Lychee's Mega Suggestion Thread (On Trade, Technology, and More)

lychee · 2019-05-13 15:32:52

RECONSIDERING WATER SCARCITY:

Currently, the game is designed such that water scarcity is the primary motivating factor for technology advancement.

Because of this design feature, it doesn't make sense to have rivers (=unlimited fresh water), and suddenly the world of OHOL is kind of backwards, bizarre, and kind of weird. The logic is just strange.

In this post, I'll discuss ways that we can have motivations for technology advancement without depending entirely on water scarcity.

HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION A: INVERT SOIL AND WATER SCARCITY:

Suppose that we reversed the scarcity of fertile soil and water in the game . Let's make water unlimited and soil limited.

To do this, it's easy -- kill compost. Compost would not longer be low-tech.

The presence of high-quality fertile soil has always been a greater challenge for human civilization in history.

Of course, it's easy to start a farm anywhere, but the fertility of the soil depletes rapidly over time. We've struggled with this even up to the 20th Century, where non-sustainable farming practices led to the Dust Bowls of the 1930's.

Civilizations have struggled with soil fertility trough all of history.

Mass sheep compost... as far as I know, wasn't really a valid strategy because (a) there's no way you have enough sheep to produce enough poop to cover the farms of an entire civilization, (b) sheep eat grass and you have no grazing area around towns -- hence shepherds and nomadic sheep farmers), and (c) poop didn't produce /enough/ fertilization value so still everyone worried about soil quality even after the family cow pooped on the fields.

One of the earliest methods to restore fertility to soil was the Slash-and-burn method. Basically, you set fire to a forest to clear the land and fertilize the soil.

Old civilizations depended on flood cycles of rivers.

In short, soil has always been more important to sustainability than water. Water, when it existed, was considered unlimited -- until after hundreds of years maybe the rivers have shifted or the lake has dried up (however these changes occur over hundreds/thousands of years). However, this isn't an inherent feature of short-term water scarcity. It's more of a matter of geography.

As a result, my suggestion is to make water unlimited (even if it's scarce in terms of how often it appears), and instead bring a greater focus on soil exhaustion and soil tech. And also restrict the number of valid tiles farming can be performed on (it makes no sense you can farm in arctic biomes).

Since natural resources are exhausted so fast in OHOL, transportation should be the strongest motivation for technology advancement.

Players should be developing river barges or trains to the the iron bonanza or ocean fishery (lots of fish meal fertilizer), and moving large quantities of goods to sustain a farming settlement. However, farms shouldn't be possible to develop near oceans because of the salinity of soil. Also it shouldn't be easy to mass-sheep fertilize a farm, because sheep should eat tons and tons of grass.

All of these things (combined with human strain) should really help add to urgency and excitement to the game, promote trade, and technology advancement without explicitly forcing water technology.

lychee · 2019-05-13 15:48:44

Some ways to balance the economies of a few different types of settlements.

River Farming Settlement:
- Easiest place for an Eve to settle in the short term
- Can grow a large diversity of foods
- Long term issues with soil fertility
- No easy sources of fertilizer

Grasslands Nomads:
- Can have lots of sheep; having sheep should be enough to live a basic life
- Sheep eat grass rapidly, so must move and herd the flock constantly
- Cannot build fixed settlement, therefore restricted in ability to advance technology without trade/violence
- Grass respawns over time

Fishing Village:
- Only place to fish; will have lots of boats (boats great for transporting goods up rivers)
- Can not farm
- Not much fresh water, but since players aren't farming the water consumption is less severe
- Not much variety to diet, but life should be sustainable here
- Incentive to trade with farming villages (fertilizer <=> diverse foods)

Mountain Village:
- Abundant sources of ores and metals, focus on mining industry
- Cannot farm here; may be able to hunt for food
- Lots of wildlife - should be renewable (kind of like family rabbit holes)
- ABSOLUTELY DEPENDENT on trade with other groups for food
- Imagine sending your sun with a barge full of ore and telling him to come back with food -- very powerful incentive

-------------

A few things necessary to make this work:
* Need transportation of large quantities of stuff. One large shipment of food should be sufficient to sustain a non-farming village for approximately a generation. Cheapest low-tech way would be with rivers/oceans (but rivers are fixed geographically). Trains would allow the development of routes to more defined places.
* Complete change to sheep mechanics and nerf of compost
* Restriction on places farming could occur, expansion of biomes

lychee · 2019-05-13 16:21:42

PROPOSAL 14: BIOME-RESTRICTED CROPS

Certain crops should only be plantable in certain biomes.

I kind of have this vision of massive wheat trade -- people shipping wheat here and there -- because wheat can't be grown in lots of biomes (e.g. mountain, sea-side, not enough water in prarie) and also because wheat is important for the best recipes (e.g pies).

Pies are great because they have multiple portions and can go in backpacks. They're great for a player's time efficiency.

In contrast, a lot of food in other biomes wouldn't be as great for time efficiency. For instance, a fishing village might have a lot of fish, but maybe they don't restore a lot of food and they're easy to feel "meh" about. Additionally, it wouldn't be possible to put four serving of fish into a BP/plate, so it's a hassle to always go back for more food.

In the past, stock markets first developed on speculation of grain prices.

Trade of grain was one of the most prominent features of ancient civilizations -- and civilizations had strong incentives to build "granaries" (for grain) and stockpile in case of famine or poor harvests.

lychee · 2019-05-13 21:08:20

PROPOSAL 15: FERTILITY RITUALS

People make altars in the game already so might as well have a fertility ritual.

