Maybe why we'll always get down to one family (tipping scales)

jasonrohrer · 2019-08-26 19:14:48

If we ignore mother fertility bonuses for now (from warmth and YUM), which may exacerbate the problem, we still have a problem:

If your family has 90% of the fertile women on the map, you will have 90% of the incoming babies.

This feels like it could be a snowballing, rich-get-richer situation, which kicks in as soon as the balance gets outta wack by even one mother. If you have 55% of the mothers, you get 55% of the babies, and the other family only gets 45% of them.

However, it's not necessarily a snowballing situation: If you get 90% of the babies, you will have 90% of the fertile women next generation. Thus, the balance should remain the same over time, ignoring other factors.

So, while the math works out in terms of balance, it FEELS a little funny to me.

Say your fam has one mother left, and the other fam has 9 mothers. A new player joins. BOY does your family really need that player. But you have a 9/10 chance of not getting that player.

I do want families to compete for babies, though....

Is there some other factor that would make the "rich get richer" in terms of babies? If you have 90% of the mothers this generation, why would you have 92% of the mothers next generation?

This is also interesting... because I always assumed it was new Eve families and lineage/area bans causing families to die out. But families are still dying out just fine even WITHOUT those factors. It's kinda crazy, really.

Dodge · 2019-08-26 19:23:45

Why should families compete for babies if having more babies means it could potentially trigger the apocalypse?

It basically makes increasing your fertility means you might end everything so it actually makes it a bad thing.

Isn't keeping your childrens alive not enough?

Competition would actually be make enough food and care for them so they dont die.

Booklat1 · 2019-08-26 19:27:18

This ties in with techtree issues, but i think players get up to perfect heat way to easily still. How many towns inside or out of the rift actually have builds to preserve heat? If heat and yum are supposed to increase as does a village'a wealth why does it cap at fire + fur clothing?

Other than that it is like you said, the random chance of only boys being born and girls dying can much more strongly affect small families. In this sense small lines are way more fragile. Why would we players try to kill other families though?
Assuming we'll trigger a reset that may feel more like a "family x defeaded others" rather than "family x survived for y in the rift"

Grim_Arbiter · 2019-08-26 19:27:49

jasonrohrer wrote:

Is there some other factor that would make the "rich get richer" in terms of babies? If you have 90% of the mothers this generation, why would you have 92% of the mothers next generation?

I mean there's always the rng aspect of it.

If those 9/10 babies that went to the rich family were all male, it wouldn't matter. If that 1 that goes to the other family is female they're the winner.

While I haven't seen instances in the rift, I've seen that situation happen before.. and while its probably not even the prime suspect, it might be contributing a bit. I mean you HAVE to be unlucky sometimes in rng.

jasonrohrer · 2019-08-26 19:32:22

Yes, I suppose it is enough.

Still, the "princess pampering" ritual has been in the game for a long time, and I really like it.

Also, they will be competing for babies regardless (in terms of how good they take care of girl BBs, etc.) If one family is 5% better than the other, they will eventually have 100% of the population, right?

The only way to prevent this is to add anti-competitive compensation in terms of baby distribution. I.e, the smaller family gets more babies than it should otherwise get. And that just feels weird!

But here's another perfect example of why the rift/arc is so good. This problem has been around for 18 months, and it's never been pinpointed. Families die out, sure, and there were many theories as to why...

But now we've proved the existence of that problem, and also proved away those theories (because post-Eve-window, the suspected factors aren't even present).

Imagine how much harder this problem would be to pinpoint and solve "in the wild."

wondible · 2019-08-26 19:33:22

One thing I've noticed from looking at my own family trees over time is that they have boom and bust cycles, with many families surviving through only a single mother at least once. If that mother had gotten careless with food or had a run-in with a boor, RIP.

Due to population-induced famine, bear attacks, or whatever, families have fragile points and may not always survive. I actually don't play a ton, so I'm not sure what the more successful families have done. Perhaps having multiple towns, allowing them to repopulate if disaster strikes one? That may be harder in the rift with limited space.

