Openciv3 - Population

[amjayee]

Population

Created: May 23rd 2000
Updated: -

There is a popular demand for a better population system. This is a description of a system that intends to satisfy that demand. I will be updating this when things are discussed and decided. From the beginning of the description you can see, when it was updated, and what was changed.

The key idea is to use "population units". Each tile could have several PU's. All the individuals in the PU belong to the same "group". Each group has these things in common:

-ethnicity (this means to what tribe they originally belonged to)
-religion (regardless of how the religions are handled)
-location (in same tile)
-owner (the civ that "owns" them; this can be also none)
-controller (the city that controls them; this can be also none)

In every tile there is only one PU belonging to the same group. So, the amount of individuals is not any fixed number, but rather the actual amount of people.

Every PU has also some properties specific to it:

-amount: the total amount of individuals
-reproduction: the net amount of new individuals produced per turn (the net amount means the amount of new-born members reaching adult age, excluding the members dying naturally)
-happiness: this is the average value describing how content the people are to their living conditions
-age structure/workforce %: either a simple percentage of people in the working group, or the amount of children, women, men, and seniors.
-professions: the amount of people exercisig each profession
-workhours: the amount of hours spent working per year
-creative energy: a figure showing the "free time activity" of the PU
-efficiency: the percentage of workhours used for actual work

If the PU hasn't got a controlling city, they are independent, but still produce stuff to the region they belong to. IF it hasn't got an owner civ, they work only to get living for themselves. This is mainly for primitive tribes.

When a city or tile is conquered, the PU's in it preserve their ethnical identity. At certain point, some citizens may "change" their identity (when new generations start to born) and their original ethnical group loses members to the conquerer group. Some kind of "immigration" between ethnicities. This is affected by how the host population treats the conqured one, among other things.

In certain situations it might be possible that two populations merge forming an entirely new ethnicity. This could happen for example when the two populations have same rights, and the other pop isn't very much smaller. This would be especially likely, if the populations belong to a region that declares independency from some other nation - like in America. It will take some time (dozens of turns) for the new ethnicity to create its unique culture.

I hope I can update this soon. -amjayee

[Victor Galis]

It sounds like a nice idea. Perhaps, most of these details could be kept hidden from the user, to keep the game a little simpler (or perhaps just until the invention of the census.)

I like most ideas that involve population as an actual number, not some abstract number of points (i.e. 1 million, not 7 or whatever). I had some ideas about this somewhere, I'll see if I can dig them up when I go back to California in two weeks.

[The Joker]

I like all these ideas.

But for me the very best we could do to city ressource management is to let the computer handle it all. I don't want to move around people on some squares trying to get the most ressources from them. In stead I would like for you to just choose the percentage of people in the city working with certain things (like percentage producing food, working in the factories, administrating the empire, ressearching etc). Ideally the 21 squares system would be abandoned, and replaced with a more realistic system involving less micromanagement.

If we remove most of the micromanagement from the cities and include armies to reduse the boring unit movement (as you would be able to move several units as one) we would be able to give the player several new and funnier tasks, like domestic politics (negotiating with your people when doing things if you were a democracy and a constant need to deal with surpressed ethnic groups to avoid the empire falling apart), global ressource management (like deciding what to use your energy on) and WAY expanded diplomacy.

[amjayee]

Victor and Joker:

I'm happy to get positive feedback for the idea. Victor, send the text to this thread if you fínd it.

One of the key ideas in the population system is, that the population works _independently_. Free citizens cannot be told what to do - the players build a world, and the people try to make their living in it. Players to try to control the people - there are two ways of doing it. Either by fear (forcing the people to slavery) or by keeping them happy. The first requires lots of money and resources for upkeeping a large army and security force. The second is difficult, because it's hard to please the people. Mostly players end up with something between these two.

So, there will be _no_ need for moving people around or other micromanagement. Moreover, there's no way of doing this. You can give direct orders to slaves only.

I'm not excactly sure how to deal with production, but most propably that's done by ordering the governors/mayors increase production of x, or even order to produce x amount of y per year. Then, governors try to fulfill your commands as they can. Also, there could be a possibility for the micromanagers to set the excact amounts of production. It would be done with sliders; there would be a "pool" of work the citizens can give. If players wants more, for a turn or so the citizens are given extra work. Then, workers start to immigrate to the city from nearby area. If citizens work too hard for too long time, they will become unhappy.

There will not be the city radius used in civ2. Instead, each city can control certain amount of squares, based on its size. From that area, all production is transfered to the city. The tile controlling can automatic, or player can order the city to take control of certain area. The farther the controlled tiles are from the city, the more waste and corruption occurs.

All population properties are hidden from the player; he does not need to bother about them. If he isn't interested even in the excact amount of people, he doesn't need to find it out - local government takes care of all tasks the player isn't interested in. But, some people have shown interest in charts and statistics in the game. So, there will be a possibility for the micromanagers to view all stats of the population and other things (the stats might be very rough and even false in ancient times, evolving into excact counts of modern times) but no-one has to read anything he is not interested in.

