help on models for famine, other

[Eternal]

I'm thinking about a Korean scenario that focuses on North Korea's struggles after the fall of the Soviet Union. By now Kim Jong il is the de facto leader, so it also follows his efforts to improve the situation both before and after the official head of state's death.

My problem is how exatcly I shall model the intense famine and economic problems Korea has faced since the Cold War officially ended.

I'd like to leave the Dear Leader options about what to do politically. Grovel for aid, try social reform, invade under different sets of cirumstances.

Any suggestions?

[Captain Nemo]

My Red Front scenario did model famine quite well by the switch of seasons, drastically reducing the food production of most terrain. North Korean is a country with a true winter and could work under that model too. If the scenario is a monthly based it would work well, making a 5 months a year famine period except for cities that have large quantity of food in storage. This makes food convoys, granaries and agricultural improvements critical.

[Eternal]

Yes I have considered hunger as a consequence of winter. I already know that I will doubtlessly have winter months- to increase economic problems and also because it can be a better time to strike the South (as in the book Red Phoenix). But North Koreans are starving year round. If only pollution didn't cause global warming I could use that to take away some resources from terrain. Does anyone know how much pollution it takes to cause global warming? Is there global warming if you have the No Pollution option on? I would like to have pollution in the game though because that is a serious problem for the DPRK and can really harm crops.

[master on high]

make some REALLY bad grassland terrain and then an OK grassland terrain and then a regular grassland terrain and make it so that terraforming is the only way to feed your people better.

Either than or go to the ______ (can't think of the name right now....it's the first main batch of things in the rules.txt) and make it so that every person requires 2.5 or 3 foodstuffs instead of the 2 that is the default.

[Eternal]

That last idea is especially good. By changine that number, and possibly the number of rows in the food box, I can change using several rules.txt just how bad the famine is. That could be the way to go, but I'm still open to any comments from any of you folks.

[Kull]

Go ahead and use pollution, too. When you save the game as a scenario, one of the options under *Scenario Parameters* *Edit Special Rules* is a toggle for "Eliminate Pollution?" That will eradicate the Global Warming problem.
[This message has been edited by Kull (edited October 21, 2000).]

[master on high]

yep. that and you could possibly make it so that irrigation does absolutely nothing and that only farmland helps with food. that way you have to waste engineerers and production to build the infrastructure and supermarkets...

[jeibel]

Here I go with my humble suggestions...

What's your take on technologies? I don't know anything about Korea in the period, but are you sure that it is appropriate to use scientist and have a lot of scientific breaktrough? If not here's how i would do it...

Since you said you're using multiple events/rules files the problem of the maximum size of the event files il lessened. Here i will focus on some idea on tech-related events.

In civ, sience is no more than a part of your economy, a governmental (sp?) long-term spending opposed to having readily available resources or controlling population unrest. Therefore it would be appropriate to change 'Science' to something on the lines of 'Development Project', 'Budget Allotment', 'Spending' and so on.
In this way you could also use multiple tech prerequisite for the real long-term project or simplier one-shot tech for the ones with less scope.

Supposing you have your famine in action here are spme tech related to face it:

1) tech: Plea for Aid (simulates diplomatic effort) -> tech: U.N. Relief Intervention : create various food caravan every turn (may not work since i don't know if it's possible to specify the caravan type)

2)Triggering a massive justonce CHANGETERRAIn event. This can be done in various way:
a] to remove pollution, since AFAIK changing terrain destroys improvement and pollution is counted as such
b] changing to a terrain that can sustain the existing populace but need to be improved to ensure growth
c]changing to an otherwise unreachable terrain with high food production

3)Making a pop-up message which say 'Congratulations you're solved the famine problem! Save your games as XYZ.sav, load up your batch file and select option *.'
From now on all the seasonal rule file will have the 'population eat this amount of food' parameter reduced by one

These approach also make you better off when trading with other nation (again simulating foreign involvment perhaps?)...

Hope I've been useful!
Farewell.

[Eternal]

I haven't thought much about anything else really. I just wanted to think about the famine thing for now. I'm reading up on Korea now. I'm also thinking how I should make the map -whether it should be skewed (as I see it now), how big it should be, how much it should include.

Thanks for the help. If any more ideas come to anyone please suggest it.