More Theorycrafting:

If your family's 10% of the females (10% of babies and future females) is two people, and one of them steps on a snake, you now have 5%. If the 90% family loses one, they only go down to 85% (roughly, since the death changes the population size)

Booklat1 · 2019-08-26 19:39:45

Jason, idk if i've said this before, but the rift is probably the best long term project for this game.

That being said, I still wish it was more about surviving scarcity than outliving other families. Is it still the the idea of the rift to cause resources to run out?

jasonrohrer · 2019-08-26 19:40:21

Wondible, if you have 2/20 females (10%) and the other fam has 18/20 females (90%), and both fams have one women step on a snake, we get:

1/18 (5.5%) vs 17/18 (94%)

So that looks really bad to me.

Of course, with more females around, the bigger family would have more chance of stepping on snakes, etc. The smaller fam just had 50% of their females step on a snake. This is assuming the risk of stepping on a snake is defined per-person. The bigger family has 9x more chance of having SOMEONE step on one.

Now, take the same two fams again, and have only the smaller fam step on a snake: We now have:

1/19 (5.2%) vs 18/19 (94.7%)

One question: would the larger fam have more chance of high warmth and YUM fertility bonuses than a small fam?

Lava · 2019-08-26 19:46:48

jasonrohrer wrote:

Wondible, if you have 2/20 females (10%) and the other fam has 18/20 females (90%), and both fams have one women step on a snake, we get:
1/18 (5.5%) vs 17/18 (94%)
So that looks really bad to me.
Of course, with more females around, the bigger family would have more chance of stepping on snakes, etc. The smaller fam just had 50% of their females step on a snake. This is assuming the risk of stepping on a snake is defined per-person. The bigger family has 9x more chance of having SOMEONE step on one.

Now, take the same two fams again, and have only the smaller fam step on a snake: We now have:
1/19 (5.2%) vs 18/19 (94.7%)

One question: would the larger fam have more chance of high warmth and YUM fertility bonuses than a small fam?

Whenever I play into a family with one female, She either pumps out babies like crazy, or pumps out a boy then stops. There needs to be more of a consistency. Maybe the server will know when a family is almost out of girls and prioritizes babies their?

Dodge · 2019-08-26 19:49:07

I mean the larger fam probably killed all the snakes and other wild life around so those probabilities might be slightly off.

Also something to keep in mind since smaller fam are usually less advanced they have less clothes and food, which means kids/youngers have a higher probability of dying.

So if they have less fertility + higher chance of starving + more wildlife around no wonder they die out to larger fams.

Booklat1 · 2019-08-26 19:56:01

Like I said, I don't think heat is much of a difference in the long run. Yum might be because of how easy it is to make yummy foods after you've got all crops but heat mostly caps pretty early. Fur clothing is very warm and lasts for long enough for people to transition into other clothing and all villages have a fire starting with their eve. Yum scales with tech, heat stops incredibly early.

jasonrohrer · 2019-08-26 20:12:14

Regarding one family spreading out to have multiple towns, yes, that is viable.

And post-Eve-window, with only like 5 fams left, there is PLENTY of room for that in the rift. Let's say each town takes up a 100x100 area, which is very generous. There's room for 50 of those in the rift.

Twisted · 2019-08-26 20:18:43

jasonrohrer wrote:

One question: would the larger fam have more chance of high warmth and YUM fertility bonuses than a small fam?

Getting a high Yum is fairly easy if you know what you're doing unless you're in an Eve town. I usually have one consecutive yum chain from age 3 to age 60, and I only have to eat ~16 foods per lifetime, depending on the warmth of the clothing I'm wearing.

Berry, Berry Bowl, Carrot, Popcorn, Corn, Mutton, Mutton Pie, Rabbit, Rabbit Pie, Stew, Bread are eleven foods that are readily available in almost every town you'll ever spawn into as long as you're not an Eve or her kid. You only need to get ~5 other foods to have a life-long yum chain, and that's fairly easy to get since you don't have to worry about it until age 40 or so.

Warmth is mostly provided by clothing (buildings are completely irrelevant for warmth IMO), and if you don't have clothing readily available in town the first thing you'll do is head out with a snare and a needle+thread and get geared up. You'll probably have a full set of clothing before the first baby pops out no matter how lucky or unlucky you get with the rabbits.