Was a thing in history (people loved that kind of thing -- it's also the reason for the tradition why people throw rice at weddings)... so fertility ritual could really help towns when they're praying to have babies.

lychee · 2019-05-14 14:10:13

WHY PEOPLE BUILD WALLS

If OHOL is meant to be a simulation of human society (note: key word "if" -- I'm starting to increasingly believe it's not meant to be -- I had a bad dream last night with regards to massacres/wars -- because inevitably war is associated with horrific things including sexual violence :c), one thing Jason is correct about is that virtually all ancient civilizations had walls.

Ancient humans built walls around their cities since the earliest times.

Note that a city wall isn't exactly the same as a border wall -- and in fact border walls were comparatively rare (for obvious reasons: in the sense that what a crazy amount would it cost to build a border wall!)

In either case, I took to myself to start looking deeper into the reason why cities had walls. For most articles I read online, the most common reason for walls was for security and defense against marauders/animals. There were also some sources that mentioned that walls were important as a form of surveillance and immigration control. It was easiest to tax people at the city gates. Additionally, walls/gates were convenient for keeping people in the city when you didn't want them to leave (think Berlin Wall, and stuff like that happened more often in history than you might expect).

One interesting article that I read argued that contrary to the popular notion that the first walls
(pre-Bronze Age) were built for military protection, there was a massive social purpose and motive to building walls. I really liked this general model, so I'll spend some time discussing this in some greater detail.

When we contemplate the origin of early city and village walls, it's important to remember that they were being built at a time when walls themselves were a relatively new invention. Hunter-gatherer groups began living year-round in settlements roughly 10-12 thousand years ago. This move from a nomadic life, where we owned nothing but what we could carry, set off what could be called a domestic revolution. Suddenly, people began building permanent hearths, planting farms, and constructing homes.
These villagers' ancestors may have had light tents, but Neolithic people had walls of mud, wood and thatch. They could hide from their neighbors. For the first time, people could begin to develop a sense of privacy. In Peter J. Wilson's book The Domestication of the Human Species, the anthropologist argues that humans first walls were probably a social or cultural development. They allowed people to develop a sense of individual and group identity in villages and cities that grew far beyond the size of any hunter-gatherer group. It's possible that humans needed walls to deal with the psychological stress of living in bigger groups; they gave people separate spaces where they could cool off from conflicts or share their feelings without social judgments.
In the years since Wilson's book came out, archaeologists have confirmed that many city walls appear to serve a social purpose rather than a military one.
In the Neolithic village Ilıpınar, located in the Anatolian region of Turkey, walls helped villagers consolidate their identity as a community. These people's biggest threat was not a military incursion, but fragmentation into hunter-gatherer groups. And indeed, it seems that Ilıpınar's inhabitants did eventually return to a semi-nomadic way of life. The village was slowly abandoned after several hundred years of permanent settlement. But first, it was occupied by people who only lived there for part of the year. It's as if they became partial nomads, then abandoned village life altogether.
Early walls in cities were also used to enclose small groupings of homes rather than the entire settlement. Perhaps these internal walls were used to separate powerful groups from everyone else. Or maybe they were more like neighborhood boundaries that kept people from wandering into the pottery-makers' quarter and messing things up.

This sort of intrigued me a lot -- we're not in seige era yet (so concentric castle designs aren't really relevant) -- so why so many walls dividing a single community?

And this is where I started to increasingly like this neighborhood boundary concept.

You see, in places like ancient china, it was very common for the landowners (nobility) in China to build cloistered estates.

In fact, any landowner with any degree of money to their name built one, and this was their family residence. Chinese (and Japanese) nuclear families (thanks to Confucianism) were quite large, and in fact you'd even get great-grandparents, grandparents, uncles, cousins, etc. living in the same "house". Single-family homes weren't really a thing in ancient China (unless you lived in a hut and were super poor). Critically, these family residences were walled (although often the houses themselves formed part of the wall), so they produced a sense of exclusivity, privacy, and security since you couldn't exactly just walk into the courtyard. Importantly, it also kept beggars and other paupers out in the city streets.

Even small residences (from less wealthy families) were designed with a central courtyard and large enough to host an extended family.

So I really started considering the idea that early walls first started as a separation of class. Nobility build walls around their property (which includes land) to keep out the urban poor from... doing silly things like stealing the chickens at night when everyone is asleep. Whether or not the poor actually stole chickens at night is debatable in itself. All that was necessary was paranoia/fear, and then you have a walled estate.

Consider the existence of gated communities in modern societies.

This is a gated community (walled neighborhood) in the US.

This is a walled neighborhood in Baghdad.

Why do gated communities and walled neighborhoods exist today? Answer: the perception that the outside is dangerous or filled with unsavory people. Incidentally, to the rich, the poor are perceived as unsavory people, so a high prevalence of poverty in the neighborhood will increase the likelihood that a rich neighborhood association will get together and build a community wall to separate the poor from the rich.

TLDR; Walls don't have to exist around entire cities. In fact, walls were first part of houses (for families). Then walls were part of communities (to separate rich from poor / privileged from unprivilaged).

lychee · 2019-05-14 14:26:27

PROPOSAL 16: GLOWING FAMILY MEMBERS

As much as I think the language update is cool, I think it's also quite valuable to have multiple distinct families in a single settlement.

There should be an incentive to care most about your personal immediate family (rather than your cousins).

