the rate of one per cent per year since then, the world population would form today a sphere of living flesh many thousand light years in diameter, and expanding with a radial velocity that, neglecting relativity, would be many times faster than light.(!) This has not happened because throughout the demographic history of agricultural societies death-rates show a remarkable tendency to recurrent, sudden dramatic peaks that reach levels as high as 150 or 300 or even 500 per thousand. On a few occasions these peaks coincided with wars. But much more frequently they were the result of epidemics and famines that wiped out a good part of the existing population. Reference is often made to the famous Black Death as if it were an exceptional disaster. Admittedly this unfortunate case deserves some special mention, for all Europe was then struck more or less at the same time. But one has to remember that the sudden disappearance of a fifth of the population or a third or even half, was, every once in a while, a recurrent catastrophe of local experience. The statistics collected by Father Mols for medieval and Renaissance Europe offer eloquent evidence of these disasters. The intensity and frequency of the peaks controlled the size of agricultural societies.

A highly fluctuating death-rate is an index of inadequate control over environment. The demographic density of agricultural societies tended to grow out of proportion to their technical capacity to control crop fluctuations and epidemic disease. Whenever a given agricultural population grew beyond a given 'ceiling' the probability increased of sudden catastrophes that would drastically reduce the population itself.

In normal times, a large proportion of the deaths were represented by infant mortality. Of 1000 newborn children, 200 to 400 died within a year. Many of the remaining ones died before reaching the age of seven. A famous sixteenth-century physician, Jerome Cardano of Pavia, used to maintain that he could cure anyone on condition that the patient was not younger than seven or older than seventy.

The high toll of infants and youths drastically reduced the average length of life. All available information for numerous societies seems to indicate that the 'agricultural' life expectancy at birth generally averages twenty to thirty-five years and of those who reach the age of five few have good chances of surviving beyond fifty.

The prevailing high birth-rates have distinctive effects on the age composition of agricultural populations: the number of young people is very high. In general, between one third and one half of the population is below 15 years of age; in other words, the population pyramid of an agricultural society is very broad at its base. From an economist's point of view, this means that the young non-productive population represents a heavy burden for the active adult population and this is one of the reasons why agricultural societies put children to work at an early age.'
(source: C.M.Cipolla:'The Economic History of World Population',1962)

So I strongly recommend the use of the concept of Carrying Capacity, the maximum population a particular region under the present technological level can support - well-known among historians and demographers- to determine population growth.

You can find more detailed information and some population figures in remark about the size of ancient cities and population growth.
I hope my remarks and citations may contribute to a more realistic model. I know making feasible models is not my strength so I hope someone else is able to devise one. I would prefer more simplicity and a reduction of the number of variables.

Contrary to this guiding principle of simplicity I propose the introduction of some chance elements: the production of food shouldn't be a constant quantity. Some random element and good, average and poor harvests should be introduced. I am very curious to see a climatic model!

Sincere regards,

S.Kroeze

CHANCE EXISTS

**Lord God Jinnai** · August 5, 2000, 17:51

Hope you don't mind me coming in here over from Clash, but just checking on your progress.

I glanced over this model and seen one thing that needs to be corrected:

quote:

Each population is owned by some civilization; that's called their national affiliation. Each population is also living in some particular area; each population has a controller. Controller can be either a city or a region. Each city and region has excactly one population; city population is living in the city's tile, region population is living in the tiles outside the cities in that region. For each tile is stored the amount of people living in it. For those people apply the statistics of the region's population that tile belongs to.

This is not the case throughout history, although it is today. Many regions had population, but had no governmental stucture beyond a tribal area. This is espically true for ancient times.

**The Joker** · August 6, 2000, 15:43

Here I go again:

Age structure:
How many age groups do we want? I think that 10 year intervals would propably be sufficient, but if it does not require too much memory then 5 year intervals would propably be better. If we have all the people in a region have the same properties then this amount wouldn't be very heavy. Each age group would have it's own mortality rate. This would be more accurate than to only have a mortality rate for the population as a whole. Infant mortality rate would be replaced by the mortality rate for kids under 5. Each turn the birth rate is calculated, and the amount is added to the <5 group. Then the mortality rates are used to determine the percentage of each age group that dies, and a new total population is found. The age structure can also be used to calculate the amount of people in the workforce and more. Should we divide the age structure in one for men and one for women?

