[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Migration

[Andrew McGuinness <andrew_mcguinness@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Dec 05, 2000 at 03:40:23PM +0100, Gert Van den Eynde wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Just an idea I had last night after hearing a news item on this: would it be 
> a good thing to introduce the migration of inhabitants in Freeciv ? 
> 

Interesting.  The gameplay of civilisation-series games has been inspired
by the early history of city-states and empires.  Once you get even to
the medieval period, the real world just doesn't work the way the game 
does.  You get continuous migration from rural areas into cities.  This
jumps to a new level when industrialisation comes.  In fact, I have 
heard it claimed that  industrialisation depends on pushing peasants off
the land so they are forced to become factory workers.

In Freeciv, of course, a city includes all the agricultural area
surrounding the city proper, so this drift from rural to urban living
is not really capable of representation (except as the appointing of
specialists, which is not really the same thing).  In fact, even in 
a very advanced Freeciv civilisation, the bulk of the population is
devoted to agriculture and mining, which is a long way from reality.

I don't think you can really do much with the concept of migration
without some representation of the industrial workforce which is almost
always the target of any migration.

The nearest thing in Freeciv to an industrial workforce is the taxman
specialist who produces money, which in Freeciv can be a substitute for
raw materials.  If the gameplay drove civilisations towards a few large
cities, consisting mainly of taxmen, fed by food trade routes from
smaller cities with very productive farming, or from other civilisations,
and the determining factor on the size of the large cities being the rate 
at which population could grow, then migration could be a meaningful
game component.

So, go to it....

[Aside, maybe we need a Freeciv-waffle mailing list for random historical
and political tangents]

> What I had in mind (just ideas, I haven't started looking into the code how 
> to actually do this):
> 
> Internal migration: people move from city to city, depending on some 
> parameters of their original city and their possible destination. Parameters 
> can be: city size, (un)happiness, distance between two cities, city 
> improvements,... Every turn a certain percentage (server option to set the 
> maximum
> value of this, should be not too big, say 0.1-1%) can migrate out of a city. 
> These migrants leave as unhappy citizens and arrive as content in their new 
> home city.... This kind of migration generates no visible units, but movement 
> of these immigrants is ruled by some kind of unit type.....
> 
> Migration between nations: after you have made contact with another nation, 
> migration from your cities to this nation is possible (migrants are added to 
> an immigrant pool and are sent to different cities in this nation depending 
> on the migration parameters, unknown to the player of the original
> nation). Every contact increases the possibility of migration to that nation 
> (sharing of information). When an embassy is established with another nation, 
> migration can happen directly between cities of your nation and cities of the 
> other nation (something like visa or green cards exchange). This
> migration generates units and is visible. (nasty possibility: immigrant units 
> can be attacked ?)...
> 
> Reactions ?
> 
> 
> Have a nice day,
> 
> Gert
> 
> 

-- 
Andrew McGuinness     Luton, UK        andrew_mcguinness@xxxxxxxxxxxxx