However, at the same time, the practicalities of coexistence between multiple families is important. Every ancient settlement had multiple families, and it's not like the separate families within a settlement were constantly feuding. There might be the occasional dispute -- but ultimately the added manpower was always better. If a single family massacred everyone else in a multi-family village, there would be no one left to run the village.

What I take away from this is that maybe... the language barrier is too harsh... and combined with griefers actually reduces the likelihood that multi-family complex settlements arise (lots of stabbing). It's too hard to work with each other when you can't communicate with each other.

So here's the suggestion:

Make your direct family members glow on the UI. You can recognize them on the screen from anywhere. Maybe implement some kind of reward for doing nice things with your direct family members or being in close proximity to them.

I made this suggestion earlier, but I think it would be cool if you feel "warm" (literally) when you're around the people that you love or do nice things for the people you love. This could be a positive incentive for people to slightly more selfish for their immediate family and direct relatives.

The opposite could also be implemented -- kind of like a grief system -- when a direct family member dies/starves, you feel "cold" and empty. Perhaps there's an amplifying benefit when all of your family members are warm (meaning you bothered to dress them) -- like there's more insulation and less shock when temperature changes.

In the meantime, I wonder if it would be good to change the language barrier to geography rather than family.

People who are born far apart speak different languages.

However, it's possible to have Eves (perhaps of different ethnicities) wander and merge into an existing village. They would still obviously be an outsider (especially with a glowing UI and skin color), but at least the language is similar so their descendants are not almost guaranteed to kill each other.

lychee · 2019-05-14 14:34:04

PROPOSAL 17: BETTER WILD ANIMAL AI AND PERIODIC ANIMAL ATTACKS

In the real world, I think a strong incentive for building village/town walls was because of the fact that people sleep.

IRL, you couldn't have eyes everywhere at all times, so when people went to bed, you could have dangerous wildlife crawl into the village and:

- Eat all the food
- Attack the livestock
- Do bad things

Walls made it such that only a few people only had to watch a few points along the perimeter.

So my suggestion goes like this:

1) Make periodic wild animal attacks (kind of like the hound attacks in Don't Starve, or the monster attacks in Dwarf Fortress or Rimworld)

When people are expecting animal attacks, there's a greater incentive for people to build walls and develop better security.

Furthermore, you can't blame a computer for griefing (and AI don't use exploits, which is inevitable in any PvP community). Instead, I think it encourages for the community of players to band together to overcome a particular PvE challenge.

Also, Dwarf Fortress has a function where the increased wealth of a settlement attracts bigger attacks. This provides inherent scaling to the game.

lychee · 2019-05-14 15:47:20

PROPOSAL 18: MAKE ALTERS TO ESCAPE LINEAGE BAN

Soo, in ancient times, people took a lot of time to make proper burials, have little shrines/alters/funerary urns to keep ashes of their dead ancestors, etc.

What if the only want to get respawned back in the same area was if your descendent made a proper burial/shrine to you?

It would be cool if a shrine had to located inside a private home of your own property (incentivizing huts/houses). Ashes could be added to the family shrine (only if they're in your direct lineage) and as long as the shrine stands, people who were honored at the shrine have potential to respawn back.

So maybe the lineage ban could be changed to a IRL 90 minute time ban. That's ~3 generations, right?

Players that don't have proper burials/shrines just will never respawn back.

Léonard · 2019-05-14 17:16:57

It's possible that humans needed walls to deal with the psychological stress of living in bigger groups; they gave people separate spaces where they could cool off from conflicts or share their feelings without social judgments.

That's very interesting.

I guess that sort of answers futurebird's thread:

futurebird wrote:

Maybe it's ironic. I'm always on this forum talking about how we need more people in towns, bigger cities, higher population density... but honestly if there are more than 4 people on screen I get a little overwhelmed.

lychee · 2019-05-16 00:22:35

Dumping some lifelog ideas (on more accurately using this post as a scratchpad lol)

Planning to put together some analyses on LifeLog data. If anyone has suggestions on particular questions they'd like asked, let me know and I might be able to account for it.

Questions I'm interested in:

* Is there any relation between SIDs and current family size?
* Is there any relation between starvation and current family size/generation length?
* Typical number of play-sessions/play-time per unique player
* Compute some kind of "likelihood to survive 5 generations" as a function of current family size and generation length.
* Is it possible to detect famines? E.g. large number of starvation events in proximity in a short period of time?

I'm considering a DBSCAN type clustering algorithm for newer data (since multiple families can be in a village), although in prior versions it would probably be fine to assume each family = one settlement.

lychee · 2019-05-17 15:24:51

PROPOSAL 19: SQUIRRELS ARE ANNOYING

This suggestion is part of a series to help incentivize the construction of buildings, and help set the groundwork for why property could be a good thing.

In real life, nature is swimming with animals. If you went outside and put a piece of bread on the ground, chances are high that tomorrow it will be gone — because some animal ate it. Actually, growing up, my mom always struggled with her vegetable garden because deer would eat basically everything she’d plant (except onions). Our neighbor, however had a fence around their garden and that helped them a lot.

Idea: Small wild animals (bird, squirrels, things that are hard to catch) will eat food left outside. Store food indoors to prevent this effect.

Extending this to domestic crops is optional. It would give use to having “scarecrows”. Furthermore, the role of cats in village life was to catch and eat vermin that might otherwise snack on stored grains.

Lots of potential things to work with.

lychee · 2019-05-17 15:49:01

PROPOSAL 20: MATERIALISM MAKES YOU HAPPY

This suggestion is part of a series to help incentivize property, and help set the groundwork for why property could be a good thing.