Estimated life span:
With an age structure this will simply be a calculation based on the actual mortality rates of the age groups. Therefor the life span will not effect anything. In stead it will be an indicator to the player, based on the actual conditions in the player's civ, on how well he is doing. I think that we should also have a graph showing the age groups as percentages of the population, like the one in Sim City 2000.

Education:
I think that we should have an education system with 5 levels of education (none, elementary school, highschool, craftman's education (can't find a dictionary right now - what is this called?) and university degree education). In the economy model there will be an independant demand for each kind, which of cause will change over time. The people with no education will not be able to read or write, so the litteracy rate can be based on this. the higher education people have the later they enter the workforce. People needing a university degree education will not be in the workforce untill they're 25, where kids with no education will be there at 5 or 10.

Happyness:
I am not really sure what to do with this. It should propably be a part of the political model. But as it mostly effects riots and revolts and such we can wait with it.

Unemployment:
This will be a part of the economy model. But I am still not quite sure how unemployed people will survive - they don't have money to buy food!

Workhours:
This is also a part of the economy model, but one that I have virtually no idea on how to imlement.

Creative energy:
We really need to find out what this means, and what it will be used for in the game.

Efficiency:
What would this mean in the game, and how do we implement it?

Nutrition:
Would this only be about how much they eat, or would it include other things too?

Wealthiness:
Again determined by the economy model. We should have an indicator for wealth.

Information accessible to the player:
Yes. Many informations would be pointless to have. But some would be good to know, like education levels, and these should be accessible to the player. It is also fun to see how your people are doing. I always enjoyed the demographics of Civ2, even if they had nothing to do with the game. Having demographics that actually were based in the game would be great.

Age structure (again):
I think that we would rather want age groups. Education and technology levels will decide when people have kids, when they are too old, when they will work and when they are too old. Such a system is more flexible and more exact than the simpler one where population is only divided into a few groups. Having age definated groups also reduces the amount of calculations needed when calculating the work force etc.

House wifes and disabled workers:
We need some way of calculating this...

Professions:
These should be decided by the economy model, and then added to the political model. It shouldn't be a large problem.

It is a great idea to have unemployment calculated for each class. I hadn't thought of that! It will make sure that people can't just change sector completely when getting a new job, as they would rather work in the same one as they used to.

Population growth:
This could be completely handled by the age group system. I think that soldiers would all be young people aged 20-30 (or younger), if such are available. This way a war could seriously affect the amount of people in that group.

Birth rate:
What would determine this? Possibly education levels will be enough, but technological level should propably also be taken into account.

Immigration:
We need a good migration model. It is as simple as that.

Workyears:
I am not sure how this should work, with the different workhours and all. But workyears will not be all that will effect production. The amount of capital included in the productive process is also a factor.

technological level:
I am not really sure what I think that we should use here.

Mobile populations:
Yes. We need nomads in the game. In the ancient times they would propably have units with them, and be able to conquor large amounts of land. refugee units is also a good idea. I also like starting out as a mobile tribe. With 1 year turns throughout the game it can be fun to use some years in the beginning on moving around the world.

Hi S. Kroeze.

Great to see your interest in the project.

Carrying capacity:
As the amount of food produced in a square is more or less constant, I think that this is propably be included in the model already.

I think that it would be great to have a model in which population doesn't just stagnate when the maximum amount is reached, but where it actually drops radically due to plagues and such. We just need to find a way to do this.

This should propably also be included in the disease model. The chance of diseases should be increased radically when there is not enough food. Disasters should cause other disasters.

Simplicity:
Hmm... What would you say could be made more simple? I think that simplicity shouldn't be chosen, if it gives the player a poorer system.

About chances:
Don't worry. Chances will be included in the game. Both in food production and in the political model.

**The Joker** · August 7, 2000, 00:08

Here goes:

Ownership:
I agree with the Lord: some people should propably be independant.

Ethnicity:
A conquored city could be assimilated into your civ, and a city should also be able to develop it's own ethnicity. There must be some number, that makes it possible to see how similar two nationalities are, and how "far" a city is from developing it's own. Every group should have such a number, and also every city. Maybe it should be somewhere between 0 and 100. When the number is below 10 the city still has the same nationality as you. So in your empire your capital would (always) have the number at 0. Your core cities would propably be 1 or 2, but far away colonies might very well be 9 or 10 or even more.

