Announcement

**Lord God Jinnai** · March 29, 2000, 19:30

[I copied this message from the Natural Distasters Model forum because this is the forum it should be in]

I've read thru your new model. It seems a whole lot better and a lot more detailed as well as more concise and to the point.

Distaster Linkage Chart
I think you did a good job with the linkage of disasters causing other disasters. Some things you need to change however. Huricanes should also only happen if there is a signifigant amount of oceanic tiles. Not that it will affect anything out there except ships and in the future perhaps some cities, but Hurricanes need this large body of water to form. These rules can be bent for scenerios. Also we're talking per turn in which it is a min. of 1 month? Hurricanes can affect entire coastlines which is deffinatly more than 1 square.

Also on earthquakes causing volcanoes will only happen in certain techtonic areas. (Subduction Zones). Also we need to really add another thing for volcanoes (as well as a disaster in and of itself). Landslides and Run-on-Landslides. These would happen with volcanic eruptions, earthquakes or rarely on their own. These only happen in moutanous regions. The reason these are needed?? I don't think the volcanoe and earthquake disasters could simulate the results of these on their own w/o focing it to happen everytime. You could prob forget regular landslides if u wanted and just worry about run-ons, but if were picking disasters that would affect a size of 1 square signifigantly then run-ons easily do since then can travel for many miles after they reach level land (or uphill even).

Floods
Floods do happen in deserts every year (unless there's a drought). Its the reason they aren't completely devoid of life. They occur during the anual rainy seaon.

Also this brings me to another point. You should also make certain now that you can't really have a flood and a drought in the same area (you prob could, but it would screw up things and the player would prob be scratching there head asking how that's possible).

Hurrianes and warning systems
Population decrease even with warning systems might still happen. Esp during early stages. I would say a min of .01% is the least that can happen because even today there isn't always enough time.

Tsunami
Would Tsunamis affect surface water cities and such?

Economic Disaster Chart
Reseach should be on there (and seperate from education).

Special Case Disasters
It might be interesting if Radiation caused new species. Just an idea, but not a ness. one. Although I personally like it.

Global Warming
If your going to use global warming and your basing this on history (even prehistoric) then after the climate reaches a certain temp range, prob 5 degrees celcius above the current level then a global cooling trend goes into effect at a much faster rate. If you wish to know why read the next paragraph, if not igonore it.

Global Warming icreases themp (duh!) which causes more rain-producing clouds to form (this is already known by a many of people). Most of rain falls on the ocean, not on land (this has been known for a while). Fresh water (rain) and salt water (oceans) don't like to mix. Almost like mixing oil and water. Anyway what I'm leading to is that the ocean currents, esp the large ones, coveye heat to otherwise cold climates (british isles and New Egnland FE). Because these currents are oceanic they are made of salt water. When it rains a lot (which is much more likely as the temp icreases) it forms a break in this very sensative "conveyor belt" or heat. Without this heat many places would begin to freeze over into an ice age. Now the proof that this has happened before: We have had atleast 5 ice ages in the past (perhaps more). But of those 5, 4 came right after (100-300 years) a global warming trend similar to ours. All the warming trends like ours if they continued to a point near ours ALWAYS resulted in an ice age.

1 last thing where is the stuff on the city destroyers you talked about on the wonders model?

BTW Great nice empty charts. Just kidding!!

**alms66** · March 29, 2000, 22:05

[This message has been edited by Toubabo_Koomi (edited March 29, 2000).]

**alms66** · March 29, 2000, 22:21

LGJ,

I know what you mean about the # of ocean tiles, but the way I wrote hurricanes was for a world. In a scenario where there is only a part of a world shown, they should probably be turned off anyway. By per turn I meant per year, or 50, 25, or whatever number of years happens to be in that turn.

On the number of squares affected, you're right it can affect more than one. If we can do hurricanes as I envisioned them, a "unit" on the map with a move of 30 or so (that way it can reach the shore), it will hit and affect a number of tiles. The only problem with that approach is making the hurricane "unit" move in a way that is realistic for hurricanes (i.e. not in a straight line). But it will affect only one square at a time, although it may hit several squares during its movement.

