Comprehensive Animals Modeling

[Beör]

Five minutes ago I thought it was OK to model horses, camels and elephants as Mounts, where the particular type of flavour was decided by which ecological zone the unit was created. In a way this is would be similar to what in the tech model has been called Template Techs (Techs that are exactly alike, but have different names, depending on which civ gets it (muslims: mosque, christians: cathedral etc).

Now I am not so sure. Horses, camels, and elephants would act exactly the same. Thus mounted units consisting of elephants would for instance be capable of entering any square that horses could enter.

It would add flavour to the game to have the three types of mounts, but at the cost of some rather unrealistic results.

Then there is the possibility that rodrigo mentioned, where there must be a class for each type of mount. This would allow restriction of movement of elephants into unsuitable terrain or climate zones. Basically we could have a mount interface that is implemented in three different ways, unique properties and methods overriding the default ones from the interface. The question is: Is the more complex modelling worth it in order to add a little flavour? In my opinion camels and elephants have not made a great impact on history - at least nothing compared to the horse.

I would therefore recommend having three classes but without the template tech approach. We loose camels and elephants, but gain relative simplicity, and retain the allimportant horses as a class in itself.
Horses (I prefer this to 'mounts'. 'I am going to create a mount unit in province X' reeks programming compromise)
Draft animals
Food animals

[Richard Bruns]

I think you all have a few misconceptions about what the Mounts idea is trying to do. It produces unique units and I think the modeling would be faster than the alternative.

I could address all of the specific concerns in detail, but the fact that you are have these misconceptions probably means that the idea is confusing and non-intuitive. So it would probably confuse the player no matter how we explained it, and we should drop the idea. Horses alone will be modeled.

[Beör]

quote: Originally posted by Richard Bruns on 09-14-2000 07:55 AM ...Horses alone will be modeled.

And draft animals and food animals, right?

[Richard Bruns]

Yes. I meant that horses would be the only Mount modeled.

[F_Smith]

Guys:

I'm not really able to get too into the depths of this discussion right now, but can I throw out a quick thought?

'Animals' are a resource. In other words, 'animal' objects will implement 'resource' interfaces (as will metals, woods, edible plants, etc). Then there's no reason we couldn't have any number of animal 'subclasses' such as 'horse', 'elephant', etc. Each would have distinct behavior. It would even be a small matter to have different 'breeds' of each animal -- an 'African Elephant' class and an 'Indian Elephant' class, a 'warhorse' class and a 'appaloosa' (sp?) class.

Just a suggestion.

[Lord God Jinnai]

I think we still need a seperate class for dogs. They aren't generally draft animals except in artic regions and they aren't generally food except in some oriental dishes (which btw any animal could be food) and you seem to be ignoring there impact on how the domestication of wolves has shaped things. FE Rich refered to them in the sense they are now in many cases today 'household animals' (Which IMO shouldn't be modeled), but that hasn't been the case throughout history. I just think if you want something like horses modeled which that one race impacted societal and technical change so greatly you can't ignore dogs or their earlier domesticated wolven anscestors. Again there are specific techs that couldn't really have been achieved IMO without the domestication the wolf into the dog specifically. Herding and grazing of many other food animals is one especially on wide planes. This is a very fundimental tech since no domestication of dogs means any hearding aniamls like cattle wouldn't probably have been possible. Also as use in hunting it allows the increased tech level especially early on. Dogs were really the first type of security alarms also.

F_Smith: I don't think we should go too far. Anything i think we do in this area should be for ness. reasons only. I think this area more importantly than others because ecology is very complex, more complex than anything else almost.

As far as that is concerned though i do think we need some way to distinquish from atleast differnt geners or whatnot for disease reasons. This also applies to the plant side of the ecology model and agrarian part of clash also.

[F_Smith]

Lordy:

I'm just pointing out that from a coding standpoint, the approach I detailed is the most efficient way to go.