Currently, in OHOL there is little to no incentive for property, as it provides no real benefits to an individual or a town. Consequently, most players are averse to taking personal ownership of anything (except clothing). However, this does not appear to emulate materialistic western society well.

To better simulate this, my suggestion is to emulate the concept that “materialism makes you happy”. Getting a new television or new phone or game generally makes people happy, although none of these things generally assist with the procurement of food (which is currently the only player incentive in OHOL).

So maybe it’s time to add a core system: Happiness.

Actually, a multitude of games have experimented with this core system in the past. In don’t starve, it is sanity. In dwarf fortress/rim world, characters can go mad if their needs are not met. These strategies are the most common solution to the fact that a low-tier system (e.g. hunger) on Maslow hierarchy of needs will never simulate complex human behavior. If all we care about is food and survival, we are nothing more than monkeys. We don’t need to care about entertainment or social capital.

A “happiness” meter would be the easiest way for a developer to incentivize players to do something that isn’t necessarily “efficient” for survival.

For instance, the more unique items you own in your personal dwelling, the happier you get. Eating luxurious foods like ice cream could make you happy. Giving or receiving gifts could make you happy.

Why should players care about happiness?

If their happiness goes to zero, they could go insane (clicks sometimes error/drop things/nonresponsive) or get depressed. Being depressed could drastically slow down a player’s movement speed. Being happy could accelerate a players movement speed or have pleiotropic effects on temperature or food. A lot of possibilities.

Adding third core system like this could be a critical answer that might provide answers for subjects that the player base has been looking for for a long time.

paulof · 2019-05-17 17:12:17

jasonrohrer wrote:

There's trade happening right in my town.
Not sure why everyone is so focused on long-distance trade, New York to London or whatever.
I'm going strawberry picking on Saturday with my kids, and I don't grow strawberries myself... $12 per gallon bucket.
I could grow strawberries myself, but I'm busy making video games.

Property update proved that trades inside the town are not welcome, people in general wants stuff inside the village to be shared, i don't agree with this, but the majority want to be like this, once they see something inside a property they complain that the village needs that even if the owner made all by himself.

So trades only works between towns

wondible · 2019-05-17 17:46:49

lychee wrote:

So maybe it’s time to add a core system: Happiness.

Not sure about the materialism part, but a while back WomanWizard did mention having a food drain bonus for being around your close family, to simulate the mental health benefits for having close relationships. Perhaps killing could have an opposite stress effect.

lychee · 2019-05-17 18:44:53

wondible wrote:

lychee wrote:
So maybe it’s time to add a core system: Happiness.
Not sure about the materialism part, but a while back WomanWizard did mention having a food drain bonus for being around your close family, to simulate the mental health benefits for having close relationships. Perhaps killing could have an opposite stress effect.

I think those are all great ideas and I would be enthusiastic about any of them!

For me, my main point is that having a core system that’s not hardwired to starvation is fairly critical to incentivizing the higher levels of Maslow’s needs.

When we have a game that all we care about is food — we end up with mono-diets, an excessive focus on efficiency, and all those toys are ignored because they’re worthless in the context of the game. The role players aside, it’s easy to approach this game as if the avatar we control is an emotionless robot. Our characters don’t get stressed and they don’t *need* time to relax or decompress as real people do. Where is the music and cave art that has existed as part of human culture since the Neolithic era? Why isn’t this seen in OHOL?

Consider the fact that arts and entertainment make up 4% of the US GDP, whereas agriculture makes up 1% (real estate is top rank at 14%). Why would we spend so much money making and consuming entertainment when clearly it has nothing to do with the food that we eat?

If this is an aspect that Jason wants in OHOL, it might be necessary to consider some other systems other than food to reflect real human society’s hunger for entertainment and social interaction (and the corollary of mental illness and depression).

Last edited by lychee (2019-05-17 18:47:19)

lychee · 2019-05-19 01:05:54

TECH TREE PROJECT: INTRODUCTION

This is just one of my hobbies, so you can ignore posts that start with this heading if you're primarily here in this thread for the OHOL suggestions.

The objective of this series is to develop a semi-realistic tech tree for all of civilization starting from scratch. For most of the items here, I do research on cultures/societies that used certain items and recursively research backwards until I figure out the minimal technology that was required to make something. A lot of the content here will be more redundant/detailed than what is currently implemented in OHOL, but the objective of this series is semi-academic. Whether or not Jason (or anybody making a mod) decides to use this information is entirely up to them.

Before starting, I should clarify there are several major features of the current OHOL crafting system that prevent a realistic implementation of a mega tech-tree.

1. No abstraction. In computer science, an abstract class refers to a parent class that has fundamental behavior. For example, you could have a Rope class that is used to tie a basket to a tree. It doesn't matter if it's a straw rope or a carbon fiber rope -- you can use any type of rope to perform that function.

2. More crafting time. In the real world, time is often a limiting feature of crafting. Primitive objects are very labor intensive and time consuming, and part of the major incentives of technology advancement is to increase efficiency (e.g. time to craft) to make something.

3. No item quality. If one choses to forgo abstraction, an object like "rope" needs some metric of quality. A rope made out of straw shouldn't be comparable to a rope made out of carbon fiber. A numeric property needs to distinguish these two -- potentially on multiple dimensions. A three-parameter numeric quality array is probably sufficient to cover most use cases. Certain recipes (e.g. making a suspension bridge) should require "rope" of particular minimum quality in order to be used.