That's why earthquakes triggering volcanoes is left up to the map model. That way it can only happen in those areas that it can realisticlly happen.

As for landslides, the reason I dropped them was because there are very few important ones in history. They are really only a major threat in areas of mountains that have been heavily deforested. Unless we model deforestation, I don't think we should model landslides as a disaster.

Floods in deserts? Not by rainfall, although there is always some rain in a desert, which is why they aren't devoid of life. And since we dropped the cyclical floods of rivers, there are no floods in deserts.

Floods and droughts of course shouldn't happen in the same area. I figured it was a fairly obvious thing, so I didn't mention it. I finally figured out how to use those things.

The warning system thing reduces deaths to negligible amounts, some people still die, but it's usually less than 20, which is such a small number of people (speaking Civ-wide), we might as well call it 0.

Tsunami
Would Tsunamis affect surface water cities and such?
---You mean cities built dirictly on the surface of the water (floating cities), right? If so the answer is yes.

About research, wouldn't the death caused by disasters have a big enough impact on research already? If RP's come from population and suddenly 20,000 people die, that's a big loss of RP's.

Radiation causing new species, that might be good for a Sci-Fi game, but I don't think it quite fits in with Clash.

Global Warming-
This is still a touchy subject to me. There are lots of theories and counter-theories. IMO, we need to decide which ones to use and accept as truth, then model that. The stuff I have written already fits in with all theories I've ever heard of. The Global cooling caused by global warming is a theory I've heard of, but like I said, we need to decide on which theories to accept, before we truly detail this.

I'd ask for your opinion but I think I know which way you'd vote, seeing as this is the 2nd or 3rd time you've mentioned this.

Like I said in the wonders model, I'll put the city-destroyers in when I get back to the model (i.e. When the social model is posted).

I see you've noticed I'm not finished yet. You sure don't miss anything do you?

**Lord God Jinnai** · March 30, 2000, 15:39

I know what you mean about the # of ocean tiles, but the way I wrote hurricanes was for a world. In a scenario where there is only a part of a world shown, they should probably be turned off anyway. By per turn I meant per year, or 50, 25, or whatever number of years happens to be in that turn.
-----
The reason I'm bringing this up is that some world maps might have little/no oceanic waters so then hurricanes would then be impossible because they don't have a good source of water to draw from to form a tropical storm.

As for landslides, the reason I dropped them was because there are very few important ones in history. They are really only a major threat in areas of mountains that have been heavily deforested. Unless we model deforestation, I don't think we should model landslides as a disaster.
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We'll we'll see how it works w/o it though I still think they need to be put in, atleast run-on landslides.

Floods in deserts? Not by rainfall, although there is always some rain in a desert, which is why they aren't devoid of life. And since we dropped the cyclical floods of rivers, there are no floods in deserts.
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Actually yes, rainfall does cause floods in some areas of deserts, but since you turned of cyclical floods well then the point is mute.

The warning system thing reduces deaths to negligible amounts, some people still die, but it's usually less than 20, which is such a small number of people (speaking Civ-wide), we might as well call it 0.
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Well the thing is nothing is perfect so we could make the min 0, but have a minimum variance from 0%-1%

About research, wouldn't the death caused by disasters have a big enough impact on research already? If RP's come from population and suddenly 20,000 people die, that's a big loss of RP's.
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At the same time a civ might then invest in ways of preventing the loss of lives. Look at California. After every earthquake that destroys major sections of the city and usually has a small loss of life and lots of injurites, they put more resources, atleast temp into R&D.

Radiation causing new species, that might be good for a Sci-Fi game, but I don't think it quite fits in with Clash.
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Yea well it was just an idea. Maybe for an expansion pack or something.

Global Warming-
This is still a touchy subject to me. There are lots of theories and counter-theories. IMO, we need to decide which ones to use and accept as truth, then model that. The stuff I have written already fits in with all theories I've ever heard of. The Global cooling caused by global warming is a theory I've heard of, but like I said, we need to decide on which theories to accept, before we truly detail this.
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Yea, but there's more data now to back that up nowdays than the infinate spiraling theory of global warming.

Anyway I thought you were leaving it out.

I see you've noticed I'm not finished yet. You sure don't miss anything do you?
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I try not too, but I'm not perfect.

