Vegetation, Climate, Ecology, and Pollution

[Mark_Everson]

quote: Originally posted by Simon Loverix on 05-11-2001 05:24 AM Site improvements: I would rather have them separated, since irrigating temperate land does no good, terracing a plain would not be very useful and you can only fish a lake without the appropriate infrastructure. But if these categories are to detailed in comparison to other infra classes..

The way I had in mind takes care of your concerns. The tech level for a square (which determines how effective the use of kapital is in increasing yields) will get a bonus for irrigable, etc. land. So if the land can benefit from irrigation given current technology the 'tech level' will include that effect. So investing in a square with good irrigation potential will pay off in higher yields compared to an identical square without good irrigation potential. Same for terracing. Whether lake fishing will be handled separately or rolled into farming is TBD.

[Simon Loverix]

That's OK. I think fishing can be handled just the same way, since you need technology, people, tools and a fishing grounds. Shouldn't be a problem, unless the yields are too high or too low. Maybe fishing and lumbering are rather something like mining, except that the resource (BM) regenerates, and mines don't.

LGJ, if you wish we can further discuss the species issues by e-mail.
Here's mine: simon.loverix@rug.ac.be
Or do we start a detail thread ?

[Mark_Everson]

Ok, sounds good on lake (and ocean shore) fishing being rolled into farming. So we would need to come up with a site-equivalent number for fishing also, and add it to the farming one. I wonder if we should just call it food production? I agree about the similarity between logging and mining etc.

[Simon Loverix]

Do you mean adding the fishing and farming sites together? I would rather not, farming is far easier to control than fishing. If you manipulate the fields enough there will be improvement, but the ocean is vast and the fish populations are consequently vastly more difficult to stimulate.

We could use the first equation for farming sites for fishing sites (Maybe that's too much but the ocean squares won't have a high BM anyway). The BM would have a set rate (or percentage) of regeneration. The amount fished/produced is subtracted of the BM (like mining) and if it reaches a limit (5 or 10 BM) the regeneration rate drops drastically.

For sea farming: use the fishing sites as farming sites (more stable than fishing). You can get either kelp or fish (that can make a difference in yield according to tech level) out of the ocean, but not both at once. So those sites are food production sites; land sites can't be used for fishing anyway ).

Recycling:
The number of resource sites used in the production function rises with a percentage based on the recycling tech.
-for exhaustable sites (specials):
The number of resource sites used in the production function rises with a percentage based on the recycling tech. These extra sites don't contain resources, but resources are extracted from them as if they were there. Thus it reduces the amount of resource loss, while increasing production.

[Simon Loverix]

Pollution is depending on resource consumption. It (or the severity of its effects in any case) increases exponentially with increasing consumption. We should have an easy way to determine what type of pollution occurs, but I think it's better to wait for that until we've seen the econ model in action in d5.

[Simon Loverix]

Discovery of new, more productive farm plants and animals can be simulated by giving RP for exploring. FE 5 for a land square, 1 for an ocean square. The total land mass thus limits the total explore bonus to farm tech.
The problem with this is that there's no difference in species, just going around the globe is enough to boost your farms. The inclusion of specific species is needed if we want something like the native americans put on a disadvantage because they don't have horses on their continent. That could be limited to a few key species. just 0 unavailable 1 available. If this is 0 the requisite tech level for horseback riding can't be reached.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Simon:

Yes, I did intend to just add the fishing and farming sites together. It's just an issue of simplicity in the interface. And also I believe the player will just generally want the best source of food given what's available, and not really care whether it is from farming or fishing. That said, really abundant lake or sea fisheries will be handled as Specials, and so will be treated independently from farming. In the fullness of time we can try both your and my approaches and see what the players think.

What you say about recycling sounds reasonable, but I can't say I have given in a lot of thought looking for potential problems. It does sound like a decent approach though, and I think it would work reasonably well within the current system. Good idea!

Discovery of new more productive farm plants and animals...
how about we just hold off on this discussion until we see more of what the game looks like? I think that once Specials are on the map they may sufficiently cover those important species you are thinking of.

[Simon Loverix]

Fish & farms:
There will never be fishing and farming sites on the same square, so they can have the same name, but they behave differently for exhaustion purposes, infra requirements etc.

