Expansion and Settlement in Clash

[Gary Thomas]

One more thought... If we want to do things with a really low-management approach at the start, we can just let people diffuse out on their own as Gary has been advocating. Then the only time you'd use settlers/colonization is if something's really far away, or eventually if you want to shuffle around the ethnic mix. It would be especially low micromanagement. Essentially when a place starts getting crowded the people would build settlers themselves. The challenge is to promote and channel the growth rather than push people yourself.

Yayyyy! Way to roll!

This is the way it really happened. However the management, government, whatever, can still sponsor colonies in addition to the diffusion approach. But there should not be a "settler" unit for a couple of reasons. One is that it has a capability completely different from every other unit or type of unit. The ability to "settle" then has to be built into what is essentially military code, which will creak as a result.

Also, colonists realistically went in lots of small groups (Conestogas for example), not properly represented by a unit.

So I would opt for picking the square, setting the numbers, checking if the idea is popular enough to get volunteers, or, alternatively, get the army to forcibly move people, and then watching the colony grow.

Forced colonization has been the commonest form in history, strangely enough.

Cheers

[axi]

And Axi, please, be nice to the obscenity police. If you push the limit and someone complains we collectively could get in trouble. That word really wasn't necessary to convey your point, now, was it?

In my native language the word carries only it's literal meaning and it is widely used as a metaphor about difficult issues in discussions. It was not obscenity, it was hellenicism. Really.

That doesn't mean that I care much about the censor's sensitivities either...

Forced colonization has been the commonest form in history, strangely enough.

Initial colonisation forced or not, was always carefully planned. Perhaps we should have the player pay to set up a colony with the minimum 5k of people wherever he wants and then have the migrants choose on their own. Of course the player could eventually intervene by setting acceptable destinations, subsidising, ostracising, forcing people out of their homes, creating labor camps and all that nice stuff that rulers usually do. The initial colony's backpack could be optimised for the target's terrain. Migrants would take with them just their property, in cash.

The problem with this is than we cannot build a reliable migration model right away. Unless you've got all equations under your sleeve.

How about the Default way to settle, whether it be by settler or colony is by Whole Province. If you control land you can just outline a province, place a capital city location (or let the comp pick) and then any people that get to the capital (or are teleported there) automatically are distributed in a reasonable way throughout the province on the next turn. You can use this mechanism for intra-provincial migration too. You can designate settlement projects for one or more provinces at the same time.

I like that. Carve provinces up on the map with straight lines! That would look really realistic on the map - see a map of Africa. A good suggestion Mark.

[Mark_Everson]

Well, I never really much liked the Settler thing anyway. Since it seems nobody much likes it, lets ditch it, at least for the moment. Ok with everyone?

If we do settlers at some point, or things like nomunits then if they can't be built off a military unit base per Gary, they will need to be started from scratch.

I think all the sweeping generalizations like "colonists realistically went in lots of small groups", and "Initial colonisation forced or not, was always carefully planned" are not always true, and are best not used as templates for the system. IMO we should just design a flexible system that can cover at least a substantial fraction of the wide range of forced and unforced movements of peoples througout history.

If we all buy into the non-settler approach then we have to:
1. work out a near-term standard for a first demo
2. keep in mind the things we'd like to do in the future, and make sure the overall eventual system can handle it.

Since I have every confidence that in the fullness of time we can make the system work sensibly, I will focus only on a near-term standard for now.

For the moment I propose we just work on a people-teleporting standard with not time lags for settlement. As I said above I would prefer the default to be on a provincial basis, although refinement to a mapsquare basis should be possible via the gui.

The simplest option:
As a start without the gui, we could just let the people expand on their own using some simple standards. Absent the social/govt model I would make the main drivers economic. We can start simple, and make it as complicated as we like as we go along.

Next up the chain:
Player can offer inducements for people to migrate to a given area/square, or perhaps disincentives (a migration tax). On the raw force side, the ruler can force or ban migration with military might.

So, provided a reasonable plurality agrees with this general approach, we need to pick whether we're doing the the simpler or more complex one for the first shot. I favor the more complex one, simply because otherwise the migration aspects will I fear be too much like a sim where the player has little control, and might scare off players.

I propose once we agree on the basic approach we hash out an overall mechanism for each of forced and unforced migration, and sketch out exactly what the gui needs to do. Also we need a list of Big things to keep in mind for the future so the system will eventually handle them.

I will add my first proposed Big thing for the long run now.