**alms66** · March 31, 2000, 00:12

LGJ,

The reason I'm bringing this up is that some world maps might have little/no oceanic waters so then hurricanes would then be impossible because they don't have a good source of water to draw from to form a tropical storm.
----
So basically you're saying we should have a minimum % of water on the world? I can definately agree with that. I really don't know why I hadn't thought of it before.

Actually yes, rainfall does cause floods in some areas of deserts, but since you turned of cyclical floods well then the point is mute.
----
The only desert floods I've ever heard of are the river floods, which are sometimes caused by rainfall, that's why I said no desert floods. But your point isn't mute. If you feel we should have them, show me why and we'll discuss it further.

Well the thing is nothing is perfect so we could make the min 0, but have a minimum variance from 0%-1%
----
I can live with that.

At the same time a civ might then invest in ways of preventing the loss of lives. Look at California. After every earthquake that destroys major sections of the city and usually has a small loss of life and lots of injurites, they put more resources, atleast temp into R&D.
----
So how do you propose we affect reasearch with disasters? Are you thinking that it would boost the reasearch RP's of disaster prevention?

Yea, but there's more data now to back that up nowdays than the infinate spiraling theory of global warming.

Anyway I thought you were leaving it out.
----
I agree with you, just so you know, but I also think we need to make sure we include the majority's opinions because it is just a game, and we need to make sure it's fun for everyone. And although I did say I was leaving it out, I meant only temporarily. I had planned on including it all along, because it's one of today's major issues, so it really must be in there somehow.

**Lord God Jinnai** · March 31, 2000, 01:18

I agree with you, just so you know, but I also think we need to make sure we include the majority's opinions because it is just a game, and we need to make sure it's fun for everyone. And although I did say I was leaving it out, I meant only temporarily. I had planned on including it all along, because it's one of today's major issues, so it really must be in there somehow.
-----
So what are your plans if few people respond?

**alms66** · March 31, 2000, 21:20

LGJ,

Well if few people respond, I was just going to go with the warming=cooling thing, since that's the theory I find most believable.

And you didn't give me an answer about the effects of disasters on research, how do you think it should be done? Just a general idea will do, I really don't need the specifics right now.

Richard,

Landslides: A landslide could kill thousands of people and could wipe out towns, sure, but they are rare until modern times (unless they simply went unrecorded in history), and unless we do the defoliation stuff, I don't think we should include them.

However, if we do the defoliation, they would be nasty to those who wreck havoc on the environment, and I'd definately put them in.

Tsunami's: You're right, I'll have to plead temporary insanity on that one.

Global Warming: Not a bad compromise, What do you think about it LGJ?

**Lord God Jinnai** · March 31, 2000, 23:39

TK
And you didn't give me an answer about the effects of disasters on research, how do you think it should be done? Just a general idea will do, I really don't need the specifics right now.
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Distasters in general will lower output in science for the short term because of loss of life and property. There are a few exceptions. Depending on the disaster it can for the short run increase medical basic techs, meteorology, geology, biology, architecture. Some things will go down no matter what for short term such as economy and sanitation. The other things that go down will vary whether or not they do depending on the disaster and how well prepared the populous is.

Richard
Landslides: A landslide could kill thousands of people and could wipe out towns, sure, but they are rare until modern times (unless they simply went unrecorded in history), and unless we do the defoliation stuff, I don't think we should include them.
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Well I think we should do defoliation. It won't be too hard and it has been theorized to be the distruction of several great civilizations. Generally it shouldn't be too hard to model. Each area has a max number of certain resources to start with (for easiness everything should start out at its max, but a desert has less trees than a forest so we don't have to worry too much about that). Anyway there may be a few special areas that higher than normal max, but that's beside the point. Here's what happens: Each turn a civ uses some of those resources. The larger and more industrialized the civ, the more it uses (until things like recycling). Well as in real life there can be 2 types of resources renewable and non-renewable. Anyway lets take the renewable reource of trees or forest. Well lets say a forest regrows at say 5% each year and it has 1000 wood points. So long as the civ uses no more than 20 they're fine. However, other things can also affect this such as diseases and forest fires, sometimes floods, etc. Anyway lets say it gets to 400. The tile could then turn into a plains/grassland/savana, etc depending on the area. Anyway now its rate of regrowth is lowered to say 2% or at 400, 8 per turn. Note that in each climate zone a place has a max level it can achieve depending on its condition. FE a swamp can't become a forest too easy, but a grasslands could. Anyway now it becomes harder to regrow itself and could go even lower till eventually if it reaches 0 for say 2-3 rounds it becomes a wasteland (bottom of the barrel for anyplace. Even artic ice and desert is better). Wasteland would have 0 max and be that way for say 10-20 turns. Whatcha think?