I completely agree with Joker about reducing micromanagement, and adding some more interesting tasks, requiring real strategy. This will be done by adding lots of detail, but also adding so good AI, that player can leave the details he isn't interested in to it, and concentrate on global strategies. This is also more realistic; no ruler has been able to deal with everything himself, except in small kingdoms. But, all the details are also for players to manage, if they want. It will take some time though. Also it might be possible that this results in slightly better results than with ai.

I will refine my population ideas in few days.

[Guildmaster]

Question...
How do you plan on building cities? I hope you don't expect us to move those retarded settlers to a certain point and hit "B"

Cities build themselves. You mentioned the sims as being independant, I think that's a great idea. But on the same tolken you can't force people to live in cities if they don't want to. So my thinking is, to have cities build themselves based on certain variables. These would be, readiness of food (based on a variable between agriculture and infastructure) also proximity to stuff, crossroads, strategic locations, etc. Of course you CAN build cities on purpose, but then if nobody wants to live there that's your problem. Take Gainesville for example... it was nothing more than a place for farmers to get feed and seed and stuff until the state came in and built an agricultural college in UF. The college grew and with it the town. Today it's what we call a college town, not much going on. Compare that to Orlando which is the corporate headquarters for half the companies in the nation, a great big convention center, also we like to call it "Theme Park Mecca" and etc. That brings me to Mecca... a thriving metropolis simply due to a religion. Motor City Detroit, Modena, Hiroshima, all cities build upon the auto industry. Cities pop up when there is a military base. Whrever there are people, there are more people to support those people. Coastal cities also have a great advantage in that they are often port cities. And let's not factor out TOURISM. New Orleans, Aspen, San Francisco, Jacarta, Paris, Rome, countless cities all across the globe revolve around the tourism industry. While mountains don't produce much food, they might have good ski resorts. While swamps aren't much use either industrial or agricultural, the alligator tours of Louisianna and south Florida can be quite lucrative. But anyway I was talking about cities.

You can commission the building of something like a university or a military base, or you can put a capitol someplace. That would bring a concentration of people in one place and call it a city. The game should also consider trade routes, terrain, proximity to certain terrain, economy, agriculture, and numerous other variables and automatically build cities accordingly. Look where Jerusalem is, located in a bottleneck of ocean and mountain where Africa, Europe and Asia all come together. And then there's colonies... once established they become cities, but that doesn't affect growth. They could jusy die out if no one wants to live there.

Now you can appoint viceroys for these cities or you can let the people elect a mayor. I don't know how that works yet but I will think on it.

[amjayee]

Guildmaster:

Thanks for your very good message. I think the population/city/economy etc. systems should be able to handle all these things you pointed out; industry, tourism etc. increasing the importance of cities, and so forth.

I agree that cities should not be built with settlers. There could be these choices, as you pointed out:

1. Citizens build a city in some important location, like near a military base or mining station. Also strategical importance is taken into account.

2. You can order your people to build a city with the listed improvements and infrastructure. People move to the spot chosen by you (invisibly, or a settler unit appears) and build the city. The builders will stay in the new city as citizens, but if the spot appears to be lousy, they will move away. If it's good, more people will move in.

Anything else?

About the government of the cities, you could choose how the city will be led separately for each city, region-wise or civ-wise. There are numerous possibilities - viceroy, vassal, mayor... also the form of government, as with the whole civilization.

You seem to be very knowledged. What's your education? It is good to have you with us in the design team. I'm working on the first draft of the gameplay design documentation. I will make it in html. I try to organize my tasks so, that I can finish the document during this weekend. Then it will be much easier to continue the design work.

[Victor Galis]

I guess this is where this goes:

Suggestions for a major city overhaul:

Instead of having sizes starting with 1 and going up, they should have a population with far more increments. A settler unit might for instance bring 10,000 people. Then next turn the City might have 10,100 or 10,200 people.

City growth should not only depend on food surplus, but also taxation and other factors. If you build up the city as a center of trade it should grow faster. There are several factors which have a major impact on city size. These include the presence of the national or Imperial government, the opportunity for trade and the availability of manufacturing work. (Essentially city size is determined by the availability of work and patronage.) Very successful cities will outgrow the food available locally and have to organize food imports or face riots from the hungry citizens. (In the case of ancient Rome and Constantinople, the providing food became the single most important domestic problem facing the Imperial government as the food riots could result in a change of emperor).

The implications of this are that a cities size is determined by the improvements within the city and its trade links. Thus building say a marketplace would increase the size of a city as would building a harbor. The size of a capitol city would in addition be affected by the size of the empire (ie the number of cities a player controls). The food supply becomes important in defining the upper limit on city size. Food supplies would automatically be drained from cities with a surplus in the same province.

After the city reaches a certain size, suburbs should pop up around the city. Suburbs would act as a terrain improvement and expand the radius. Enemy troops, if they capture the suburb, could slaughter civilians reducing the population.