Discoveries:
Just make sure the specials are not too evenly spread (like civ). This will make exploring more fun (like: hey, they don't have horses here, but they do have over-sized, hairy cows.. ). Otherwise, it's just building your mainland and grab the remaining territory.

Summary:
The summary of the eco model will probably end up being a summary for the map generator also. And maybe I can include some ideas for the initial population as well?

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Simon Loverix
Fish & farms:
There will never be fishing and farming sites on the same square, so they can have the same name, but they behave differently for exhaustion purposes, infra requirements etc.

??? How about a coastal square or one with a river? Surely these will have Both fishing and farming sites... and this is before we get to things like lakes that are too small to show on the map, althought that may be too detailed.

Just make sure the specials are not too evenly spread (like civ).

yes there should be uneven distribution of specials

Summary:
The summary of the eco model will probably end up being a summary for the map generator also. And maybe I can include some ideas for the initial population as well?

Well, go ahead and try these things. But you might want to give a rough draft for comments before launching into detailed items. I hope you plan to keep much of the map generator as-is since I think its pretty good already, although it doesn't have all the details yet...

[Gary Thomas]

I am still a bit worried about the scale of everything. At 100km a square you can have pretty much everything in every square, the only thing that will alter is the proportions. I tend to base things on where I live: within 100kms of here are:

2 different oceans
Plains
Rolling hills
Badlands
2 mountain ranges

and economically:

Fishing (2 oceans)
Farming, arable, horticultural, market gardening and pastoral
Mining
A major water cachment
Major industry
and, of course, lots of tourism - parks, ski slopes and such.

Cheers

Gary

[Gary Thomas]

This is a little off the topic for this thread, but I couldn't find anywhere else to put it.

I feel rather strongly that mountains should have passes, arranged in a similar way to rivers. The effect of passes will be on movement and defence, with possibly some effect on trade.

There would be no need for all the combinations of passes, just SW to NE and NW to SE.

Cheers

Gary

[Mark_Everson]

At 100km a square you can have pretty much everything in every square

Making things simpler than reality is IMO part of the abstraction necessary to streamline the game. Otherwise you get a "universal world simulator" that hogs too much memory, clocks, and player attention on inessential details. Don't get me wrong, the details could be critical in real-world events, but I think 64k all-one-terrain tiles is already perhaps too many! And I just don't think the player would get anything out of the extra detail.

Mountain passes: Agree completely! Passes will automatically have effects on trade, since the merchant agents will use the passes for routes when there's a big enough profit to be made.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Sorry been away for a while.

Simon:
Yes, I'd like to continue that discussion of specization. My e-mail is tenchi01@netzero.net\

AS to the Acid Rain question you asked a while ago and I misssed, The chemicals that produce acid rain actually reflect sunlight back into space better than almost any other chemical and don't trap the heat that does make in. Obviously though filling the sky with these chemicals has other risks.

Mark:
I believe we will need to do more than have species as merely specials in order to get the tech model to work properly. For some technologies, this is fundimental (or rather the lack of the animal is).

Land Passes:
I agree, but we will need to make seperate tiles so the player knoiws where the passes are.

[Simon Loverix]

scale:
10000 km² squares are already small-scaled enough to give a realistic representation. I tried it out on a map of the middle-east: you can recognize the forms and proportions, f.e. the nile delta is 4 squares, the Tigris/Euphrate delta 3, the Donau delta 2 or 3.
Let's keep it on this scale for Clash 1, we can make it smaller if computer capacity increases.

passes:
There are more types of easy-go-throughs than mountain passes. A plain between forests is a pass. A hill between mountains is a pass. A valley between plains is a pass. A snow-free route is a pass. It just depends on the circumstances, i.e. the surrounding squares. Most routes and roads will go through the pass, so its clear where it is.

Species:
Prerequisite species for tech, perhaps? f.e. no draft animals: forget about land transport above 20.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Simon Loverix
Species:
Prerequisite species for tech, perhaps? f.e. no draft animals: forget about land transport above 20.

Yeah, that's the kind of simple thing I was thinking of. There will already be some kind of production screen to tell you what your civ produces or can trade for... Posession of a small amount of horses (read draft animals) can make quite a difference, and then have the contribution or requirement have diminishing returns when you add yet more of them.