4. No technical skill barrier. Primitive objects often required higher skill on behalf of the user in order to produce, and unskilled individuals were likely to have a higher failure rate (e.g. starting a fire using a fire plow). In contrast, modern factories require essentially no skill on behalf of the operators, which consequently led to the disappearance of skilled artisans that predominated the world prior to the Industrial Revolution.

5. Decay/durability needs to be revisited. Stuff breaks. Newcomen pumps break geometrically......... Decay/durability is a function of time and usage frequency.

Last edited by lychee (2019-05-19 01:51:13)

lychee · 2019-05-19 01:39:36

TECH TREE PROJECT: FLINT DISTRIBUTION

Contrary to popular conception, flint is not a particularly widespread resource. In the Paleolithic/neolithic era, archeologists have traced stone tools hundreds of miles from their original sites, and there is extensive evidence that primitive humans transported and/or traded flint tool precursors (lithic cores) over long distances. Consequently, to understand neolithic cultures/economies, it's good to understand the source materials for lithic technology.

Stone tools are made from rocks that have particular fracture patterns:

- Flint (chert) - most famous
- Obsidian - volcanos, very sharp, extensively traded over long distances in archaeologic record. Lots of obsidian neolithic tools in museums.
- Chalcedony - a shiny precious jem, prized as jewelry but can be crafted into sharp stuff. Mentioned in the bible. Notable in asia minor. Unclear if commonly used.
- Greenstone - similar to chalcedony, includes jade and other hued-stones that were pretty and also crafted sometimes

Also some harder tools made from "ground stone" (more for hitting things then cutting):
- Radiolarite - very hard but less sharp than flint, sometimes called "iron of the Paleolithic"
- Basalt - Most common volcanic rock (think hawaii). Doesn't seem to be mentioned much in neolithic resources (maybe not so sharp?). Good for construction/statues.
- Quartzite - very hard rock resistant to weathering (harder than granite). I've seen this mentioned with regards to stone ages tools.

TLDR; know chert, obsidian, radiolarite, and quartzite. It's probably fine to lump radiolarite and quartzite together as "hard rocks but not as sharp". All of these can fracture along planes though.

Where to find this stuff: If you're in a pinch, wikihow says that you can search river beds. Rivers typically carry all kinds of rocks, but you might have to spend some time searching for the perfect rock and you might return with empty hands. Flint/chert/obsidian weren't exactly common, and they were considered the most precious. Additionally, you needed a certain size rock that was big enough to make certain tools, so a tiny pebble obviously wasn't going to cut it if you wanted a hand axe.

It turns out that archeologists have identified neolithic flint/chert mines. Cave men weren't particularly good at digging into the ground, so it had to be exposed rock cliffs. Chert is often found in limestone deposits. The most famous kind of flint mines were the kind with a chalk base, which were very valuable for cavemen because chalk is soft and you can dig into it with bone/wooden/stone tools. It also has a very characteristic appearance so even a modern couch potato could identify a chert-chalk deposit:

Here we see chert/flint (the black) sticking out of a chalk cliff. Chalk is soft and erodes over time, so the chert nodules actually stick out over time.

Archaeologists don't believe that anybody owned these flint mines; however there are evidence of temporary neolithic camps near many of them. It's likely that a hunter-gatherer group passed by, took what they wanted, and then moved on. The flint mines were nice because you could get nice big lithic cores that you could use for better crafting than little river pebbles.

How common are these mines?

Here's an map of middle-paleolithic flint mines in northern france:

Basically, you can see that the mines often appear in clusters, and there were areas that lacked mines.

To quote the outdoors stackexchange:

But flint is a natural resource. As with all natural resources they will occur in some places in abundance, while not at all in others.
We sometimes have this idea that in prehistoric times everybody was able to find and work flint - this is simply not true. Like all other 'geological' resources flint was mined and traded for long distances.
See for example this study flint-bearing formations in Southern France, which among other things presents us with this map:
...
Not wanting to go into detail I'll just point out: there are long stretches and vast areas without known flint formations. If you find yourself in one of those, you will have to resolve to tools made from different materials.

Depending on where you live, you might not have any flint (color = presence of flint/chert geologically; the picture is southern france.

I guess that's why neolithic people often carried lithic cores (raw materials for flint tools) hundreds of miles with them. If your flint tools broke, you couldn't reasonably expect to walk all the way back to your favorite flint deposit.

Last edited by lychee (2019-05-19 02:00:58)

lychee · 2019-05-21 15:25:14

I’ll get back to the tech tree project next post, but today I’ll write a little bit about an interesting conversation I had with my mom this weekend when I was home. My family (grandparents) came from rural China, which back in the 60s/70s was fairly primitive and didn’t have electricity/plumbing. My mom spent time on the farm there, and OHOL got me talking to her what life there was like.

So a typical farming village in rural China c.1950s had around 100 families. There were many types of villages, and some of them had specializations (my cousins lived in a mountain village, which was much poorer than a farming village) depending on what infrastructure/resources were there.

Chinese farmers planted rice, wheat, cotton, and hemp on their main fields (called Tian). Rice in particular needs to be grown on a flooded field, which was essentially made by digging irrigation ditches out from a stream/river. A floodgate (a big rock) would be used to divert water to the fields when rice was transplanted into the fields in the spring (germination/budding is done indoors). Wheat was the main summer/fall crop.

Fertilization was done with anything and everything. Livestock dung (fermented), urine (fermented)... whatever people could get their hands on, and probably wasn’t enough. You could burn wheat chaff to make potash, which was a common early chemical fertilizer. By the 70s, people were using industrial chemical fertilizers and insecticides in additional to the traditional stuff.

