Civilization and War

I saw the topic on Scaling by Tenebrarum, and would have posted had it not been two years old. I do not know if the problem has been taken care of, and if it has, let me know, but under the premise that it is not, then I will bring it back up, as well as advancing civilization as a whole. I have seen the squad editor, but absolutely nothing on squad sizes.

To begin, we will have the Awakening stage, where you and a pack of your species have learned basic fundamentals in tool making and now have weaponry to better fight off aggressors and hunt prey, thus starting the Strategy mode, this we know.

Normally, it would be difficult for a large group of creatures, i.e. fifty or more, to survive at this point, because we'd have to assume that these creatures are nomadic. Nomadic, of course, means that they have no place to live, or can not live in one place for too long, and must therefore continuously move on their way.

It was not possible for early humans to settle down and one place, because they did not have a much needed understanding, domestication. Using domestication, humans were able to create the clothes and food they needed throughout the year using the animals and plants. In Thrive, with our aliens, it should be no different. I've seen discussions on how being a domesticated animal could be made fun, and I'm assuming there is already a tech for it, and if not, there should be. So now we can settle down in one spot.

Settling down reduces casualties from lack of resources and exhaustion, and predation therefore, thus allowing the population of the tribe to rise. Then there's another tribe discovered, of your species or another's, depending on the computer. Effectively, you're competing for the same resources, wood and stone for the tools and weapons. If you went the friendly way, then you could effectively share the resources, for a while anyway...Or you could get rid of future competition...This is where the first instance of scaling comes in. There would be so few soldiers that you could possibly render to the last wrinkle(But we're okay since their all clones). But effectively, you could control each individually, or in tiny squads consisting of five or six, and as the population continues to grow, you can get a larger army.

Eventually, you're tribe has become large, and could have found one of the most precious objects for warfare...metal. They find it to be strong when smelted, done using the heat of fire, much more deadly than a sharp rock on a stick. You enter the early ages of the Metal era. This is effectively the beginning of the Medieval ages.

So we can have maybe up to a hundred or more soldiers. This is where scaling of both cities and armies come into play. Also, the question on if you can only get cities through war, or found your own. (Can you?)

This is basically tribal stage on a larger, more advanced scale, as you keep advancing and growing your kingdom. The strength of many larger empires soon becomes clear as the smaller ones are weeded out. This is where we are talking about a possible thousands of units in one army...A squad of five or six won't cut it. This is where the problem comes in. We can do like the Hobbit flash game on facebook, where we have one avatar representing a whole number of them,or we could make it more realistic but take more of a tole on the processor, by going Total War on it...How are you guys doing this for free?

If we do it the first way, we effectively remove the realism, without killing the coders, designers, and engine to render every soldier, every flying arrow, and every swing of the sword, not only that, but having to render them as the species would be, whether it be a two legged bird man or six legged insect creature. If we do it like Total War Two, that effectively depends on the engine, this is confusing me right now, as I don't understand processors and engines, but what I do understand is the problem of rendering an individual alien creature that no one had seen before, and how it would handle a weapon. The computer would have to generate it based on how they were designed to fight as animals, unless we want to add in a selection for an editor on how a creature should use a sword, shield, bow and arrow, or other weapon. Top it all with how the armies move about, as in if it's open world or not.

Effectively, this problem will persist for the rest of the game, with the armies only getting larger as more and more individuals are born into an empire, grow up, and take up arms for the emperor.

Effectively, the cities will just grow depending on their individual populations, and as the tech advances, the buildings would as well.

The problem is effectively wiped out at space stage, as the grouping idea for star systems made by...I don't remember who now, wipes it out.

But what about space battles? Humans aren't that far along yet, and won't be in our life times, but it's always been seen as fleets of carriers with fighters in them, as if it were just a battle at sea. But in another less well made game, it was just an individual ship. If the player isn't controlling a ship directly, like in aforementioned badly made game, then this isn't really any problem when you send ships, be it a single one or a fleet. This begs the question to the aforementioned but not discussed open world, now galactic.

The Total War series solved this problem by reducing their world to a map, with armies represented as a man carrying the banner of their kingdom. Upon entering a battle, the game generates a battlefield and the armies, with static casualties from battles before. In Thrive, this is possible, but probability is debatable.

