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(TFT) Re: Terrain



At 16:38 -0400 5/3/08, Jay wrote:
I'm going to make a BIG assumption and say that the force of my muscels is basicly proportional to my size.

I'd say to mass, which goes like (roughly) (height)^3 (that is, to the third power).

For a human walking, this is basicly the height of my legs, and my 2 legs basicly equal my height. The force of my muscels working against air resistance along a flat surface comes out to V~L, where V = speed and L = height.

Air drag should be proportional to v^2 and to frontal area, which is proportional to (height)^2.

However, air drag is negligible for a walking man - practically all the energy lost is lost to internal muscle and joint resistance and footwear and walking surface non-elastic compression. Even at a full sprint, air drag is only a small part of the picture. Not until you are on a bicycle does air drag come to dominate. Consider how fast the wind has to be blowing in your face before you notice it - a 20 mph wind will slow you down walking, but not much, and a 10 mph wind will just keep you cool. 10 mph is equivalent to running 6-minute miles.

At 16:38 -0400 5/3/08, Jay wrote:
Top speeds for downhill skiers and estimates of max fall speeds for humans are both around 140mph, can I use this as a figure for air resistance?

Yeah, that's where air drag is as strong as gravity. Scale down by square of velocity and you've got it (ie at 10 mph, drag is 1/196 times as strong).

I suspect I'm not helping in your effort to make workable, simple approximations; please ignore as appropriate.


At 16:38 -0400 5/3/08, Jay wrote:
Now what I'm asking here is what are the methods of controlling Populations?
I am VERY Machivellian on this point.

	The classic reference. I assume you have read "The Prince" at least?
There are many counter-examples; "The Last Emperor", Queens Victoria and Elizabeth, Czar Nicholas (the last) (in a different way), etc. At the lowest level, a King simply has to convince his populace that they are better off living under his rule than trying to fight him. That could be simple repression, just as easily as some sort of social contract. A Kingdom that works that way will be pretty susceptible to conquest, since a large fraction of its military might will be taken up simply with suppression of rebellion. A popular King, or Queen, could command *quite* a lot more loyalty by convincing the populace that (s)he actually had their best interests at heart; as Machiavelli notes, execution of corrupt or over-authoritarian officials, institution of justice, and fear of external threats will all contribute to this. I suspect that public works like the Coliseum, Libraries, roads, etc. could do so as well, but probably at a higher cost/benefit ratio. As far as eating, there's a bit of a choice; most years in most places, the King simply had to *let* the population eat; the French nobility learned the hard way that taxing too heavily interfered with the peasant's ability to feed themselves. On the other extreme are the biblical stories of a Prophet/King insisting on storing up 7 years' worth of food to stave off starvation during a coming famine. In game terms, such a King would have to have perfect foreknowledge of large-scale weather patterns *as well* as a whole lot of charisma or some other serious hold on the population's attention to get *that* to work.

In gaming terms, some simple models are encoded in the rules for "After the Holocaust" (I think) and "Godsfire", 80's-era boardgames. I can write simple descriptions if those will help. There are many computer games with slightly more complex models; I suspect "HAMURABI.BAS" may be the first; I know there's a model in "Nobunaga's Ambition".


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