1. A civ should not be able to drop people into ridiculous places that could not be reached if we did have settler units. Method TBD, but suggest it uses pathfinding on the map, in conjunction with expected hostile positions and forces.

2. There should be attrition of people and resources moved over anything but the shortest distances.

3. Moving people large distances should involve time lags.

We can debate the "big" issues in parallel with the specific near-term implementation I think.

I am happy to comment from the side, but don't really want to take the lead on this... anyone interested in pushing this along?

Originally posted by axi
In my native language the word carries only it's literal meaning and it is widely used as a metaphor about difficult issues in discussions. It was not obscenity, it was hellenicism. Really.

Well then I'm sorry Axi. But you know as an American its my job to be culturally insensitive, and yet complain about others' cultural insensitivity . Its a long an honored tradition!

[axi]

My proposal

Contrary to you Mark I believe that it would be better to start with player controlled settlement. This will make the average player interested in the model and make the demo more interesting for him. We can start with a simple enough interface and elaborate it later.

For an early implementation, I propose the following for the settlement window:

- Select origin button: (cursor selects an owned populated square, else error message)
- Select number dropdown menu: (Up to 1/4 of origin population, increment by 1000 or 5000)
- Select target button: (cursor selects an owned square or a visible unpopulated square, else error message)
- Current cost display: (displays cost of current choice)
- Previous button: (revise previous order)
- Next button: (revise next order or create new order)
- Total cost display: (displays total cost of choices)
- Cancel all button: (resets all orders)
- Exit button: (closes the window)
- The window should also display the details of the current origin and target squares.

The cost could be swell if it were proportional to the value of the infrastructure of the square, but it can also be proportional to the PCI or if this is difficult, it can be constant (only depending of number of course) for the time being. Next round, the teleported settlers are subtracted from the origin and added to the target economy. In case of an unpopulated square, a corresponding event appears in the events window, because the player might want to issue econ orders. No infrastructure is subtracted from the first, but infrastructure equal in value to the cost (or less than the cost, to represent some overhead cost or attrition, or maladministration) is added to the second. Cost is essential, since it creates a limit to settlement.

Also an infraclass exists in the econ window, to allocate funds to settlement. These funds could be amassed and drawn upon freely, like roadbuilding, meaning that all existing orders are executed by order of priority untill the fund is exhausted, meaning that there can be settlement orders waiting for many turns. Alternatively, the amount of existing funds at the beginning of the turn are the maximum cost the orders issue this turn can attain, meaning that all orders are executed the turn after they're issued. I don't know which is more practical.

As for the aggregation issue, classes can initially be totally disregarded but EGs should be represented proportionally in the settlers. Infrastructure is the big problem here.

We can later add preferrential handling of SCs or EGs. We can later add private funding for settlement in player designated areas, using some ROI formula and treat certain areas as accessible without the need of player designation (f.e. internal migration is free) We can add better tools to take the place of the two first buttons. We can change the formula for the cost. We can add use of military supplies and time lags or even pathfinding. We can add the option of actually building a settler unit at an increased cost.

[LDiCesare]

Axi, I think Mark also wants player-controlled movement.
I tend to agree with your plan except I'd like a multiselection of squares. I can select one square if I want to micromanage, or a set of squares if I don't. That makes the total cost part of the gui less useful.
The point is how do we determine the appeal of a region? This is used to know whether people want to go there or not, and the incentive needed to have them move.
There are factors we can't take into consideration yet, like climate or luxuries there.
Others include:
*Square population (the lesser, the better), including population from other EGs.
*Available sites (unused?).
*Existing infrastructure.
*Distance between squares.
How do we quantify these?
Moving population should be forbidden if target square is owned by a foreign civ and existing population exceeds both a preset limit and the population being sent. The preset limit represents enough population to mop up militia to rout the invaders. Should armies spawn automatically in such a case?

[Mark_Everson]

Re: My proposal

Originally posted by axi
Contrary to you Mark I believe that it would be better to start with player controlled settlement.

I had this... I take it you mean Exclusively player controlled settlement.

- Select origin button: (cursor selects an owned populated square, else error message)

I agree strongly with Laurent. I think this and the set target Must allow selection of whole provinces or numbers of squares from the start. (And Vastly prefer the default being whole provinces.) Otherwise we risk people doing the mental calculation "I'll have to do this How Many times?" and leaving, as possibly I myself would.