TL;DR, most towns have the same warmth and yum potential, the only exception are early Eve villages.

Dodge · 2019-08-26 20:20:16

Booklat1 wrote:

Like I said, I don't think heat is much of a difference in the long run. Yum might be because of how easy it is to make yummy foods after you've got all crops but heat mostly caps pretty early. Fur clothing is very warm and lasts for long enough for people to transition into other clothing and all villages have a fire starting with their eve. Yum scales with tech, heat stops incredibly early.

Are you referring to my post?

Small fams have less clothes which means kids dont always have clothes and stay naked so they die more easily to starvation, where do they spawn next?

In the bigger fam, where they get clothes as baby and are much less likely to die from starvation, where they can just eat berries from the big berry farm.

The point is since it's already harder to survive in a smaller fam why give a fertility advantage to bigger fams?

Why not have fertility based on the genetic fitness instead?

Or is it really important to have the villages themselves compete for kids and not individuals?

And why have a fertility bonus since thisbonus can be punishing to the point that it resets the arc?

But maybe with a 2 family limit it will be ok.

Potjeh · 2019-08-26 20:38:03

You can fix this by manipulating baby gender. When a baby is born count how many fertile women and girl kids are in the family, higher numbers (relative to other families) skew towards new baby being a boy, and lower numbers skew towards girl.

Last edited by Potjeh (2019-08-26 20:38:41)

pein · 2019-08-26 20:44:38

percentages can be misleading this case, we rarely have 70 players so comparing to 100% is just funny

in real life male/female ratio is very close to 50%
a bit more females generally, maybe cause males die stupid deaths

so i don't see a reason why couldn't be ingame the same

i seen quite a lot of cases where a family has 2-3 ffemales, an eve comes in, pops 6-8 kids fast, where 4-5 are girls, then they take over in 40 min, generally the males survive longer for some reason

cant be a scan for male/female ratio, then just give more femmes when it's low?

ryanb · 2019-08-26 20:51:31

What about first picking a random family and then a random mother within that family? If that mother is not eligible (cool down, curse, etc.), try again. This way babies would be evenly distributed between families, but the cooldown would keep one mother from getting overloaded.

Perhaps the yum/heat bonus could be more about reducing the baby cool down timer than increasing chance of a baby being born.

Dodge · 2019-08-26 20:56:07

ryanb wrote:

What about first picking a random family and then a random mother within that family? If that mother is not eligible (cool down, curse, etc.), try again. This way babies would be evenly distributed between families, but the cooldown would keep one mother from getting overloaded.
Perhaps the yum/heat bonus could be more about reducing the baby cool down timer than increasing chance of a baby being born.

More opportunities but equal chances that's actually much better.

Saolin · 2019-08-26 21:14:04

jasonrohrer wrote:

One question: would the larger fam have more chance of high warmth and YUM fertility bonuses than a small fam?

I think yes, and yes, with one caveat: when there is a huge population boom occasionally, it depletes these resources, creating a kind of negative feedback loop.

Actually I think it's more complicated than that. A currently small established town may have plenty of variety of foods if it was once larger but shrinking due to lack of births, and lots of food was prepared due to the expectation of many mouths to feed as well as the options available in a larger town.

In general a more advanced / developed town will have more potential for yum chain due to more options, but what's actually available will depend on population boom or recession, as well as who is preparing the food. Some will make just the most efficient foods, while some will focus more on maximizing yum potential.

Psykout · 2019-08-26 21:14:31

Can we get some details on Yum mechanic? As it was already said, bigger families have better clothing, better yum, better fires and more food. It all really favors the top end and barely trickles down to smaller families.

I agree it would feel weird to not get a bonus for having a successful family but it also doesn't feel good to have that bonus essentially be taken from other less successful families. It's like shaking down the poor and needy so you can keep living in luxury.

Maybe any fertility bonus increases chances of kids, but having little or no bonuses you are more likely to have a female child. Not a huge increase, to avoid the feeling that being successful hurts your chances, but enough of a nudge to keep the low income families above water. Baby welfare kind of haha

Guppy · 2019-08-26 22:52:07

Would there be a way to make the chance for a female baby higher the less people the family has?