Animals will be 'objects'. Each type can be as different as we want, with no added difficulty.

Ya'll can build your model with or without that in mind.

That's all I meant.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Well i always keep it in atleast the back of my mind most of the time, i just don't think unless we start differentiating between things like rice and wheat in the agrarian part of the ecology model we shouldn't differentiate between cows and pigs unless we need to.

[F_Smith]

Lordy:

Actually, from a 'coding' standpoint, we should have objects for individual crop types.

A 'crop' will be a 'plant' object. No reason not to subclass it into 'rice' and 'wheat', etc.

But I leave that choice up to ya'll.

[roquijad]

[read the following post]
[This message has been edited by roquijad (edited September 14, 2000).]

[roquijad]

Comments:

1) The concept "Draft" isn't good. I orginially proposed "Production Animals" and Richard changed it to "Draft". I didn't know this word, so I assumed it was just another way to mean "productive", but now I understand Draft is more like "Pulling a Plow". My initial idea was way wider than that. Productive Animales are all animals helping to production. This involves draft animals such as oxes, "helping" animals such as dogs in herding and animals that provide raw materials such as sheeps providig wool. In this way, the econ model can increase production in an abstract way using all kinds of animals and with all their usages as a source. This way dogs and other animals LGJ mentions would be included in this abstraction.

2) I think F_Smith has a point in what regards implementation, at least for mount animals. In the coding side, we should have Productive Animals, Food Animals and any number of mount animals. For the default game we should stay only with horses, but the flexibility to add more will be there for scenarios or people who want to see more mount animals.

3) In terms of military units and if we agree on 2), I wouldn't like to see horses and camels behaving exactly the same in battle terms. Horses were preferred because they were better. Each mount animal should have as a property a "battle" value or anything like that which is "passed" to the military unit when it is created. In other words, we should only have horses with no chance for expanding the system OR we should have the flexibility for any number of mount units, but with differences between them. Otherwise the only relevant difference will be the icon you see in the screen.

[Lord God Jinnai]

I still think if we are model horses as specific animals instead of abstract mounts, we cannot leave out dogs as seperate because dogs were important. Domesticating them allowed for the domestication of almost every other animal that is domesticated today, including horses. I listed already why it should be so and i believe that no other animal out there can do that. I watched a program on TLC about the first domesticated animals and they explained why wolves were domesticated above all other animals. 1> efficent hunters 2> numerous enough 3> they could work in a group to bring down bigger prey 4> they understood athority and heirachy in some sense. The last 2 are very important as when hunting you need cooperation and a sense of who's in charge. Without this specific race you couldn't domesticate horses. Horses aren't heirachial like wolves and except for parental care their is no sense of anyone being in charge of horses, espcially the first ones. Also horses are quite fast, even the first wild ones so that capturing one would be hard and keeping it long enough to do training would be nearly impossible without a way to keep them under control (which prob would require beeting the horse and possibly killing it which defeats the purpose.

What i want to know is why shouldn't we have a seperate listing for dogs and we should have one for horses and other mounts. Can you tell me how you can model abstractly what the domestication of wolves did for humanity? I wouldn't think so because the 'production animals' really are more for ones that work the land and dogs are much more versitile since they can be used as both draft and production (if it includes hunting and herding)...only mounts could do that and a wolf really isn't a mount.

Anyway sorry for ranting, but i either think we should not have any specific races modeled or we should pick more than just horses and similar mounts to model, but only those that have important impact on history that would definatly affect any model in any signifigant way and wolves/dogs can do this just as well as horses.

[Richard Bruns]

F_Smith:

Yes, I know that all of the animal groups are just objects, and that we could theoretically make thousands of them without difficulty. Basically, this discussion is to find a way to model all the animals using existing objects, so we can take advantege of OO flexibility. (I have learned something by studying the Java book.)

But the problem is the interface and processor time. Each animal group object has a lot of methods to run every turn and will demand attention from the player. So we can't have too many in the default game. Sure, the functionality will be there for scenario designers to do whatever thay want.