Planting seasons were very narrow. If you missed it by a few days you could be screwed.

Rice harvest is done using a scythe. Stalks of rice were then beat into a box (threshing), and then the grains would be left to dry for 2-3 days. Rice grains could be sold or a majority turned over to the government (this is communist China). Polishing rice to make it white could be done later.

Chinese people didn’t really raise sheep, as in OHOL. The pig (and water bull for ploughing) and chickens were the main domestic livestock. Pork is the major meat in Chinese diet. Typically every family would buy piglets (already weaned) from the pig vendor (around 2-3) in the Spring, raise them through the year — pigs eat almost anything — and they would be slaughtered during Chinese New Year, which was the main holiday/festival in the Chinese calendar, and really the only one that civilians slaughtered pigs for.

2-3 pigs was sufficient to produce all the oil/lard a family needed for cooking for an entire year.

All parts of the pig were used/preserved, notably the limbs were salted and preserved for a long while. Different cuts were used to make different things, most of which I don’t know the details to, but generally almost everything was eaten.

Apparently most families slaughtered pigs every year because it was a waste of feeding to keep them more than a year. Sows have litters of 10+ piglets, so it was pretty much always easier (and cheaper) to get piglets from the village pig farm.

In either case it was cool and enlightening!

lychee · 2019-05-23 22:50:45

TECH TREE PROJECT: OVERVIEW OF LITHIC TECHNOLOGIES

The paleolithic era is characterized by control of fire and usage of stone tools. Consequently, they are earliest preserved tools in the "tech tree" of humanity, and in fact were utilized by pre-hominids in the Homo genus. Chimpanzees have also been observed using stone tools (albeit primitively). Importantly, despite the fact that there is a disproportionate focus on stone tools in the archaeologic record, this does not rule out the fact that early hominids likely also used wooden and other perishable tools.

Early hominids had different physiologies and lifestyles than modern humans, and these characteristics are important to keep in mind while evaluating early stone tools. Scientists believe that proto-humans had less fine motor control and a weaker grip. In some aspects, proto-humans probably resembled chimpanzees.

Currently, proto-humans of the early/middle-paleolithic were believed primarily to be omnivores, with a majority of the diet attributed to nuts, berries, tubers, and honey. Their diet was supplemented by scavenging prey taken down by other predators, and early stone age proto-humans are not believed to have done much hunting of their own. Proto-humans utilized tools for many of these circumstances.

Hominids could eat nuts by crushing them with rocks.

Hominids could eat tubers by digging them up with sticks (few surface animals have this capacity to dig this deep into the ground).

Hominids could scavenge carcasses, cut hide, scrape, and split bone marrow with sharp stone tools.

Years ago, I performed back-of-the-envelope efficiency calculations on various foods and determined that calorie-poor foods (e.g. berries, dandelion greens, cattail tubers) are not feasible staples for a human diet. Particularly, humans would have to spend a majority of their time constantly eating (think herbivores; bears eat 30,000 berries in a single day) if they tried to live off of such diets. To fulfil a 2000 calorie diet on solely on something like Lingonberries (5 cal/oz), assuming that berries are mostly water, and individual would have to eat ~3.1 gallons (11.8 liters) of berries in a single day. Note that the human stomach only has a capacity of ~4 liters, so a person would sooner be retching than reach the necessary caloric requirement on berries.

(All of this aside, humans have a great capacity to fast without food -- so not eating for a few days won't kill anybody -- however the 2000 calorie diet is the benchmark for the amount of calories a person needs to eat on average over a long time to maintain their body weight).

For reference, here's some values for various meats:

Clams (10 cal/clam) - Need to eat 300 clams per day for 3000 calories
Egg (75 cal/egg) - Need to eat 40 eggs per day for 3000 calories
Squirrel (132 cal/animal) - Need to eat 23 squirrels per day for 3000 calories
Rabbit (790 cal/animal) (1 lb meat) - Need to eat 4 rabbits per day for 3000 calories
1 ft long river fish (960 cal/animal) (1 lb meat) - Need to eat 3 fish per day
Salmon (5760 cal/fish) (6 lbs meat) - 1 salmon lasts one person for 2 days
Turkey (7200 cal/animal) (10 lbs meat) - 1 turkey lasts one person for 2.5 days
Deer (59,360 cal/animal) (70 lbs meat) - 1 deer lasts one person for 20 days
Bear (68,800 cal/animal) (100 lbs meat) - 1 bear lasts one person for 23 days

In short, don't count on trapping squirrels to sustain your wildnerness diet. More likely than not, you would burn more calories chasing squirrels than than you get from the ones you catch. Opportunity cost is a critical consideration when considering hunter-gatherer diets.

By observing the behavior of the modern-day Hazda hunter gathers, we observe that nobody in the tribe would spend their entire day picking berries in the berry fields (it's not efficient) or hunting squirrels. However, as tribe members migrate through the wild focusing on calorie-rich foods, they won't hesitate to grab berries off of the bushes they pass without even stopping (constantly on the move!). Nobody would deny free food if it's right in front of them. However, certain things aren't worth dedicated effort to go out of your way for.

In either case, I've derailed enough.

Onto paleolithic cultures and technologies.

EARLY PALEOLITHIC: OLDOWAN LITHIC TECHNOLOGY

The earliest lithic tools are categorized as part of the Oldowan industry.

