(TFT) Re: Terrain

[Mark Tapley <mtapley@swri.edu>]

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".


--
						- Mark, 210-379-4635
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Large Asteroids headed toward planets
inhabited by beings that don't have
technology adequate to stop them:

				Think of it as Evolution in Fast-Forward.
=====
Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com.
Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body
"unsubscribe tft"