Expansion and Settlement in Clash

[Martin the Dane]

I think LDi's method is the best proposal for the conquer isue.

But as to the ability for armies to pick up some enemy population. I think this is an important part of any civ-type game, this would simulate slave raids.

Forcefully displacing people have been used by many rulers, as far back as history goes, as a means of keeping an empire together or suppressing newly coqured land.

In my oppinion slavery should play a part in population growth and expansion. I don't like slavery but it's both a historical fact and an important social element in some parts of todays world.

[Mark_Everson]

Conquering and Retaining Control of Territory

I thought I should try to pull all the discussion together here. (should we start a dedicate thread?) If you find useful material on this topic, please either re-post it here, or provide a link. Based on that we can come up with a spec. We really need both a short-term spec, to band-aid issues to reduce conquest MM in D7.3 and D8, and also a long-term approach.

This was precipitated by the comments from TheCid that I have quoted below. Just to be clear, the problems he cites are only temporarily what happens in Clash D7.2 due to lack of development in important parts of the program, like the Govt model.

From the Demo 7 Download and Comments thread:

Originally posted by TheCid
About annexing territory:

I believe that when having a unit go over a territory should not be enough to keep it in the long term. As things stand now, each tile that a unit goes over, becomes his nation's and as a result, the resources produced benefit its own population. However, in reality, when a raiding army goes through a land (like Hannibal for instance), as soon as he's far enough... the resources (and tile ownership from the game perspective) would revert to the original owner's.

I believe that to keep a territory, we need to keep a military presence within some distance (say 2 tiles) otherwise the tile should automatically revert to original owner's until such a time as the population of the tile has switched allegiance to the new civ. This way, in the Hannibal scenario, Hannibal would only control as much territory as was near his army. No take away all the resource-generating squares from the romans just by having walked on them.

We have several good suggestions, and now that militia are implemented we have some extra tools to help solve these issues.

New ideas are welcome, and after a few weeks, if not sooner, lets try to finalize at least the interim specs.

Thanks!

Mark

[Simon Loverix]

Are slaves going to be a separate group? If they are, I think they shouldn't be separate, since there have been so many social statutes: sometimes slaves were wealthy and free in their movement, sometimes farmers that were technically free had almost no possiblity to move.

[Richard Bruns]

After playing the Jericho scenario and turning every part of the map except the desert blue, I realized that Clash basically gives all players ICS for free if there is any empty terrain that is worth anything. This gets out of hand very quickly; I was able to get my civ to an incredible size and power in that scenario, as were other playtesters who left one square in enemy hands.

In order to prevent this, I think that at least 50% of the useful land on the map should start with someone occupying it, so that after a short time there is someone everywhere and players no longer get that free expansion.

This comment may earn me the title of "Master of the Obvious" but I think it needs to be said that we cannot use the Civilization map generation system where everything starts off as blank except for a few spots. Even in the whole-history game the player should start with a map even more densely populated with other people than the Jericho map.

[Mark_Everson]

I Bow to you Master of the Obvious

One advantage of visiting Silicon Valley is even crappy motels have web access

Originally posted by Richard Bruns
In order to prevent this, I think that at least 50% of the useful land on the map should start with someone occupying it, so that after a short time there is someone everywhere and players no longer get that free expansion.

This comment may earn me the title of "Master of the Obvious" but I think it needs to be said that we cannot use the Civilization map generation system where everything starts off as blank except for a few spots. Even in the whole-history game the player should start with a map even more densely populated with other people than the Jericho map.

I agree in general. Although for tutorials and some demo games it didn't particularly bother me. We need to work out the best way to do this. I'd say with D7.3 we should have at least one scenario that works the way you suggest.

[Fosse]

There could also be a maxiumum practical size for any particular province. So you could theoretically take over the whole map, but not by sitting idly and letting your starting province grow like a blob until it covers the world.

The size at which a province can effectivly manage itself could increase as time goes on.

I say this because I don't really see anything wrong with a great deal of the world being empty at the dawn of civilization. As putting even 1000 people into half of the squares will result in extemely huge world populations at a time in ancient history when humans may not have had those numbers.

[Richard Bruns]

A full-world map will only have a few thousand inhabitable squares, so it would be perfectly reasonable for each one of them to have a few thousand people each. Even in prehistory there were millions of people on the planet. I think the game feels more reasonable in the Roman scenarios, where everything is inhabited already.

Although limiting province size is good; I believe we already had plans to do that at some point.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Its true, most areas should be inhabited, but not everywhere. This mostly in Artic and Desert regions (not near any water source) though.

[Martin the Dane]

What about having lower than 1000 pop in some squares, and have small tribes that have allmost constant populations.