(Slightly OT) I really think it would be bad to model individual crop plants. It would force excessive player management and take a lot of computation time. All crops are modeled as a single object. People are assumed to pick different crops automatically, but that is not modeled. The output of the "crops" object simply varies by terrain and climate.

LGJ:

You keep misunderstanding what I meant by "household animals." I must be saying something wrong, so let me try to explain the concept again. The term does not mean "pets." Instead, they are animals that do important things that are not covered by the other groups.

You have listed many good reasons for dogs to be included. Every one of those reasons is a reason to include "Household Animals." Every one of those reasons is a reason I came up with "Household Animals." Dogs ARE Household Animals. Just like "Mounts" was intended to include horses and some other animals, "Household Animals" was intended to include dogs and some other animals. The concept was supposed to include wolves, cats, dogs, lions, etc.

This was meant as a way to explicitly model what dogs can do for humanity. I never said we should have a seperate listing for horses and other mounts. I wanted to combine them all into larger gropus.

You ranted against household animals, and then proceeded to rant about how the exact same concept shoud be included. This is surely the symptom of a communication problem.

I definitely messed up by coming up with those hybrid concepts. While the computer (and my computer-like brain) would deal well with them, normal (non-deranged) humans found the concepts bizarre. So nobody knew what I was trying to say. Sorry for confusing you all. They seemed like such good ideas at the time. . .

Roquijad:

1) Actually, I meant "Draft" to be a synonym for "Production." Those animals were always meant to do many things. Don't assume that my English will be good just because it is my native language

2) I agree. I was trying to fit the exotic mounts into the normal game, but the idea flopped. We should just leave them out and show scenario makers how to implement them. if they want them.

3) I never meant the battle units to be the same. I specifically said that the military model would treat them differently. We will make the resulting units act very differently.

So can we all agree on the following?:
Horses (Scenario option for exotic mounts)
Producation Animals (Oxen, Donkeys)
Food Animals
Dogs

[Lord God Jinnai]

Rich:

Okay yea...seems like you had both me and Rodrigo confused there....

Anyway we still need something else other than horses for mounts unless u want use dogs (huskies) for the artic regions as i think allowing horses to live in nothern Siberia and Alaska, etc. is just stretching truth a little too far. It might be possible when there are seasons, but i don't like the idea.

Other than that i think the groups are fine. Although the we shouldn't have 'wild dogs' but just 'wolves' instead.

As for wild creatures we i think they should be modeled even after full domestication in that square and it shouldn't be gradual levels like you have mainly for population reasons of the breeds. FE you could wipe out the entire best breeds in a war and simply lowering the average doesn't model that right because it would take a long time to rebreed to the same level without brining in new animals.

We need to have a way of showing differnt genetic structures in each race for disease and adaptablity purposes. Whatever we choose should be used for ecology model for plants and such, espially important for crops. FE genetic engieered crops produce much better, but are far less adaptable. These should also be incorpetated in to the sentient races as well in the population demogramics model. Like i said earlier a simple 1-10 variable 1 being clones with no genetic mutations should be good enough and this would be stored at the square level (can't be stored any higher).

[F_Smith]

Off topic note:

Richard -- when you subclass an object like

'animal'
'horse' extends 'animal'
'beaver' extends 'animal'

there aren't any additional public methods, and there is no additional drain on computational resources, unless the object in question has behavior so complex it needs heavy number crunching.

In this case, all animals would have 'behavior' type objects. In a horse, that object would have different methods from a beaver (or whatever).

But in both cases, the same public methods get called. That's kind of the point of an object hierarchy. You can loop thru 'animal' objects without worrying about what kind of animal it is, and call public void migrate() (or whatever). The 'animal' subclass will know what to do.

So animals can eat different amounts with no added number crunching, for example. Reproduction rates can vary. That sort of thing.