Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mcnc!gatech!udel!wuarchive!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!swatsun!hirai From: hirai@cs.swarthmore.edu (Eiji Hirai) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games Subject: Re: SimEarth things Message-ID: Date: 20 Nov 90 19:20:33 GMT References: <7025@vax1.acs.udel.EDU> Distribution: usa Organization: Medieval Metaphysics Dept., Miskatonic U., Arkham, MA Lines: 38 I once tried to make a 'Dune' like world and actually succeeded in having the sentient folks take off into Exodus a lot faster than on the usual Earth like planets. What I did: Once life appears and you're almost ready to go sentient, boil away the seas. Do this by turning up the sun, turning up the greenhouse effect, putting albedo low, etc. Once the oceans are gone, immediately put things back to normal except that you still want the sun to be high. I don't know what the underlying assumptions are but a waterless world seems to get cold with normal Earth-like model settings. You may need to tweak the other settings to keep the planet warm. You also want to keep the reproduction rate and heat tolerance at max. Don't worry, life won't die out at >50 degrees. Now that you have all the land mass that you'd ever want, your sentient folks can build cities all over the place and with the population expansion at max, the amount of work done will increase dramatically. Don't worry about plagues and war because the population will increase so much that plagues won't be able to slow down the expansion. Soon right after, you've achieved Exodus because all the work gone into Science (among other things). It seems like the lack of landspace is the limiting factor in most pre-Exodus scenarios and so taking that limit away makes the game easier. I have no clue as to whether having a sealess world is actually a viable thing in real-life. I'm beginning to think that SimCity is a nicer game since you actually get to 'put' things on the map instead of mainly tweaking stuff and having the computer 'put' most of the stuff on the map in SimEarth. I mean, wouldn't you rather 'build' than just 'watch'? -- Eiji Hirai @ Mathematics Dept., Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA 19081-1397 hirai@cs.swarthmore.edu hirai@swarthmr.bitnet rutgers!hirai%cs.swarthmore.edu Copyright 1990 by Eiji Hirai. All Rights Reserved. Permission to reproduce or quote explicitly denied except on Usenet. I don't speak for Swarthmore College.