Global Warming: Not a bad compromise, What do you think about it LGJ?
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Just so that its not completely random. It should still have some overall gradual incline toward something, i perfer warming -> cooling. The reason why is now we do have theories and leaders do take actions based on these theories. But the turn to turn things can be unprediticable, but not stupid.

**Richard Bruns** · April 1, 2000, 01:38

I know some about this topic; here are my opinions about the disasters. If I didn't talk about it, then it looks good to me. I think Toubado_Koomi did a good job overall.

Landslides: These have been devastating disasters. A nasty landslide can kill thousands of people and wipe out towns. I think that we should include them. I thought that we were goung to model defoliation of terrain. IMO vegetation should change a lot over the game; I posted this on the map threads. Landslides would be a great way of punishing the player for allowing the environment to be plundered.

Tsunami: These would have very little effect on cities in the ocean. When the wave is propagating in the ocean, it is simply a short and wide bump in the water. It would have zero affect on a floating city or an underwater colony, and a city anchored to the ocean bottom would not be affected much if it was pretty far offshore. Tsunamis only get dangerous when they hit the shallows, when the ocean bottom compresses the wave into its destructive shape.

Global Warming: There are many competing theories about what happens, and we could argue them forever without getting anywhere. And the fact is that no one really knows. 30 years ago, everyone was convinced that pollution would cause global cooling. Now it is global warming. In another 30 or even 10 years, any theory that we put into the game will probably be obsolete, replaced with a new climate forecast that makes our system look stupid.

So I propose that 'global warming' simply causes random things to happen everywhere. It might get hot, it might get cold, there could be floods, there could be droughts, plains could turn into deserts, deserts could turn into forests, or all of the above could happen. (One theory states that global warming will improve agriculture in the US and Europe while harming it in other parts of the world.)

So rather than having pollution cause global warming, which might cause something else based on a complex model, I propose that atmospheric pollution simply causes random stuff to happen. Deal out the climate and terrain changes like a deck of cards. Historical leaders had no idea what climate would do, so why should the players? I think this would be better and more fun than having things depend on a big chart and a theory that we aren't sure about.

**Mark_Everson** · April 1, 2000, 11:55

Hi TK:

The new model, especially the linkage between the disaster types, looks good! I have a question about the frequency of occurrence of floods. I get the feeling from your formula, although it's not explicitly stated, that floods will happen fairly often near major river systems. While this is true, I think floods at the level of what the player of Clash will be interested in, should only happen very rarely. Anything else IMO will just annoy the players, and stimulate a large amount of micromanagement.

I think this point is also true for some other things that are being discussed in this thread. For instance things like defoliation... I just don't think we can afford to clock cycles to make a really detailed model of the vegetation in each square. We certainly Could do it this way. But there is just not the "bang for the buck" for the player in it. So IMO anything the disaster model handles needs to be both important for the player, and also relatively easy to calculate. To do otherwise will seriously impair especially the multiplayer version of Clash. Everything we put in an individual square that can change from turn to turn is a potential killer for multiplayer since the new information needs to be transmitted every turn to all the other players. So when things change in an individual square it needs to happen only very infrequently, and in ways that are important to the player, or we are just wasting time...

On landslides... I am firmly with TK on this, a landslide has never to my knowledge seriously affected population or infrastructure on a civ-wide level. Although landslides are devastating right where they occur, it's hard seeing how this would ever been anything more than a yawn for the player.

And "Economic" infrastructure is meant to be "Commercial" infra. That is my mistake from the info I sent TK originally.