Oldowan stone tools were predominantly made from local stone materials, typically found in river beds. Flint/Chert was not necessary in this period, and in fact a majority of stone tools were made from lesser quality stones that fracture (e.g. quartzite, basalt, etc.) less predictably or are less sharp. Keep in mind depending on your area, flint could be a rare resource.

Consequently, the inability to precisely control lithic fractures (in part due to poor quality starting materials) meant that stone tools had to be made from pebbles/rocks that were already approximately the shape of the final tool. For instance, an axe-shaped river rock was used to make a hand-axe. Consequently, this also meant that making stone tools in the Oldowan period included a laborious search for the perfectly shaped rock for a certain tool. Furthermore, only a subset of rocks fracture according to planes. Additionally, the process was error prone and difficult to control.

It was rare to make more chips than necessary on Oldowan tools.

Formula: Lithic stone (many different stones can be used, usually a river stone) + hammerstone = flake + sharp stone + debris

Depending on the type of tool, either the flake or the core was used. "Choppers" (hand-axes) were likely fashioned from the large fragment. "Scrapers" were likely fashioned from the flakes.

Stone tools such as these were not particularly sharp. They were thick, pebble-sized, and have a lot of variation from tool-to-tool. Whether or not a sharp-edge formed was probably semi-random.

Despite being called "hand-axes", it probably wasn't appropriate to use such tools for heavy concussive purposes. Stone tools chip and shatter easily, especially lithic stone tools (used more for cutting things like skinning carcasses than hitting), and the lifespan of a lithic tool would be quite short if it was indeed used for whacking against trees. More likely -- ground stone ("harder" stone rather than "sharper" stone) was used for such heavy purposes, which I will discuss some other day. Takeaway point: hand-axe is for cutting (or gentle chopping), not hitting as hard as your can!

Last edited by lychee (2019-05-23 22:57:21)

lychee · 2019-05-23 23:22:34

Oldowan Lithic Tool Implementation:

Object Family: Lithic Stone (any stone that can be chipped and form a sharp edge; not true of all stones)
- Parameter: Size
- Parameter: Type (enum) - examples: quartz, basalt, chert
- Parameter: Shape (enum) - examples: triangle, circle, flat
- Parameter: Sharpness
- Parameter: Durability

Object Family: Ground stone (any hard stone; is not a lithic stone)
- Parameter: Size
- Parameter: Type (enum) - examples: granite
- Parameter: Shape (enum)
- Parameter: Hardness
- Parameter: Durability

Object/Tile: Stone deposit
- Parameter: Type
- Parameter: Capacity
- In real life, stones (particularly in river beds) are often found in large clusters. You can search in one place for a rock you desire.
- When interacting with a stone deposit, you draw a random rock (e.g. lithic stone, ground stone) with random parameters with frequencies defined by the type of a deposit. For instance, drawing from a (riverbed type) stone deposit may give you a certain distribution of rocks. Every time you draw a random rock from a stone deposit, the capacity parameter decrements until there are no rocks left in the deposit.

Many stones should be able to stack on a tile ("Pile of Stones").

Oldowan Lithic Reduction Formula:

A: Lithic stone + Ground stone = Chipped stone (pick random tool type, influenced by stone shape) + debris + Ground Stone

B: Chipped stone + Ground stone = Chipped flake (pick random tool type, influenced by stone shape) + debris + Ground Stone

C: Lithic stone + Ground stone = Chipped flake (pick random tool type, influenced by stone shape) + debris + Ground stone

D: Lithic stone + Ground stone = Lithic stone + Ground stone

E: Lithic stone + Ground stone = Lithic stone (reduced size/durability) + debris + Ground stone

Formulas (A) and (B) represent intentional outcomes "success" outcomes.

Formulas (C-E) represented unintentional "failure" outcomes.

Generally speaking, oldowan stone tools should have a high base failure rate. Even at 100% mastery, there should still be failures.

Oldowan Lithic Reduction should always generate lithic stone/chipped stone that is at equal or less durability/size than the starting materials.

lychee · 2019-05-24 02:28:07

EARLY PALEOLITHIC: ACHEULEAN LITHIC TECHNOLOGY

The second tier of stone age lithic technology (after Oldowan) is Acheulean, which also corresponds to the Early Paleolithic period.

Under the Acheulean Industry, several advancements were made to to lithic technology. The first change was that early humans started to use larger and dedicated lithic cores to produce tools, implying that humans spent a lot more time and energy searching for the best materials to make stone tools. No longer did people just pick up any old rock from the river bed. Notably, this is the period during which we see many more flint and chert tools -- the classic preferred materials in the European stone age.

A typical Acheulean hand-axe was around 8 inches long (over double the size of Oldowan), and originated from a "lithic core" ~12 inches long. Many of these "lithic cores" were furthermore obtained from an even larger "flint nodule", which was potentially dug out from a flint mine (see prior post on distribution of flint) or other large rock source.

By focusing on higher quality stone, the production of tools could be much more precise and predictable.

Additionally, Acheulean flintnappers started using wood and bone "soft hammers", which allowed increased fine-control. Particularly, soft hammers were critical for thinning large lithic cores into a manageable shape. Acheulean techniques also led rise to the "tranchet flaking" method, which allowed for the sharpening and "retouching" of old stone tools that weren't possible in the Oldowan industries.

Acheulean stone tools were unquestionably sharper and larger than Oldowan tools, and they could be "repaired" a limited amount of times.

