DESIGN: Modeling population

[SMIFFGIG]

I voted for simple model for both units and cities.

However ive been thinking hard about what actually made cities have there population, why a city like Bagdad could have such a substantial difference in population compared to the likes of london.

Of course there are a million reasons if you really refined it, why this was the case. However one thing i think is really missing from (any civ game) but in this case ctp2 is native population.

Native Inhabitants/Population

The world isnt and wasnt through history a baren land with no humans for 100's of miles then a 12000 strong City appearing on the horizon. There was and always will be a native population.
I think this should be modeled in CTP2 even if its something simple like a number of natives living in an area (tile) and the information appears when u right click on a tile.
This native population should gradually (as your city grows) become part of your cities population, the larger your city getting the more these natives decline and merge into your cities population (of course they will never fully decrease)

This would add a greater depth to where you want to settle as you will want to check what like the native population is before settling in certain areas. Also having battles within a vercinity of a city would decrease the native population in watever Tile the battle took place (civilian casualties is sadly a part of war) and the larger the battles the more it would decrease. So this would give you incentive to avoid battles taking place on your turf

There could even be some sort of mini map, or map view which displayed different tiles in different colours, each colour representing a different amount of Native inhabitants in each square (Blue being 100-500, green being 501-1000) or something like that.

It would add a whole new level and strategy to building cities
Not only will you be looking for where the best land is, but also where the strategic goods are and also where the Native inhabitant population is large.

It could be taken to another level also, where you may not want to settle to close to certain areas as the local inhabitants are TOO much, and may hold resistance and cause pillaging etc etc.

On a flipside to this you could have an agreeable native population and they could help you, possibly significantly decreasing the cost/time of PW improvements on there areas (Tiles) by lending you a helping hand

Resources could appear when you bulid a city in the vicinity of agreeable native inhabitants as they could teach you the ways of the lands and tell you where local resources are.
A basic description could be shown of the tribe/leader name (or watever it maybe) that currently roam/own the lands you are on

Of course they will not be OVER powering in either way (being helpful or non-helpful) but they will play some part, as they certianly should do!

-SMIFFGIG

[tyrantpimp]

Originally posted by Locutus

tyrantpimp,

Personally, I would never trust any city to the AI. No matter how good it is, it never does quite what I want it to.

I agree but i dont want to be forced to micromanage so if thats the case im more inclined to keep it the same.

[Gilgamensch]

Originally posted by Locutus
Come to think of it, it might even be a possibility to consider to create some farms around a city where an army is disbanded (or just add some PW points).

That would sound better Even as they might retire, they still would be part of the economical model (no not too much discussion here )
And this we might want to make a bit more unit-specific, which would also make it age-specific.

Like ancient units, mainly farms or fish-nets (?)
And if a unit is more advanced you get instead the modern versions of the TI's.

But I see one human possible exploit again, unless we balance it accordingly, instead of upgrading a human might decide to disband his ancient/old units to quickly upgrade a city, which he for example, just created. I am also not sure, if the AI could handle it correctly. So in other words, to get the rings properly improved. Just brings to my head: How shall the computer decide where to place a farm? I wouldn't like to see it placed on a mountain or similar, only because it was free............

after rethinking with my last comment, maybe it isn't such a good idea at all anymore...........

[The Big Mc]

There’s still a problem linking it to real life, yes in the past people did make farms but now they want to retire to open up a bar

[Peter Triggs]

Well, Big Mc, there's another tile improvement for you to do: modern age holiday beach resort. Produces gold, clearly.

[Keygen]

I beleive that we shouldn't follow historical accuracy. Just because in real world, in some eras population was larger than others shouldn't be a reason to find formulas to calculate changes in population sizes according to each era. I think it would be better to focus on the reasons behind the differences in population sizes in that eras in real world. Wars, famine, economical growth, religius believes and others could be factors that affect population.

Regarding the unit model you suggest Locutus, it is not clear if a unit built would decrease the population of the city or not. If that is not the case then it could be a good idea and killed units in the battlefield would realistically represent the historical decrease in overall population of a state in large wars with many casualties. It would certainly add to complexity a bit but I have the feeling that the games of this genre get more complex as the time passes anyway.

Regarding your thoughts you shared with us with the complex system of yours Locutus, and the population allocated to courthouses and city walls, that is already in effect. You can put citizens to happiness, science etc. so it won't add much to complexity. It will expand the current one. Unless of cource you meant something else...

[Flinx]

Originally posted by Keygen
Regarding your thoughts you shared with us with the complex system of yours Locutus, and the population allocated to courthouses and city walls, that is already in effect. You can put citizens to happiness, science etc. so it won't add much to complexity. It will expand the current one. Unless of cource you meant something else...

