Cantr II Discussion Forum

I'm starting to notice elements of darwinism in Cantr for the first time. I realise it was probably obvious to some already haha, but I find it fascinating.

The expert fighters (some who are still around thanks to surviving wars/fights/random attacks as a result of their skill), spawn off newspawn expert fighters, effectively weeding out the weaker fighters until they become a thing of the past, or at least a minority.

Once upon a time it was somewhat balanced. However in the near future, we will see some serious unbalancing and nature/darwinism will take control of our little world we call Cantr.

We may not realise it, but eventually Cantr will be a living and breathing second world. Already animals have several qualities which give them the ability to act on their own 'random' accord, ie travelling to other towns and attacking Cantrians.

Interesting stuff. Will post more when I'm not at work.

Mh not really. I have really weak and bad fighters. And they live since I started.

But it is interesting, read old notes and talk with older chars. You will find old great civilizations and now these towns are ghost cities. Rise and falls of empires.

Now that, I agree with Saalko..very interesting indeed!

@Salko: I'm not saying this is a massive thing whereby all weak characters are more likely to die; no.. it's a very slight progression over time, weaker characters are less likely to survive as they'd put up less of a struggle against expert fighters, in small instances across the Cantr world.

returner wrote:I'm sorry, but I don't think you actually understand anything I say, including my suggestion in the other thread which you made a silly reply to. I don't mean to be rude, but may I politely request that you refrain from posting your irrelevant opinion in threads you don't fully understand?

Congratulations on your weak characters surviving since they spawned. I never said all weak characters die off because they're weak, so why are you saying 'not really'??

Also, I'm not saying this is a massive thing whereby all weak characters are more likely to die; no.. it's a very slight progression over time, weaker characters are less likely to survive as they'd put up less of a struggle against expert fighters, in small instances across the Cantr world.

Okay, so we've established that you don't like people disagreeing with you, am I correct? We've also established that you can't politely get your point across. Instead, you have to put people down and insult them, by saying they 'don't understand.' How about, instead of insulting people, you re-word it to -help- them understand, hm?

Sound like a plan?

edit

I can give you a tip. (I only lost until now one of my chars and I play over four month.)

Fighting isn't thee most important thing. And Cantr is slow. But you can play up to 15 players.

Try other things than thievery or fighting. Play a tailor or something.

Oh and what you mean with weeding out weaker fighters? I had understand it, that the better fighters will kill the weaker fighters.

Sry I think it is not really a language barrier. It is more a problem, that you are new and everything must be done fast. But In my opinion is this the worse thing you can play Cantr.

Well I am going to disagree with your discovery as well, mostly because I don't see the same trend. I spawned 5 new characters the past week and I think I have one that fights effectively. The rest are novice or even awkward.

Don't the skills change over a player's lifetime as well? Like if you don't fight you decrease in skill where you can increase if you hunt every day. I never did any one thing long enough to notice it in any of my characters. That can really effect what we are considering evolution.

Saalko wrote:I can give you a tip. (I only lost until now one of my chars and I play over four month.)

Fighting isn't thee most important thing. And Cantr is slow. But you can play up to 15 players.

Try other things than thievery or fighting. Play a tailor or something.

Oh and what you mean with weeding out weaker fighters? I had understand it, that the better fighters will kill the weaker fighters.

Sry I think it is not really a language barrier. It is more a problem, that you are new and everything must be done fast. But In my opinion is this the worse thing you can play Cantr.

Thanks Saalko, this is much better. I actually agree with what you said there. Sorry I was a little rude before, it's the morning here and I'm at work and I have a shitload of stuff to do, I'm cranky.


Ruby, I always thought the trend would be minimal, but now that I've heard another (your) side to it, I agree the trend is TOO minimal to have any darwinistic effect.

Still, it's nice to ponder that we are very close to achieving a Darwinistic universe.

Yeah, out of the total nine or so character I've spawned, six are alive and only one strong/expert. I find a majority of characters to be average strength and only novices to skillful fighters.

Which still makes sense in Darwinian aspects cause it's about balance not about being the ubermonster.

OH and skills don't decrease only increase but on such a small tiny level that unless you do ONE THING for that characters entire life not much will be noticed.

They should increase the rate in which skill is improved, I reckon.

If they did that only, very old people would become expert at everything (or at least a lot of things). If you increase the rate of skill improving, then you would need to have to add a a skill decreaser if you stop using that skill. Or else, everyone will be expert.

My idea would be to never have spawns spwan with an expert skill and add this. If you work on a skill, it would increase so you could actually be specialized in anything. But if you stop using that skill for a while, then it would start decreasing to the level which you spawned with. You wouldn't become awkward neither expert at everything, eh?

Ah, wasn't sure if they decreased or not. If they don't then there is absolutely going to be an "evolutionary" effect going on. Since newspawns' skills are determined by the people already there (though I'm not sure how big the variation factor is) then if the people keep getting stronger if even a little bit each generation than the newspawns will have an increased chance at having better chances (again I don't know exactly how the code works but if it's a normal distribution than the expected value would be exactly what the old generations skill-level is which is expected to be more than the generation before under the same logic)

I don't think I explained that as clear as I could have and the variance variable upon spawning may very well be overpowering any bit of skill gain that any generation could possibly manage. I'd really need to know the numbers to be sure. One things can be said. The more any one generation works, the stronger the next generation is likely to be, especially if everyone in an area is working on one specific skill.

Problem with that thought process is the "parents" picked for a spawn are random and there are no "generations" in Cantr. "Spawn parents" could be anyone at the location even be two newspawns that are not even a day old and as a good chunk of those "awkward/weaker then average" folks are left to rot they are the high average to get picked as "spawn parents". Not to mention that the "older generations" are hard to come by. So even if picked for spawn it's highly unlikely the other "spawn parent" would be of the same age/whatever so would sorta cancel or balance out with another "spawn parent" of lower value.

Meaning that "average/skillful" is probably where the game will settle at if it does anything of this nature, at all.

Well even if the newspawn comes from two character that were 5 days old. Assuming those parents did anything during the 5 days the newspawn would have an expected skill value greater than the average of the two parents.

Furthermore the assertion that characters with weaker skills are "left to rot" (an assertion I don't think is necessary true) would mean that those characters would have a smaller chance to be picked out as they would be alive far shorter than characters with stronger skills not left to rot.

Again the argument is completely mute without knowledge on how much your skills come from your parents and how much random deviation comes into play. You could have two people in a location that are expert in every single skill, if random deviation is strong enough the newspawn could end up being an expert in nothing.