As an example, someone gave me AOE II as a present. I thought I might go through the learning tutorial just to see what I could learn from the interface and their learning tutorial. When I found out I had to take every individual peasant and tell him to "go pick berries" or whatever, the waste of time so disenchanted me that I put the thing aside. Unless the feature is directly part of the fun of Clash, I think we need to limit potential repetitions to the absolute minimum. Doing things as much as possible by province, or even whole civ will help a lot with that.

Also an infraclass exists in the econ window, to allocate funds to settlement. These funds could be amassed and drawn upon freely, like roadbuilding, meaning that all existing orders are executed by order of priority untill the fund is exhausted, meaning that there can be settlement orders waiting for many turns. Alternatively, the amount of existing funds at the beginning of the turn are the maximum cost the orders issue this turn can attain, meaning that all orders are executed the turn after they're issued. I don't know which is more practical.

Either of these sounds Ok to me.

I agree with Laurent's take on issues for free movement of peoples. But if we use the only-order thing as a start we don't need to worry about all that for immediately. Of course we still have yet to decide if it is to be order-only, if the people only do it themselves, or a combination of the two. I was hoping we could hear from more than just a few people first. Detailed coding is still a ways off, so hopefully we will hear more opinions yet.

[Gary Thomas]

Select origin button: (cursor selects an owned populated square, else error message)

No, only non-owned squares can be colonized, not owned ones (which are already colonized, or should be, automatically). We really do not want to have to micromanage colonization of squares that are already part of the civilization.

I agree strongly with Laurent. I think this and the set target Must allow selection of whole provinces or numbers of squares from the start. (And Vastly prefer the default being whole provinces.)

Unfortunately there aren't any provinces if there are no people, or an existing civilization. I have no problem with selecting a few squares as the target. The people, being intelligent, will ignore your instructions if they are silly, and settle those and surrounding areas if they are sufficiently desirable. In turn, this will create a province.

Always assuming that any indigenes are suitably dealt with.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Gary Thomas
No, only non-owned squares can be colonized, not owned ones

Gary, Axi is talking "origin" as in where the colonizing people come From. Later he mentions a target square, where they go To.

We really do not want to have to micromanage colonization of squares that are already part of the civilization.

While I agree with this as a general principle, some players Will want to move around people to places already occupied. This could be simply to accelerate development. Certainly the Romans swapped around lots of people for a variety of reasons. Now if you want to distinguish that activity from colonization, ok. But in any case the guis for colonization and relocation should be IMO be similar, because in each case you're moving people around. optionally giving them stuff to start with.

Unfortunately there aren't any provinces if there are no people, or an existing civilization.

I was going with your definition that the player can paint a province anywhere they want. Anyway, as you say, one can draw an Intended new provincial area, and let the people populate it.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Alright I'm starting from the begginning since i haven't had a chance to post on this, one of my fav subjects dealing with clash.

Virgin territory:

I think any place that has less than 500 people in a square could constitute 'virgin'
in the sense that there are not enough people to constiutte any sort of civilization on any scale. Some areas l**** Antartica had abosultely no population at all...

Nomad Civs:

Nomad cics should getbonuses to:
Agriculture: Herding Basic Tech
Economy: Trading Basic Tech
Tranportaton basic tech
Better atrtack value with mobile military units dealing with horses and wooden ships.

They would get penaties to:
Agriculture: Farming Basic Tech
Government: Adminstration basic tech
cannot form certain governmentasl types...ie parameter limitations
some diplo opptions greyed out
Cannot mine or do other such similar things

Note: All civs for simplicity should be able to fish and hunt/gather at maximumm potential

Nomads need not have Land Attachment or Traditionalsim values, both to make easier to adap[t...they will always be set to 0/1, whatever is minimal.

Like Minor Civs...i perfer 'Despotic Cixs' they are never at war and they can raid....

Nomad civs would settle and should become Minor/Despotic Civs.'

I personally do not like the horse idea....as far as i see it just makes the model more comples for little benifit.

I agree with mark thee should be 2 units (or 3 if the nomad civ is sea-based). The military units coime from the 'population' unit and are not restricted in their range. IMO these population units should only be so big...after achieing a certain level they split, one becoming the primary, the other secondary...the primary can be moved wherever, but if the secondary is moved too far there is a chance they'd break away like a conquered nomads, except be on very friendly terms...secondary units splitting always create 2 secondary units

Mercenary Units/Militas:
Hring a unit can only be done by settled civs, ie ones based aroiund agriculture. The money they pay is given 1-time only to that civ, 1/2 of it...this can be used to buy supplies in bad times instead of raiding.