Groups:
I agree that linking people with the same ethnicity together is good. But what if a city has 6 nationalities and 5 religions? That will give 30 groups. This might not seem as being a lot, but when you consider that each group should be able to do things, and that you would have to check with all groups to see if they're happy, it would be really annoying to have too many groups.

Cities and Regions:
I am beginning to think that we should have regions replacing cities as the basic element in our game. This has some advantages: First of all it makes it more easy to work with rural people. It is a bit hard to fit the farmers into a city model. Second using regions would decrease the amount of entities in the game. This will make it possible to have more complex economic, social and political algorithms in the game, as they only have to be calculated region by region and not city by city. I think that a region should be able to be as large or as small as you want it to be, but it would propably be most efficient to have between 5 and 10 cities per region. This number would also depend on the type the region is.

I have to go now. I'll be back later with more!

------------------
"It is only when we have lost everything
that we are free to do anything."
- Fight Club

**amjayee** · August 7, 2000, 10:04

S.Kroeze: You are right, food supply is the most important thing affecting population growth. Thanks for noticing. This is excactly why it's good to keep the models as public as possible. I simply didn't remember this thing. About famines and stuff, they will be connected to real events. Also there will be some randomness in the food production.

The reasons affecting birth rate presented in the citation were interesting. I think most of those can be taken into account in the game.

The calculation of population growth is very interesting. 0.5 to 1.0 percent growth per year doesn't sound a lot, but this calculation puts it into right perspective. One more good reason to take soldiers from existing population, and to model disasters and diseases...

The text overall was very interesting. Thanks for finding it for us. If we manage to model the things presented in it at least somehow, we have done quite well.

The idea of carrying capacity is good. It is not affected only by food production; if you transport food from elsewhere, it would rise the capacity. The closer the population amount is to the capacity, the more problems you will have; famines, diseases, etc. Vut generally, I agree each tile should have a carrying capacity figure.

About reducing complexity, our intention is to model certain things of real world as well as possible, always considering the scale of the game, so we don't go into too much detail. We will include all the required variables, but every single one will be judged, whether it is necessary or not, to conserve memory and processing power. Generally, we will not sacrifice gameplay for too much detail, nor realism and complexity just for making our job easier. If something is good, and we think it is reasonable for the scale of game and doesn't result in worse gameplay or much slower game, we will add it, if it makes the game more interesting.

One point about conserving memory and processoing power; it will propably take some 2 years to finish the game. Until that, the average pc's will be much more powerful than today.

Joker: Yes, it is possible to have people not belonging to no civilization. But; people without cities could be modeled with "mobile tribes", working as simple civilizations, and people with cities would be civilizations of their own. We might make special civilization AI for very small civs, like the ones with only one or two cities, to reduce the time required for AI calculations.

Ethnicity: Yes, you are right. I forgot to mention those. About cities (or regions) developing their own ethnicities, that sounded good. There might be some special cases; for example when a region declares independency from your civ, and their inhabitants are mainly ethnically from your civilization, they could instantly form a new ethnicity, with the name of that region. And so on. I will add these things to the next version.

Groups: Yes, that might be a problem. But then again, very few cities have so many significant groups. The emphasize is on the word significant; we might want to keep track of only significant minorities. Only those groups could affect politics or such. Other groups would be kept track of "behind the scenes" and shown to the player under the name "others". That wouldn't increase calculations very much. But anyway, I think ethnicity AND religion are so important and distinguishing things, that we definitely need to know, how many worshippers of each religion are in each ethnicity. But if we later find out that this is too complex, we can start listing ethnicities and religions separately.

Cities are so important historically, that they need to have their own populations. And often they are very independent from the other surrounding region. Also, distinction between urban and rural people has always been very clear, and continues to be so even today. But I think this system doesn't increase complexity too much. So; there are populations for each region, and each city. Region would be the main element of economics, as you said. Cities could take part to economics; there would be inter-regional trade, and sometimes also inter-city trade. But usually, regions would trade (after all, usually most regions have only one city, which is the capital). How does this sound?

Age groups: I thought of having more age groups, but I became worried about the complexity, and the fact, that it doesn't necessarily add much to the game; we have no use for information how many 20-30 year olds and how many 30-40 year olds there are. But it is possible to add some more groups; for example we might have children (under 7) and another group for people under reproductive age. And we could have own groups for men and women. But we need to think over, what groups we really need, and then add those. Aa I said earlier, we don't need to reduce variables just for reducement's sake; but we do need to judge for every variable, is it needed.