In Space stage, we can't do that. We'd have to literally know everything about our species' galaxy, but we only could in God mode, which is a big, fat no at this point.

This is just to get the brains buzzing on how this should work, if it hasn't been figured out.

Yes, most of the transition to the Strategy Mode based stages is already covered.

The best way to currently predict the scale is is using our knowledge of the surface area of a planet. The average planet will have a surface area equal to that of Manhattan. Manhattan has a population of approx. 1.6 million. Then we find all the factors that reduce this. Assuming its Earth, that means 2/3 of the planet is ocean. Of the remaining land, let's say 5% is covered with urban development. Let's say there are about 10 nations on the planet. Each has 3 cities.

That means a world population of 26,666 people. An average population of 2,666 people per nation, and about 889 people per city. In America, one of the world's most militaristic nations, only about 1% of the population serves in the military. That means each nation will have a total army size of about 26 people.

Now this sounds tiny, and it is. That's why this is a game, so we will be pushing the limits wherever possible to increase this number. Manhattan has a pop. of 1.6 million, but we're going to be increasing population density, so let's put it at around 3 million. Also, the percent of people as soldiers will probably be wayy higher, something like 30%.

That means a world population of 50,000. Average national population of 5,000 people. City population of 1667. Each nation's army at 1500.

Definitely better than 26, but still quite low. I think we could even push the population density a bit higher up again, to get this number up. However, it's not a bad number, considering how it is about the size of an army on "Large" settings in Total War. 

In terms of the toll of battles of this magnitude on the game engine, there will be several tricks we can use to ease this process. Total War un-renders units that are not on the screen or are far away. It becomes quite noticeable with higher resolutions. Same with Thrive. Anything the player doesn't see does not have to be rendered or simulated. However, an overworld/campaign map would not be a good solution. It would invalidate so many gameplay features its not worth the trouble, or lack thereof.

I don't know what you mean by saying we have to know everything about space stage, but battles will most likely be modeled in whatever results from the parameters of the game. It is really up to the player and the AI whether to build navy fleets or go solo. What we can do is alter the parameters to produce different results, but I think what's important is that the AI and the player will adapt to each other, and evolve in a sense, and so each game would produce unique tactics, units, and technology.

The scaling with 26 sounds reasonable in tribe. 1500 isn't too small, that's about the size of my armies in Total War.

What I meant about space was that we always just guess at how an 'interstellar military' will work. I do also believe Spore was correct in unifying a planet to make Space travel possible, but only because a war could ruin any work being done on a space vessel.

Well guessing is the best we can do, since we don't know the future.

There is no requirement to planetary unification to reach space, and imposing one to me seems like the wrong idea. Although it would definitely be easier for the player to have the entire planet's resources at his disposal for building space technology, that's not to say we can forcefully stop the player from progressing past that point by any other means.

Yes, I know you can't be forced to continue or to stop. But planetary unification would definitely be easier and quicker, so as to not have to worry about a threat to your advance.

"The Lizardmen of Geckron-3 have made it into space! Wait..Wait...They just blew up their own homeworld in a massive war. Oh well, moving on."

You wouldn't want something like that happening, eh?

No. I'm not doubting the advantage of planetary unification.

If you don't unify your planet, its up to you to keep the other civs on your planet at bay, or have them as allies. I think it would interesting to see space nations homeword's collapse in civil war.

Remember that by the time we hit space stage we will be many more years down the line and I think computers will probably be able to handle what we have in mind. Especially when you consider Moore's Law that computer processing power doubles every two years.

Moore's law is about to stop being true, as we have hit the limit for miniaturization (a component can't be smaller than a few atoms). However, higher-end computers of today will hopefully become the norm in some years.

You can get to space even if the planet is not unified. Cold war's space race anyone? It is harder, though, and even harder if you are in an open war.

Of course, if the leaders of those other nations are reasonable (always allow for crazy), then they will be intimidated by the superior technology of a space-stage nation on their planet. If not then at least it will be a deterrent for attacking the more advanced nation.

Would it be possible for nations on a planet to ally up and unify as one space faring nation? I'm thinking like the Alliance in Mass Effect. Though I can't think how this could be implemented.

Yes, perfectly possible.