Anyone can 'cull' the population for military units though. This way the player may create vast armies on demand, but at the price of population of his civ and current economy and its future growth...there hasto be a limit though...say he can only take 1/3 of the population away (assume neutral gender for now).

Colonization:
Colonists should use the CTL (Current Technologial Level) of the gven area, with some minor variations, not the PTL (Potential Techonologiacal level). The PTL is the maximum level any square can achieve in that civ...the CTL is what the resources allow that civ to achive.

A player should be able to colonize any area they already control (like refugees integrating into a society), reguardless of population density...for places outside the control....it depends because as far as mark's first comment goes, we have no virgin territory so we'd be displacing someone elses civ...i dunno how a player might feel about some other civ colonizing his territroy. He's likely to act more aggresively than historically has happened because he has hindsight to see what almost all inital colonizations have lead to.

I don't like settler units either.

I think we could have 2 types of colonists for new territories, one being automatic, the other player controlled or both.

1> Explorers: These would be automatic...they could be from any level of socitey.

2> Miscreants/Criminals: These are generally of the lower end of society and are put in colonies to get them away from the mainland..

They player should be able to define specific areas to colonize, but the more specific, the less chance or greater cost because the colonists have less of a chance to find the best suitable land.

Now then there is one problem i do have dealing early on with nomad vs. no-nomadic style in that some people would settle down to farm, but move when things got rough, but i can't see how that would be...i mean if the nomad civ reached the point where its agriculautal level was 100% it would be forced to take whatecver quare was there, reguardless of its farming potential.....i don't agreee with having the agriculture as a variable as see my tech reasons above...something else should be used.

[colorrr]

Sorry guys, I wrote this post before I realized I was not reading the last posts on this thread, my pages got a little mixed up, so I guess my ideas have already been discussed. But I leave the original post unedited in case there are some points that might be useful. It's basically equal to Gary's suggestion.


"Maybe this has been suggested before, but I was thinking...
Why build settler units and let the player control them?
That's adding a lot of micromanagement . .

What we could do is allow the player to "zone" a square to be the basis of a new colony. I am not sure if this is what was the idea behind 'planting' colonies.
Then the game would use some kind of algorithm to simulate people migrating from the other colonies to this new one. The amount of people moving could depend upon the natural riches of the new site, religious unrest, etnic unrest, overpopulation etc in the 'mother country', and some player controlled factor, like lowering of taxes for people moving there (that's based on real life policies to settle sparse areas) or some other kind of help etc.

That would take away the whole bulding settlers and moving them around, allowing the game to simulate this -> less micromanagement by the player. Of course we could include ways for the player to micromanage this too if he wants.
Also by restricting the growth of the civilization to a factor of it's current population we could avoid the common but a bit unrealistic settler rushes of the civilization series. Zoning a lot of squares would not necessary mean a lot of new colonies..
It could depend more upon where the zones are. A good fertile, rich terrain will attract more people, while zoning a desert with no mineral riches to exploit would only bring people if the other colonies are really overcrowded.

Looking at history, how big were 'settler units'?
I don't know much about that, but I have this image of the americans settling the wild west, and I picture them like convoys a few people, like a hundred or more maybe, which goes off to search for a new land to settle and cultivate. 5k units I find hard to imagine. Maybe you have some other ideas . . .

Any thoughts on this?

Color"

[axi]

My proposal was for an early implementation, so that we can certify that the mechanisms we create for moving these people from one economy to the other work well. Also, to make the game more interesting for the demo player.

What we will actually do depends on the work of the coders. Unless you want me to point out every goddamn .java file you should write!

LGJ, I believe that nomadic civs should not be different from the normal civs expect in the fact that they are not fixedly connected with certain tiles (all their infrastucture has 100% mobility and they run their production functions with the same kapital and labor but different sites each time they move) and can coexist (while in peace) in the same squares with other tribes/civs while retaining independence.

Their only problem is that they cannot build infraclasses with a percentage of immobility (like roads, fortresses, aqueducts, houses, etc), but they have to use stuff built by others which they have to buy or take by force. Seeing that technology tends to help sedentary populations, they will have to degrade into what are nowdays the gypsies, or settle down. Settling down will have to be a one time decision.

Since we have discussed infrastructure, i feel that for the sake of the nomads, we will have to elaborate on the differences in cost and effects of a fully mobile infraunit (a mobile hospital f.e.) vs. it's immobile counterpart. Sometimes it's a matter of effectiveness, sometimes is a matter of maintenance, sometimes it's a matter of initial cost.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Axi:

I was going with Rodrigo's notion that nomads don't really need an economy in the Clash sense. It can certainly be done if required, I'm just not sure its worth the effort.