Life span: yes, it comes from those figures. But since it will be used, possibly in many places, we need to have it in its own variable, and store it in the population data structure.

Education is not that simple; different eras have different amounts of knowledge to learn. I need to figure out how to make it, but I think education should be a figure telling, what level of knowledge is considered elementary in that population. Kinda like tech level.

About the variables being part of other models: yes, for example unemployment is a part of economic model, but it is also a population property. So, it is needed to store in the population structure. The idea is, that economy, religion, social etc. models use and modify the populations. The population information must be stored in one place, that way it is simpler. Just like all map-related info is stored in the map. That's also because map and population
models need to be done first of all.

Unemployment: How they survive, is affected by many things. For example, your social settings; you could use some money to take care of the less fortunate. Second, if there is plenty of food, the unemployed people might go to their relatives for food; this would lower the wealthiness of people, since more money needs to be used for food. Third, in ancient times people could rather become slaves than die. Fourth, unemployed people might become beggars, usually being without job until the end of their lives. Fifth, some people would first fall into poverty, become beggars, and still die. And finally, I'm not sure about this, but the amount of unemployed people might not have been as large in the pre-modern times as it is nowadays.

Disabled workers: during all times, there would be certain percentage of these, depending on tech level, health care etc. Wars would rise this figure temporarily.

Efficiency: this means how efficiently the workyears are used. It is a simple percentage of time used efficiently, and the workyear amount is multiplied with it to get the final amount of workyears the population produces. Very simple, but it does open some possibilities to make the differences between different kinds of societies.

Nutrition: this means how well-fed the people are. Yes, it might be the average amount of food one individual eats. This

Immigration: Yes, it is important. I will think more of it and add some more thoughts to the next version.

Workyears: Accomplishing each job requires certain amount of workyears. If there are more than the minimal amount, the work is done faster. Though the more people there are the less effective the work is, so x more men doesn't increase the speed directly. For jobs that are done persistently, like production of food and taking care of upkeep and basic needs, there is certain amount of jobs available; it might be possible to have more men working, increasing perormance somehow. The amount of men working is an important factor determining the amount of production, but the number of men that can work, the number of jobs created, is affected by capital, infrastructure etc.

Birth rate: S.Kroeze told the most decisive things affecting this.

Professions: they need to be stored in the population, and modified by social and economic models, as I said earlier.

Tech level: This is not difficult, just requires some thought.
S.Kroeze: could you try to find out what kinds of tech levels we should have, and summarize how those levels affect the basic population properties, like birth and mortal rates? Better too much than too little, since this property affects the game quite simply and straightforward.

Carrying capacity: the amount of food produced, and thus the capacity, depends on tile properties, and the amount of food traded into the area. Also infrastructure affects this slightly.

Thanks for your comments, both of you! I hope this clears out some things.

**The Joker** · August 10, 2000, 11:27

Amjayee:

Food production:
I don't think that there should be a certain carrying capacity in the game. There would only be an amount of food being produced on a square, and this would create a carrying capacity. Generally the population would not simply stabilize at the carrying capacity level. In stead it would move up and down, as famines and diseases reduced the population, combined with a general, yet small rise in population.

I think that somehow the disease model should be very closely linked with the population model. It should be possible to have diseases that simply kills a percentage of your population every turn, but doesn't spread. Like malaria.

Mobile tribes:
Sounds good! But I am not sure that they should always be mobile.

Groups:
Ok!

Cities and regions:
Hmm... We need to make a choise here. We can not have is so that sometimes cities are the central entity and sometimes it is regions. I think that it should be regions. It has some advantages:

- We can have it so that there is no clear distinction between a city area and a rural area.

- We can have a scenario in which a large area is in fact covered with cities without havine loads of independant entities in the game - just a region for the entire are.

- It makes more sence to have the region as the basic unit. We don't need to figure out when a square is a city square and when it is a rural square, as it does not matter that much.

- We will need less entities to process data in, as there will be fewer regions than cities.

I am sure that there are other advantages too.

I think that your idea with some interregional trade, some intercity trade, region population and city population etc sounds too weird. I agree that regions would sometimes only have one city. But in modern times they could have several cities all really close to each other. With 50 km hexes wont it make sence to have regions with an average cize of maybe 50-100 hexes each? I think that this sounds reasonable. It may be possible to make them larger though.