Bring back random events like Earthquakes, fires, plagues, but make them less random. SMAC does this, Civ1 does this. I feel it could be done better.

I like the multiple production idea. Private citizens could contribute depending on your government. For instance, a Communist government could force its citizens to work on a big project. A capitalist govt's citizens might build stores and etc. on their own (raising taxes). Also weapons should be manufactured at some sort of weapons facility. Thus new units will be created by drafting people once you have enough weapons/equipment to equip them. A democracy might not be able to draft, and need to rely on volunteers.

Trade routes could be revamped. Keep SMAC's no caravan system, but make individual trade routes form city A to city B (depending on resources near those cities). Thus you would trade with foreign civs automatically if and only if they have something you want, and vice versa. The more technologically inferior of the two civs would have a chance to acquire techs the process of trading with a superior civ. The odds of this based on the amount of trade.

Not every city would look alike for even the same civ. Depending on terrain and specialization (if any) a city could look slightly or totally different.

I would suggest that the number of people to harvest a single square would be fairly constant, but the number of people who have to run the city and do other random tasks (therefore not available to the city for work) would rise exponentially with size and tech level. Also a private sector would eat up population. Then the armories and resource processing would take up the remaining population.

Also, the production in a city should be however many workers you assign to it, as long as you have resources to build with. A worker on production is one less worker harvesting a field or mining. Also, raw resources would need to be processed (also using up workers). For example, raw copper and raw tin, would need to be smelted into bronze, before they could be used. All resources processed would require a facility.

All cities within a province (if implemented) would share resources. This would simulate internal trade and cut back a little on the micromanagement created by the new resource system in which raw resources would have to be processed.

“This sounds like a really exciting idea, but it would have to be done well to avoid an excess of micromanagement.”
-TuringMan

Things like subsidizing and tariffs can also be introduced to affect trade and therefore city growth. This inevitably creates a more realistic game and simulates the problems that civilizations face from inside, not just outside.

Happiness will be independent of occupation. Happiness, Contentment, and Unhappiness would be expressed as percentages. (For example a city will have Happy: 3% Content: 94% Unhappy: 3%) Cities will riot when unhappiness tops 50%, but production will suffer after it tops 10%, getting progressively worse until it hits 50%.

If a city is under attack during a war, and it does not fall immediately, why not have some population points flee to neighboring cities that belong to the same nation or a neutral nation as refugees? When a city is captured, have more population go away in some cases, such as prominent citizens fleeing an enemy onslaught.

Those that flee to a nation other than the original one become drones or unhappy citizens in the city for several turns before they are assimilated.

Those that flee to another city of the same original nation become unhappy in the first turn, content again, but unhappy if the city is lost and if the city isn't taken back.

Additionally, militia units would spring up in the city that was threatened with capture. These could make the difference between winning and losing in a close battle, but an overwhelmed city will fall anyway. Additionally, a liberating army could get the militia on its side as opposed to the defenders.

“I think it would add stress to a war situation, making it wise to be able to defend oneself well, but this could work, and it would simulate the effect of the human civilian cost of war.”
-Q Cubed


This stuff comes from a Civ3 list which never was sent.

[Maniac]

Amjayee, in your population system PU's live each on their own terrain tile, and not really in the city. May I ask what advantages that has? I don't really see any, just that it would be a heavy RAM buster to store the information of exactly how many people are on each individual tile, not to forget with all those population characteristics...

I don't see what's the problem with them just all being in the city. Ethnicity and religion could be represented by a percentage of the overall city populace.

[Guildmaster]

The advantage of having population on the map squares spread out as opposed to in the cities:
this allows for a greater possibility of civ developing. You could have two nations with the same landmass and same population, but one has much larger cities than the other. This difference allows for the advantages of being able to differentiate between an agrarian population and an urban one. Why would you do this? You cross-reference this with your agricultural technology index to get your food supply. You get to look at a really cool demographics sheet which gives you a map showing population densities, etc. Also, it aids in the creation of cities, in that areas of high-density agrarian culture (ie. lots of farmers) small cities are needed to supply farmers with feed and fertilizer and stuff. Use this data to decide when enough sims have congregated at one point to justify calling it a city. Obviously a square with a higher density has a greater chance of founding a city. To do this you also need to know the density of adjacent squares and the proximity to other cities.
Also, when handing over territory to opponents (or getting it taken from you) it tells how many of your citizens are in occupied territory and thus, how many rebels pop up. If the population is 100% urban, there aren't any guerillas unless you take the major city.

[amjayee]

Sorry, I haven't been able to answer to messages for some days. I agree with Guildmaster. That's why I made the population system like that. More things to defend it:

1. Even during the 19th century, most of the people in Europe lived outside cities. I can't recall the excact numbers, but it was the clear majority.

2. Differences between agraric and urban societies are very large.

3. People living on the tiles instead in the cities only makes it possible to model diseases and total war much more realistically.

4. It is true that this system will take more memory than the civ2 system, but also it's true game players also have more memory in their computers. And since this game is about building a world and ruling people, the map and population systems need to be emphasized.