quote: But first LGJ, I have two questions for you, since you brought this up, did you want hurricane death to be a minimum variance of 0-.01% or 0-1%, after the discovery of meteorology (or a certain level of it)? The reason I'm asking is that you wrote both in two different places; either way is fine with me, I'll just make it whatever you suggest. And second, on disaster affecting research, isn't that the government's (i.e. the player's) choice whether or not to "beef up" R&D of techs that may help prevent disasters (or reduce their effects)? I know that some techs will come from the people, but again isn't it the people's choice whether or not to research this?

quote: Does anyone have a reliable source to get the average Earth temp. from? I pulled 84 off of a web page, but I've visited many others and nearly all have different numbers.

Try just going to someplace that would be reliable that's all i haveto say. Someplace that tracks this would be the best place, not a secondary source if possible.

Also since we're using this stuff, we should start making records of where we get this info if its not common knowledge.

For example, I have already dealt with pollution and radiation extensively in the Ecology model. Also, my proposals for water treatment in tiles would change the way droughts and floods are dealt with.

In addition to these major overlaps, there are a lot of minor things. My proposal for the map generation includes wind vectors that could be used for hurricane movement. I have proposed seven climate sones per hemisphere and the disaster model uses old data and is based on four climate zones per hemisphere.

If we do not resolve these issues now, the two models could lose all hope of working together. I have a proposal for splitting the responsibility so that the two models can work together without conflict or overlap.

Toubado_Koomi has a lot of good ideas for modeling the effects of disasters on the civilization, and I like his plans for this aspect of the model. The ecology model does a good job of modeling the natural environment, but I haven't done very well with modeling how these things affect the people.

So I propose that the ecology model be responsible for generating ecological changes and most natural disasters. The disaster model would then define how these changes and disasters affect the civilization. For issues where man impacts the environment, the disaster model would generate the change and the ecology model would define how the change affects the environment.

For example, the ecology model would generate a drought in an ecological province and define its severity using the NWR, PWR, and vegetation in the province. The disaster model would then take this drought and describe its effect on the people in the province and the civilization.

In the case of pollution, the disaster model would generate the pollution and define its severity. The ecology model would then model how this pollution changes the natural environment.

Global climate changes due to human activity would be a bit more complex. The initial climate change would be defined by the disaster model. The ecology model would then change the natural environment and generate disasters based in the climate change. The disaster model would then describe the impact of these disasters on the civs.

I think that this split would allow the two models to work together with few problems. The information traded between the models would be concise and easily understood, and each sphere of responsibility would be well defined.

If this is acceptable, I will create a third draft of the ecology model based on this new delegation of responsibility. I will add routines for generating disasters and take away the parts that describe how the changes affect the people.

Toubado_Koomi: I'm glad we agree. I'll start working on the revised Ecology model.

Pollution could be a bit tricky. Some of the effects of pollution, like the disease and unhappiness, are independent of the environment. Thus, the disaster model can handle these aspects from start to finish. The consequences of pollution affecting the natural environment would probably be a three step process like global climate changes.

It would probably be easier if the disaster model treats all changes the same way, no matter what caused the changes. If a land value decrease due to pollution is treated the same way as a decrease due to erosion, our jobs will be easier. This shouldn't be too much of a loss in accuracy.

So the basic process would go something like this:

1) Disaster model generates pollution and assigns severity values. Global climate change is also calculated. Direct effects of these are calculated and applied.

2) Ecology model makes changes to the environment due to the human influences calculated in step one. At the same time, all of the natural environmental change routines are run.

3) Disaster model decides how all environmental changes from step 2 affect the civ.

An example would help here, I think I know what you're saying but I'm not positive.

LGJ,

And, like I said, isn't that the people's choice whether or not to invest in more R&D of disaster-preventing techs? After all the people will have a choice in what they devolop right?, it won't be simple you do more of this you do more RP's in that right?

BTW, Richard,

Your post on July 27 2000, is what I meant by a good climate (ecology) model, and good disaster model working together, could create better results than a disaster model alone.

And I just watched a show on discovery channel about hurricanes which stated that wind is the driving force on where they go, I thought it was oceans, just like you LGJ, but maybe we were wrong. Although the point I mentioned about highs and lows still applies, it is mute from the Clash standpoint, so Richard may be right in using wind vectors instead of ocean currents.

Month Based ecology model that includes seasonal variations (required because the game turns will last less than a year)

Lake and ocean farming

Increased farm sites with tech level

Swamp/Forest clearing system

Revised Water and Land calculations

quote: Originally posted by Whitemage on 11-24-2000 03:40 PM This looks like a good model, but keep in mind its not essential. Global warming: I favor the idea of randomly determining a general trend (such as warming/cooling) that will shape the basic patterns. More miner results can be random(though most should be bad; you don’t want players wanting global warming!).

1> I haveto disagree with this because almost every model has a reason to be implimented, even if it is only on the most basic level. Disasters are there for a reason. Their generally random events that the player deals with and those that have more patterns and are more active (such as landslides in Japan, tornadoes in the midwest, volcanic eruptions along the pacific) force societies to evolve to deal with those problems or perish.