Population and Demographics

[4VAlien]

i put my current progress on the following page including my code (not really much yet). I'm very happy that you mentioned the immigration thingy cause i did'nt realize that myself!! But with some tweaking in birth/death rate that could surely be taken care of. So that is not included yet, but have a look anyways:
http://www.geocities.com/alien_4v/Po...opulation.html

[Lord God Jinnai]

Mark:

quote: I think the age for the cohort boundaries should just slide as the society changes. On educating the young, I think that will work out ok with the present econ system. Education costs work (services) both for the educators and the educated. So if your young are being highly educated, they are of necessity not doing any other type of labor.

While I agree with this, we also need to remember standard of living and basic technological level as well as a offset for lag in implementing changes do to education and technolgical and medical breathrus. This represents the fact that in many developing countries children after certain age are considered workers as well as children and older generation can still work, although usually not as much nor at the same jobs.

Rich:
On cyborgs, I know this isn't relavent right now, but the person doesn't haveto be dead to become a cyborg and can still age (putting in cybernetic parts when the person is young and replacing them as they age or using nanotech to have them adapt).

[4VAlien]

forgot to tell ya, but i'm at my parents home this week so there's no developing cause i'm having a vacation and catching up with my courses at the same time (

[Mark_Everson]

quote: Originally posted by Simon Loverix on 04-19-2001 12:04 PM Is there any population when the games starts, apart from Civilizations?

The current plan is to have widely spread people, but they will all be part of one civilization or another.

But civilizations won't be limited to the major players - so the number of civs could easily be of order 100 if the player desires. Some however will have no centralized control, and be merely groups with similar culture with at most local-level govt. If the tech level were also low these would be analagous to your tribes. (Which I take to mean a Chiefdom or other form of organization lower than a state).

The problem I see with your approach is it could give literally thousands of little tribes, which is certainly more realistic, but is probably not of significant benefit to the player.

Other than the limitations I've noted above I think your proposal is pretty good. Are you interested in refining it in light of the new info I've provided?

-Mark

[Simon Loverix]

Is there any population when the games starts, apart from Civilizations? If there's not, this is a possibility (which I already posted in the ecology tread).

Tribes and ecological provinces

When farming started, the human population was 6,000,000 and appr. 90% of the land mass was inhabited by humans. 6,000,000 people / 0.9*0.3*510,066,000 km² = a population of 435 people/10,000 km².
In The Beginning each inhabited eco-province would have its own tribe, accustomed to the climate, food and with appropriate customs to sustain themselves in that province. For example, a tribe in a hilly forest might be hunter-gatherers, while a tribe on the low-covered plains might be herders, driving around their herd; a tribe in a river ecological province might already be settled and farm minimally. Such a tribe has at most one center that is more densely populated then the average and is centre of the authority in the tribe. Those tribes might develop into civilizations at any time; they can also remain tribal, which is what most will do (until they are forced to modernize in some imperialist's empire).

On an earth-sized planet there will be appr. 13,771 squares inhabited. I suggest ecological provinces AS BIG AS POSSIBLE to keep them to a reasonable number to start with. An average size of 200 squares would give appr. 75 provinces on land mass, 25 provinces in oceans, seas, etc.

If civilizations grow beyond tribal structures, they will divide their territory into provinces. If such a province doesn't match an existing ecological province, the ecological province is simply divided into two parts: one outside and one inside the human province. They then form two separate provinces, that are checked separately for changes, since one suffers (most likely) from human influence, and the others doesn't.

[Simon Loverix]

That's about what I had in mind (about hundred tribes/infant civ's).

The main goal of the ecology-linked tribes was to simulate the normal spread of the human species before civilization. Making them evolve sometimes could 1) make the step from non-civilized to civilized smaller and thus more realistic and 2) provide a starting point for civ's that start later in the game. This would lessen the feel of having a civ placed at a random location on a bare map.

Those tribes could also be used for generating barbarian hordes, so they don't appear out of the void.

Real Life is becoming rather pressing next week, so I probably will be out for so long.