This way the families would be more stable, and if there are only one woman and 6 men in a family left and the men commit ritual suicide, the chance for a baby girl gets higher.

At the same time, big families dont get absolutly flooded with babies because they just so happen to have 20 females AND they would have more manpower to explore/ (fight?) and such.

Last edited by Guppy (2019-08-26 22:52:36)

DestinyCall · 2019-08-27 00:26:43

I think skewing the RNG to favor girls in small villages makes sense. Just don't over-do the advantage or the resulting baby boom could overwhelm the village infastructure and kick off a famine. A family can die from too many girls too. Especially small villages with limited food safety net. Boys provide strong workers without extra mouths to feed. People tend to value girls highly because they bring babies, but a hive of bees is almost all drones. It only needs one strong queen to live on.

Perhaps a weighted average - if your last baby was male, next baby is more likely to roll female. Or if male population in family is over 50%, more likely to roll female. Small village has a bit of advantage there.

Last edited by DestinyCall (2019-08-27 00:48:56)

DarkDrak · 2019-08-27 00:42:05

...Am I missing something here? Where are those babies coming from?
Focusing on the "compete for the babies" thing and ignoring other facturors, shouldnt it be a self-balancing graph?

Let's assume we have 50 Fertile mothers on the server, 100 total players and 4 families.
Fam A: 30 Fertiles, 60 people
Fam B: 15 Fertiles, 30 people
Fam C: 4 Fertiles, 8 people
Fam D: 1 Fertile, 2 people

Now lets assume that half of a family dies in half an hour (realistic, no?). Also that every half an hour 20 people take a break (among those who died, distributed proportionally) and 20 new people come to play (probably a too generous of an assumption)...
After that half an hour, we'll have:
20 players with no area bans
18 people area banned from fam A
9 people area banned from fam B
2 people area banned from fam C
1 person area banned from fam D
50 People total to be reborn.

12 + 0 + 7.7 + 1.3 + 0.6 = 21.6 people born in Fam A
6 + 13.5 + 0 + 0.7 + 0.3 = 20.5 people born in Fam B
1.6 + 3.6 + 1 + 0 + 0.1 = 6.3 people born in fam C
0.4 + 0.9 + 0.3 + 0 = 1.6 people born in family D

If we devide these for the number of fertile mothers that each family had we'll get
0.72 babies/mom for Fam A
1.37 babies/mom for Fam B
1.58 babies/mom for Fam C
1,6 babies/mom for Fam D

After another hour, continuing with the same assumptions, we'll have 14 people area banned from both family A and B...

Please correct me if my math is wrong, havent been doing it for too long.

This doesnt really look like a snowballing meccanic to me, not until the large families spread across several towns to beat the area ban. Then the small fams are screwed.

antking:]# · 2019-08-27 00:58:33

Before you read my post watch this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IaYhG11ckA

So my idea is pretty simple and probably effective... (though I don't know if it could work)

the higher yum and temp is the more kids you'll have obviously but it will also increase the chance to have a boy over a girl...

while bad temp and low yum will make you have less kids while having more chance of a girl then a boy.

thought for this to work out the difference of babies produced should be large, and it would balance out richer villages are able to support more works (boys)

while poor villages can only support small pops so will need more girls.

I really think we should give this a shot.....

Last edited by antking:]# (2019-08-27 01:04:18)

Coconut Fruit · 2019-08-27 03:32:51

jasonrohrer wrote:

The only way to prevent this is to add anti-competitive compensation in terms of baby distribution. I.e, the smaller family gets more babies than it should otherwise get. And that just feels weird

Maybe chance to born should decrease every next kid a mother has, and increase the chance again once the kid dies. It feels natural to me that people irl want to have kids, but not too many.

There is also another factor. People spam /die to respawn in better towns.

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#1 2019-08-26 19:14:48

Maybe why we'll always get down to one family (tipping scales)

#2 2019-08-26 19:23:45

Re: Maybe why we'll always get down to one family (tipping scales)

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