Color:

Yeah your ideas seem to at least fit with what me and Gary have in mind. Be good to hear what you think about the specifics of what we've been discussing when you get the chance to read the thing .

[axi]

What effort? You use the same code you have for sedentary civs, while making it possible for players to really play as nomads.

Correspondingly, nomad tribes can have the characteristics of normal tribes.

It seems to me more difficult to make something specially for the nomads. Plus nomadic civs will inherently tend to be simple. We could forbid multiple EGs inside the nomad populations, since EGs tend to be created by migration anyway and joint sovereignty over lands where nomads stay supercedes that.

Another idea is for nomadic civs to be in variable states for each of their economic provinces. That means that while some provinces are normal, some provinces (clans) are nomad. This could give the player a more flexible strategy, while taking care of the size of some nomad empires, which demands provinces. So the Mongols can have Samarkand as their capital and still roam the Asian steps or move into Europe or India for more conquest.

Perhaps this is too revolutionary for our game.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by axi
What effort? You use the same code you have for sedentary civs, while making it possible for players to really play as nomads.

What about all those little restrictions you were talking about? Like...

Their only problem is that they cannot build infraclasses with a percentage of immobility (like roads, fortresses, aqueducts, houses, etc), but they have to use stuff built by others which they have to buy or take by force.

I just have this feeling that a whole lot of complications will come up...

[Lord God Jinnai]

[SIZE=1] LGJ, I believe that nomadic civs should not be different from the normal civs expect in the fact that they are not fixedly connected with certain tiles (all their infrastucture has 100% mobility and they run their production functions with the same kapital and labor but different sites each time they move) and can coexist (while in peace) in the same squares with other tribes/civs while retaining independence.

Their only problem is that they cannot build infraclasses with a percentage of immobility (like roads, fortresses, aqueducts, houses, etc), but they have to use stuff built by others which they have to buy or take by force. Seeing that technology tends to help sedentary populations, they will have to degrade into what are nowdays the gypsies, or settle down. Settling down will have to be a one time decision.

Since we have discussed infrastructure, i feel that for the sake of the nomads, we will have to elaborate on the differences in cost and effects of a fully mobile infraunit (a mobile hospital f.e.) vs. it's immobile counterpart. Sometimes it's a matter of effectiveness, sometimes is a matter of maintenance, sometimes it's a matter of initial cost.

Yes, butmright here your post says there is absolutely no advantage to being a nomad...the cost differances will likely overall favor settled people so what are you offering the player as an adavntage?

As for settling dowm, if its only 1-time, then we must make sure it is in a very good spot...your proposal has it that whenever they reach agriculture 100, they automatically settle dowm, reguardless of their location. Anyway i don't like that idea...here's my counterpropasl:

All nomadic tribes start with an intial rating of settle variable of 1. Every turn this can increase or decrease, depending upon a few factors:
Factor 1: Land Quality
If the tribal unit (not military unit) is on plains or grassland this increases by 2, hills and forest by 1, swamps, mountains 0, deserts and swamps -1 and tundra, icecaps -2 (these are myideas so your free to critisize thjem).
In addition if we use the special symbols or something similar that the civ gam,es use to represent rich areas, variable goes up by +4
Rivers +2, orceans +1

Facotr 2: Agriculture based societies
being near an agricultural based civ, ie what most people considers civilizations, they get a 0-3 variable rate each turn, randomly determined...

Factor 3: Gunpowerder variable
Depending on the time period, basically if any civ they've encounterd uses gunpowder as a weapon, there is an itnital increase of 10 (the first time weapoon gunpowder is found out), and thereafter a base increase of +1 per year. This is to represent the disentigration of the nomdadic tribes aforementioned after the advanet of gunpowder.

Factor 4: Random variable -3 to 3 each turn. This is to refllect the constant changing of moods from day-to-day as nomadic life experiences ups and downs.

Facotr 5: Droughts and Famines:
Anytime this happens there would be an increase of 10.

The maximum is 100. Each turn a nomadic tribe is on a suitable space (to be decided) a roll is checked of d100...if it is lower than the settlement variabvle they tribe settles down. If not, they continue to wander. The player may attempt to 'foprce'; a settlement or not...there should be somekind of check on his power rating to see if he can overrule this...i believe this should only be done for actual players though.

Anyway has anyone reviewed my other comments i know they go back quite a ways.