Age groups:
I think having 10 year interval age groups would make the game system useable in many more scenarios. We can make it possible to have different retirement ages, and different mortality rates etc throughout history. It may not bring much to the game immediately, but on a bit deeper level I think that it will. Workers with level 1 education can start working as soon as they turn 10, where people with level 5 education wont be available for work untill they're 25 (meaning that half of them in the 20-29 group will be in the workforce). Besides this we can make it so in ancient times people usually die around 40 or 50, where in modern times they wont do so untill they're 70 or 80. I also think that we should divide this into men and women. A serious war, where many of the men have died, will create a lack of men, which will hurt the growth rate. Anyway, I have all this completely figured out in my head, and I can have a population growth and demographics system that is up and ready to go in very short time.

Life span:
This would also come from this demographics model.

Education:
I think that it could be. With just 5 levels of education we could incorporate it into the labour market, which is great. Before the industrial rev most people would only have education 1. When people become wealthier they will demand education for their kids. But the demand for higher education levels would propably come before people can afford to want education. Therefor you as the government, could provide free basic education (level 2) for everybody, which would reduce unemployment and give you an advantage in exports.

Unemployment:
Oh yeah! I hadn't thought of that.

Efficiency:
Great idea! So the public sector would have lower efficiency than the private sector.

Workyears:
I am beginning to work this out for the next version of the econonmy model.

Birth rates:
Would poor nutrition mean lower birth rates? I don't think so. Birth rates would propably primarily be determined by education, and possibly living standards. Poor nutrition would only mean, that the majority of the 0-10 year olds would die.

**The Joker** · August 14, 2000, 06:36

Amjayee? Anyone?

------------------
"It is only when we have lost everything
that we are free to do anything."
- Fight Club

**amjayee** · August 14, 2000, 08:20

Sorry, I haven't been able to answer this earlier.

Carrying capacity is always calculated straightly from other figures, like you said. Also the system wouldn't be, that the amount of people stabilizes at that figure. The population simply grows according to certain rules; when amount of people exceeds carrying capacity (which is calculated every time it is needed, or stored in memory, whichever way proves to be most wise) overpopulation exists, which causes greater risk of diseases, and also malnutrition. Then, people die, move away, or governor tries to increase food production/import, etc.

I agree about diseases. Though malaria could spread, but it belongs to the group of diseases, that can live only in certain environment.

Mobile tribes could be stationary, too. When they find their first city, they become a civilization. Also a tribe could also become again a mobile tribe, if their homeland is attacked. This would mean, that civilizations could exist also without cities; as long as there are people still belonging to that tribe/ethnicity, the "civilization" lives on.

I have been thinking about the regions vs. cities issue. I have come to this conclusion: You are right about that region is the basic element of our game. Regions produce things, trade, and form the basis of economy.

But I still don't agree about that we should not have a clear distinction between urban and rural areas. Throughout the history, cities and countryside have been very different from each other. So we will need to preserve the cities also. Also remember, that cities have been the key points in defending countries; in cities, smaller armies could hold back against much stronger forces.

So, we should solve this problem perhaps like this;

-Players would found and conquer regions, not cities.
-The population stats would be stored region-wise. For each tile would be stored the amount of people. For city tiles would also be stored some city-specific information. What, is open for debate.
-You would not manage cities; that was one of the most tedious tasks in civ2. Instead you manage regions, or give them under governor control.
-Cities and fortifications would be shown on the map similarly as in civ2. Perhaps even villages could be shown as small dots or icons?
-Cities would serve the military, trade, scientific, religious etc. purposes similarly to the real-world counterparts; this we need to figure out.
-Cities could have some stats that you could view, if you like; though the amount of cities in the world would be very much greater than earlier.

Comment this, and make suggestions. If we get rid of city populations and city management, we can increase greatly the amount of cities, and make regions much more realistic. Also populations could be more detailed, since there would be less of them. For example your age groups system would then fit it quite well. I would personally be happy of a better demographics system. I was just worried about too much memory usage. but this should solve that. You said you have the system thought out; please tell us what you have in mind.

I'm still not convinced about education. It is too much based on our time situation. Besides, it would be too much simplification, if there are only five values. Perhaps if we allow floating point value to this (education level could be 3.23 for example) it would be better. But I don't know. I need to think about it.

Hmm... yes, nutrition doesn't affect birth rate much (of course if mothers don't get enough to eat, they don't have strength to carry the child, miscarriage might occur. But anyway, nutrition would be only a minor factor determining birth rate; perhaps only very nutrition rate would make the rate a little smaller, and very hight nutrition might boost it a little.