However, a sharper edge also meant more fragile (given that stone tools fracture easily). Consequently, Acheulean stone tools were generally more intended for cutting than hitting (e.g. hand axes for skinning a hide).

lychee · 2019-05-24 03:14:55

Acheulean Lithic Tool Implementation:

Object/Tile: Lithic Nodule
- Parameter: Type (enum) - example: Flint Nodule
- Parameter: Capacity
- Essentially a flint mine. Has a limited capacity. Typically found on exposed cliffs near limestone (or chalk) formations.

Nodule Mining Formula:

A: Lithic Nodule + Ground Stone = Lithic Core + Lithic Nodule + Ground Stone

B: (fail) Lithic Nodule + Ground Stone = Lithic Stone + Lithic Nodule + Ground Stone

C: (fail) Lithic Nodule + Ground Stone = Debris + Lithic Nodule + Ground Stone

Object Family: Lithic Core (a high quality lithic starting material suitable for advanced lithic crafting; obtained from lithic nodule)
- Parameter: Size
- Parameter: Type (enum) - examples: flint, chert
- Parameter: Durability

Lithic Core Formulas:

A: Lithic Core + Ground Stone = Chipped Lithic Core + Ground Stone + Debris

B: Lithic Core + Ground Stone = Chipped Lithic Core + Chipped Stone + Ground Stone + Debris

C: Lithic Core + Ground Stone = Chipped Lithic Core + Chipped Flake + Ground Stone + Debris

Notably, the ground stone size is a determinant for the chipped core size. A larger ground stone = smaller fragment remaining.
Chipped lithic cores (of particular sizes) are used to make particular tools.

Lithic Tool Formula:

A. Chipped Lithic Core + Ground Stone = Lithic Tool (depends on the size of the chipped core + groundstone) + Debris

B. Chipped Lithic Core + Ground Stone = Lithic Tool (depends on the size of the chipped core + groundstone) + Chipped Flake + Debris

C. Chipped Lithic Core + Ground Stone = Chipped Stone + Debris

Using the correct size ground stone is critical for Acheulean tool making (this is an approximation for the technical difficulty).

If the wrong size is used, it's possible to overshoot the intended tool and knap off too big of a piece (forcing the player to end up with a smaller/different tool). There is higher variability using ground stone than a soft hammer when performing this step.

Object Family: Soft Hammer:
- Any kind of wooden stick (billet), bone, or antler
- Will consider parameters for this later

Lithic Tool Formula using Soft Hammer:

A. Chipped Lithic Core + Soft Hammer = Lithic Tool (depends on the number of times this is done) + Debris

B. Chipped Lithic Core + Soft Hammer = No change

Note: This uses the OHOL smithing system. 1-hit=axe, 2-hit=etc; meaning that soft hammers allow more precise crafting. However, soft hammer lithic reduction should both be more time consuming and be technically harder (greater failure rate). Nonetheless, its far less likely that the player will mess up and make a tool they didn't intend.

Last edited by lychee (2019-05-24 03:17:49)

lychee · 2019-05-24 14:34:04

PALEOLITHIC STONE TOOLS

In the paleolithic era, stone tools are often classified by tier: Mode 1 (Oldowan), Mode 2 (Acheulean), Mode 3 (Mousterian), Mode 4 (Aurignacian), Mode 5 (Microlithic).

Despite the fact that they are tiered by complexity, not all the stone tools are precisely intercangeable. For instance, later mode tools were sharper and smaller, whereas earlier tools were blunter and larger. Consequently, it is rather important to describe the types of tools that were manufactured in each of these settings.

For simplicity's purposes, Olodwan (Mode 1) = chipped stone. Usage of higher quality materials like flint were not widespread, and the source materials for these tools are relatively widespread and could be found in river beds.

The chipped stone can be typified by the "Chopper" tool -- suitable for cutting, chopping, and scraping. This is the most primitive multipurpose stone tool form. However, it was not particularly sharp, rather small, could not be easily repaired, and had a high degree of inconsistency/variability with regards to its manufacture.

In Acheulean (Mode 2), the "Hand-axe" is the upgraded form of a "Chopper". Hand-axes are multipurpose tools that could be used for digging up roots, cutting/smashing killed animals, boring hides, etc. Acheulean tools are made from higher quality starting materials than Oldowan, and utilize a larger lithic core that could be quarried or mined. Acheulean tools are manufactured with greater predictability, and the shapes can be quite consistent. Additionally, Acheulean technology allowed the "retouching" of damaged stone tools, repairing them slightly.

At this point I will discuss more specialized stone tools. Regardless of the technology tier, the type of stone tools that can be produced can be classified by the size of the starting material. A "Core Tool" (that originates from the larger piece of knapping) includes Choppers, Cleavers, Picks, and Handaxes. A "Flake Tool" (that originates from the smaller piece) includes Bores, Points, and Scrapers. Finally, a "Blade Tool" (arises in Mode 4 Aurignacian tech) includes Blades and Burins.

Of these tools, "Choppers" and "Handaxes" are relatively multipurpose (with handaxes being capable of fulfilling most functions). However, these are not specialized tools, and consequently not as good as the specialized tool variants. Consequently, the game should account for this by applying a debuff when a multipurpose tool is used for a specialized purpose.

A Cleaver has a flat strike surface (is generally heavier), and ideal for butchering animals/chopping into bone marrow.

A Pick has a thick end (think trianglular prism), and was ideal for digging into the ground; a little like a shovel.

A Bore is used as an awl to poke holes in hide.

A Point is the generic term for anything sharpened to a point, like an arrowhead.

A Scraper is a tool used to scrape hides.

A Blade is a multipurpose cutting tool. Sharp.

A Burin is a tool that is great for engraving and working with wood/bone/antler.

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