**Lord God Jinnai** · April 1, 2000, 16:46

On landslides... I am firmly with TK on this, a landslide has never to my knowledge seriously affected population or infrastructure on a civ-wide level. Although landslides are devastating right where they occur, it's hard seeing how this would ever been anything more than a yawn for the player.
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Obviously you don't live in a place like japan where landslides are the number one natural disaster. Also Hawaiian islands, etc. Small places with little land to spread out on with a landslide occuring can have devistating effects. Also we are not trying to totally mimic history so landslides could have that effect.

**alms66** · April 1, 2000, 20:45

LGJ,

Global Warming:
I could make one big chart of effects but still keep the "global pool" so that when each level is passed a random effect from the chart would be chosen and used, rather than having several different rigid charts. This would give that randomness Richard wanted. Then there could be a second chart that would be used when the Avg temp increased to let's say 90 degrees. This would then be used for the cooling cycle, which would bring the avg temp down.

Landslides:
Japan's landslides are associated with the huge amount of seismic activity there, and usually go with earthquakes. And I do believe earthquakes are the number one disaster there, not landslides.

Hawaii's landslides are due to the fact that the islands are very young (geologically speaking), and are still "settling". As a matter of fact, the only large landslide in history that I remember was on the Hawaian islands. It was major and ran into the sea for several miles (causing a massive tsunami). But it was because the porous rock that lava turns into had gotten so unstable that the mountain collapsed, and such things happen once every 20,000 years or so, i.e. not within the Clash timescale. And this particular one occured about 40-50,000 years ago.

Also although we are not trying to totally mimic history, I would like things to be as close as possible.

Mark,

It’s been a while since I’ve seen you in these parts. J

I don't know if you saw what I wrote in the old thread about floods and disasters in general, so here it is:

----
Another point I'd like to bring up is that some of these disasters will hardly be seen by a player. For example let's look at floods. On Earth there is (using my equation) approximately a 9% chance per turn of a flash flood occurring. This isn't 9% per civ but 9% per turn that somewhere in the world there will be a flood. So if we average it out there will be something like 45 or so floods over a 500 turn game. Now with the number of civs/cultures in the game it is very unlikely that a player will have to deal with a flood more that twice in any one game (which falls very short of their real world equivilants). The same can be said for droughts. While hurricanes, earthquakes, and volcanoes will happen in the same spots over and over, but that's just the way they work. Fire, famine and pollution, on the other hand, can be easily controlled if you manage your civ well, if not they then become a problem.
----

But yes you are right that they will mostly occur around rivers, although this isn’t because of the formula. The formula simply gives you the percentage chance per turn.

Defoliation: This is something I would really love to see in a game like this, although you are right about the multiplayer.

Maybe we could have default settings for single player and a different set of default settings for multiplayer. The multiplayer settings would turn off anything that would slow the game down too much, like defoliation, and we could just warn players that turning things like that on will slow the game down tremendously.

**Mark_Everson** · April 1, 2000, 21:07

TK:

I must have missed the flood thing b4. Your take on it is good IMO. I have been checking in, but I am trying not to say too much...

**Richard Bruns** · April 1, 2000, 21:12

One of the things I was trying to say about "global warming" is that we don't really know what average global temperature will do as a result of pollution. It could go up and then down, or it could go up and stay up, or it could go down and then back up, or it could go down and stay down, or it could bouunce around at random, or it could stay exactly the same.

And don't forget that average global temperature means very little as far as local weather patterns are concerned. The worst blizzards in recent history were blamed on global warming. Some theories predict that certain parts of the world will get colder while others will get hotter.

Also, some of these predicted changes are based on the geography of our planet, so a randomly generated planet with different mountains and climate zones would have different effects than the ones that they predict we will experience.

Any chart we make could be outdated in a few years. If we had made this game in the 70's and used a chart like you have, industrial pollution would result in global cooling, which would have certain effects on things based on the slowly falling global temperature.

For all of these reasons, atmospheric pollution should simply result in randomized changes to climate and terrain. Average global temperature does not need to be tracked. Simply use the chart to connect pollution levels directly to the severity and type of the random events.

Announcement

Disaster Model v1.1

Disaster Model v1.1

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