If each of the tribes has a chance of becomming a civ and start to grow and merge with the neighbours, the total number of civs in any given game could be indetermined, and thus more interesting.

But I think it should be possible to create scenarioes with mainly uninhabited land.

[ogj20]

Sorry to go off-topic, but since I'm having difficulty finding a thread where it would be appropriate to offer to help out in coding, bug-hunting, playtesting etc. I thought I'd just drop something in here and hope someone points me in the right direction.

[LDiCesare]

ogj, you can contact Mark Everson or check this thread: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...13#post1674856
It is about recent bugs. It would be a good place to tell what your interests are and see if you see any bug/thing that you'd like to tinker with in order to get into the code.
Also, the D7 comments has had a LOT of comments and bug reports recently so you can probably check it too.

[ogj20]

On the subject of migration of people, can I ask if the system as currently implemeted handles migration between populated square?

I know that if the people feel that the unoccupied square next door is worth moving into (It seems in minimum units of 1000 people) they will colonise it, but do they move to an already occupied square (owned by the same civ) if it is a better place to live? I get the feeling from playing the demo that they don't, but I think they should, and also that they should be able to move in smaller increments, maybe 100's, or perhaps even in as small an increment as individuals.

Also, what factors are there to encourage or discourage the growth of cities, i.e. squares with unusually high population levels?

I feel there should be factors that encourage city growth built into the economic model (i.e. a larger population density allows higher prices to be maintained as a wider variety of economic activity becomes viable), which there might be, but there are no details of the utility function of the populace on the website.

On the other hand structural factors like sanitation investment levels should hold down the maximum population, as well as the economic effects of unbalancing the micro-economy by overpopulating the square (higher food prices because it has to be bought in from next door, a larger proportion of the population employed in production/services etc.)

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by ogj20
On the subject of migration of people, can I ask if the system as currently implemeted handles migration between populated square?

Hi ogj20, as I think you've figured out already, the answer is no. But it is certainly in the plans. Much of the code for evaluating moving between squares is already there (see SettlementPlan) but the behaviors for what you are desiring aren't in the code yet. Pretty much everything you suggest is in my fiendish plan for global domination Comments about how exatly you think migration to cities and other squares are welcome. You could probably find some old discussions by searching on "migration" also.

If you want to take some of the suggestions you made on as a first project that would be of some value even now. Many of the factors that determine city population limits aren't handled yet, though we might be able to come up with some things fairly fast.

The non-migration aspects should be discussed in the Economic Model II thread if you've got further ideas.

[yellowdaddy]

in ancient times, when empires extracted tribute, did they have to have a constant military prescence? or was it more that they visited from time to time, and maybe had some political marriages, to create some link with the ruling classes (i'm thinking of ancient china).

regards to populating squares.
well, it's no good just filling them all with people, or picking an arbitrary percentage.
Most human settlement and civilisation is centred along fertile rivers like the Nile, Indus and Huang-He.
And in the early half of a "from the Dawn of civ" game, there'd be plenty of good land uninhabited, or only temporarily inhabited by wandering tribes.
(not including undiscovered islands like NZ)



pre-industrial rev, world pop is fairly stable and low compared to today.
although this graph doesn't show it, I've seen reliable estimates that World population around 1AD was around 200 million. And I'll bet most of those lived in China, northwest India, Mesopotamia and along the Nile.
Even most dark age european tribes would have numbered only in the low thousands, and rarely more than 10,000. AFAIK. World Population at the beginning of the game (9000BC) around 4 million.

http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldhis.html

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by yellowdaddy
in ancient times, when empires extracted tribute, did they have to have a constant military prescence?

No. But threat of retribution from not too far away was always helpful in maintaining order.

regards to populating squares.
well, it's no good just filling them all with people, or picking an arbitrary percentage.
Most human settlement and civilisation is centred along fertile rivers like the Nile, Indus and Huang-He.
And in the early half of a "from the Dawn of civ" game, there'd be plenty of good land uninhabited, or only temporarily inhabited by wandering tribes.
(not including undiscovered islands like NZ)

Population densities did vary greatly. But almost everywhere capable of sustaining people had population at some level. Nomadic (pastoralist) population densities are one to a few people per sq km. So you should expect a Clash square as we have them now to have populations of order 10k at a minimum. Agricultural civs typically have population densities about an order of magnitude or more higher. Pretty much every square that can sustain agriculture should have a substantial population.

I don't understand the point of your last paragraph. We should roughly match those figures once everything is tuned. Right now we don't really have a good way of doing foraging or pastoralist peoples well. Once we have that done decently, it will improve the match with the real world population densities.

[edit: added text in bold to clarify my statements.