Generally, birth rates have been somewhat constant. The mortal rates affect the population growth more than birth rate.

[This message has been edited by amjayee (edited August 14, 2000).]

**The Joker** · August 14, 2000, 16:09

Carrying capacity:
I think that the more people you put to work on a hex the less efficient will the last worker be. This makes sence, and it offers some great things: First it includes the carrying capacity automatically - when enough people live on a square the people will produce too little food for them to survive. Second it means that if you have loads of people a lot of people will work on every hex (like in South East Asia) and if you have lots of land very few people will work on each hex (like in the USA).

Regions versus cities:
Yeah, I have actually come to the same conclusion as you. Regions should be the political and economical entity of the game. You build stuff at the region level, ressources in a region is pooled together and there is a single price on each good in a region.

But you are right. Cities should be special. I think that cities should have their own birth and mortality rate. This is because in all cities before the modern age the mortality rate was actually higher than the birth rate! This meant that cities were depending on a constant flow of immigrants to survive. And they got this, as long as they were a political center. But as soon as they stopped being this, if the empire collapsed, the immigration would stop, and the cities would die out. This is in fact why large cities could completely vanish in a few centuries (NOTE: S.Kroeze is the reason why I know all this - any help he gives us will be great). If we have cities have their own birth and mortality rates we could have this actually happen in the game without much efford! Cities would also be heavily fortified. I don't think that you would conquor or found regions. Foundation of new hexes would propably happend automatically, or you could force people to move to a hex. You would simply divide your civ into regions when it reached a certain size. You would conquor individual hexes. Rural hexes would usually just be walkovers, with minor injuries due to partisans. City hexes would often have city walls, and would be hard to conquor. If you conquored the regional capital hex (which would almost always be a city) the region would collaps, which would cause loads of unstability and really low efficiency in the remaining hexes in the region.

Cities would show on the map. In fact I think that all hexes with a descent population woul be shown. Hexes where the majority of the people were farmers would be shown as farmland etc.

I am sorry, but I don't have anymore time right now. I will comment on the rest of your post later, plus describe my age groups idea.

**amjayee** · August 15, 2000, 11:46

Thanks for comments. I'm trying to put together the next version of the population model soon. About conquering and founding regions, basically you are right. But usually regions are handled as entities; you conquer the whole region in a campaign. If you can't conquer all of it, you can add the newly conquered land to another region. Also you could found a colony, effectively creating a new region. I will think about this more soon...

**heardie** · August 16, 2000, 07:11

alright, i have been following this but not posting for lack of ideas!
Disease + Population
This is easy:
Dependence of Environment(DOE): This tells, how dependent it is of the conditions at the location it was born. Also for each disease would be stored the climate type of the spawning site. Diseases with dependence factor of 1 could spread only to the similar climate areas, while with 10 they could spread anywhere.

For the diseases I have done
HIV has a DOE of 10
Influenza = 4 (maybe? Not to sure about this!)
Smallpox = 8
Pneumonia = 4

Is that what you guys had in mind?

Also:
You should see how good the new web-site looks. Unfortunallty Elmo has gone away for three weeks and I am working on it myself, but I should have it finished in around 2-3 weeks. It looks spectacular

**The Joker** · August 18, 2000, 00:39

I think you're our disease developer Heardie, but that system sound great. But we also need to have a disease type that isn't an epidemic at all. It would not spread and it would not vanish. It would simply kill a percentage of the population on the hexes infected every single turn throughout the game, or untill you had a vaccine or somehow changed the enviroment on the infected hexes to one hostile to the disease.

BTW: Really looking forward to seeing the website!

------------------
"It is only when we have lost everything
that we are free to do anything."
- Fight Club

**heardie** · August 18, 2000, 22:44

quote:

Originally posted by The Joker on 08-17-2000 12:39 PM
I think you're our disease developer Heardie, but that system sound great. But we also need to have a disease type that isn't an epidemic at all. It would not spread and it would not vanish. It would simply kill a percentage of the population on the hexes infected every single turn throughout the game, or untill you had a vaccine or somehow changed the enviroment on the infected hexes to one hostile to the disease.

BTW: Really looking forward to seeing the website!

Think the other variables could do this

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Population Model v. 0.1

Population Model v. 0.1

Population Model v. 0.1

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