C3C introduced the policeman; what not also add a paramilitary partisan? We could do this without making any changes to the population model btw.

[edit]Ack! I can't type!

[Gilgamensch]

Originally posted by Keygen
Regarding the unit model you suggest Locutus, it is not clear if a unit built would decrease the population of the city or not. If that is not the case then it could be a good idea and killed units in the battlefield would realistically represent the historical decrease in overall population of a state in large wars with many casualties. It would certainly add to complexity a bit but I have the feeling that the games of this genre get more complex as the time passes anyway.

Sorry to say Keygen, Locutus did mentioned it:

instead of a Legion just costing 6,000 pop, you could assign up to 6,000 people to your unit. The more people, the more expensive the unit would be to build

So he wants to substract the 'unit-cost' from the city. (above is only an example, where he mentioned it).

[Keygen]

Gilgamensch, yes I read that actually but it was not clear to me whether the fore mentioned system was meant only as an upper limit on building units or the population would actually decrease in each draft. In the first case it would be a Civ3 improved model while in the second one a different concept.

[Gilgamensch]

1.) Sorry if I was sounding harsh, was just lack of time

2.) Not sure, how you mean "upper limit on building units or the population would actually decrease in each draft"

3.) Me thinks, he is thinking of different system all complete, but mainly just threw it in for discussion

Only with a proper discussion you can come to a proper result.

[Locutus]

Yes, if you build a Legion unit of 6,000 men, the population of your cities would be reduced by 6,000 as well. I mentioned this specifically in my post.

[child of Thor]

It would be a very interesting thing to playtest - what would you do in the early stages of your empire if you become embroiled in some war? Or how do you think it would effect the player.
I can see it becoming quite a dangerous aspect of the early game - it would make it very easy to be wiped out!(I guess the same for the AI?).

I like the idea, just think we need to think more on the way it is put into practise. I guess it would make the early units much smaller(would there be a way to see how many men were in an army?), so you would have to judge how many men to put into an army, but leave enough behind to keep your population growing at a decent rate(and hwo best to model this)?

Maybe there should be a limit to the amount of men you can recruit depending on overall population(like 1 soilder for every 50 civilians?(and this could be gov dependant?)).

I'm pictureing a game where you have many aggresive AI opponants and before you reach the birth of christ eveyone is so depleted of population the game fizzles out....
Is my fear of it maybe being a possible player-fun killer reasonable? unless it was a well balanced feature?

[Gilgamensch]

Actually it wouldn't be a bad idea, but then we would have to have it also in the support-cost, BUT only for damaged units. It would be rather a question of balancing. It might be interresting to have it in. It WILL make warmongering far harder.

One thing which went through my head:

The number of people returned from an army could depend on your war-status. If it has been peace for ~10 turns and you are not at war with somebody, you would get 80% back, if at war (any) you would only get 15% back.

I know this post would also belong in the other thread for support, but I started here

[Locutus]

Originally posted by child of Thor
It would be a very interesting thing to playtest - what would you do in the early stages of your empire if you become embroiled in some war? Or how do you think it would effect the player.
I can see it becoming quite a dangerous aspect of the early game - it would make it very easy to be wiped out!(I guess the same for the AI?).

I like the idea, just think we need to think more on the way it is put into practise. I guess it would make the early units much smaller(would there be a way to see how many men were in an army?), so you would have to judge how many men to put into an army, but leave enough behind to keep your population growing at a decent rate(and hwo best to model this)?

I was considering to make a prototype for testing this, but currently I'm already working on a prototype for a map-generator using tectonic plates (or at least I was until I got distracted by RL stuff), so the population system will have to wait a while longer.

Balance will be very important, and early units will indeed have to be quite small (a Warrior would have to be less than 1,000 men for sure, possibly only 100 -- but much depends on the initial size of a city as well: 10,000 or 2,000 is a huge difference in the first few dozen turns).

Maybe there should be a limit to the amount of men you can recruit depending on overall population(like 1 soilder for every 50 civilians?(and this could be gov dependant?)).

That would certainly be a good idea to consider.

[Gilgamensch]

The limit shall be more on a empire scale. But me thinks that an absolute max of 50% shall be used. As Locutus and me have/had discussion on this subjects (which we will continue ) I think he will disagree. The reason why I used this figure is mainly: If somebody wants to make

Re-thought:

We shall make it government-specific:

Like Fascist: max 50%
Democracy: max 1%

This are mainly %'s to discuss and my suggestions. Reason for those differences would be that it matches better with history and would better reflect the ideas behind those ideologies.

Just a thought.