Can confirm! First appearance of beekeeping in Europe is in a 12.000 years old painting in la cueva de la Araña near Valencia (Source).
3 Likes
How could we implement bees? It would seem logical to have them in colonies, each functioning in game mechanics as one animal.
1 Like
I agree. The Beehive would be the “animal.” It would have to be destroyed to obtain the honey, as they didn’t yet know how to use smoke to force the bees out safely. The amount of honey production would be based upon climate and local flora. You could even spice it up by having a slight risk involved with harvesting the honey.
3 Likes
Destroying a hive sure seems like something where you would get stung a lot. 
Could destroying a hive make a villager unusable for a day (since the stings would hurt a lot, and he wouldn’t be able to do anything), for example?
1 Like
You could wack it with a stick and run. You would be fine. lol
2 Likes
Was the domestication of cats linked to agricultural produce storage. What value is a cat prior to this time?
I don’t know the answer to that, but it would be interesting to find out. Of course we can always say that animal friends have the value of friendship itself, but I suspect they were domesticated for the utility of vermin catching.
3 Likes
Animals are domesticated for practical purpose. Cats are a luxury for all but the affluent. Primitive people would not maintain cats, thet arent creatures with instinct to follow a migratory people, show less loyalty and will seek their own comfort. A dog will keep you warm at night porotect you and take notice of approaching unknowns. Cats tend not to care.
Cats were certainly kept as pets, with little other purpose, in Ancient Egypt, it is well recorded. But Egypt was an established sedentary culture with an advanced economy. A well to do Egyptian could afford to keep cats. Not so sure of neolithic peoples.
Cat farming for fur would make some sense, you wouldnt need to enclose the cats, just feed them and let them breed and have some disappear every now and then. However other animals are better for providing fur. However this assumes domestication, neolithic cats would be very wild, and I suspect the breeding of domestication into cats took longer than for most other domestic animals. Even now only a portion of domestication has been established.
Hello!
At least this publication (Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS)) is clearly linking the cat’s domestication and the birth of agriculture.
.Still very widespread in Eastern Asia today, this wildcat [the leopard cat], which is a distant relation of the western wildcat (Felis silvestris lybica), is well-known for its propensity to frequent areas with a strong human presenceJust as in the Near East and Egypt, leopard cats were probably attracted into Chinese settlements by the proliferation of rodents who took advantage of grain stores.
These conclusions show that a process comparable to the one that took place in the Near East and in Egypt developed independently in China following the birth of agriculture in the eighth millennium BC. In China it was the leopard cat (P. bengalensis) and not the western wildcat (F. silvestris) that started to form a relationship with humans. Cat domestication was, at least in three regions of the world, therefore closely connected to the beginnings of agriculture.
Also, I know it’s far after neolithic, but archaeologists working on the old city of Sais, in Egypte, found what looks like a rodent’s trap. We’ll probably never know, but I’m wondering if they were already building this kind of things during the neolithic times!
Anyway I think AC should definitely features some special guests: rats running around, eager to eat up the crops. Or also maybe locust - in certain regions, they were also probably widespread. What do you think @Orlanth @lotus253 ?
2 Likes
I don’t think cats would do very well for fur. They take longer to reach adulthood than similarly-sized animals like rabbits, and their coats are nowhere near as soft. You also have to feed them meet as they are oblique at carnivores. Keeping them confined would also be difficult as they don’t like to be together. Hunting them in the wild would be more complicated than hunting something simple like a rabbit. And their fur is absolutely miserable for any form of spinning. Lastly, you would want to dispose of their carcasses instead of using them as predatory animals are not generally consumed.
The domestication of cats probably occurred as a result of the symbiotic relationship with humans whereby cats killed mice while humans afforded them a reasonably safe place to live.
1 Like
I concur and was going through the options. It comes back to rodent control which is not an issue for migratory hunter gatherers.
1 Like
The document that you posted clearly speaks of the middle and late Neolithic, and even the early Neolithic and several places in Europe. This is definitely spot-on for when the game is set. I would have to read the referenced academic paper in the document you posted to see what their evidence is for early cat domestication, but if I assume it is correct then it would follow that cat domestication did occur as a response to the advent of farming. I hypothesized this in my books, but I did specifically stipulate with in the books that this was not something proven. Overtime, new research comes out proving or disproving ideas a person has LOL
Why would they not use smoke like today? All they needed to harvest without killing the nest was at their disposal. Some people even can harvest honey just with bare hands.
Very nice find!
Yes, that’s how we plan to model some swarm like animals. Even some fishes.
3 Likes
We don’t technically know if they had to destroy it or not, but we do not know when the smoking technique was invented or that it existed at that time period, whereas the hive destruction method certainly did exist. You could even make the smoking technique and upgrade to be researched. The reality is, we don’t know when it started, and we have no evidence that it was or was not used during the Neolithic.
I should have written that in a way that was less suggestive that smoking was not known.
1 Like
Just a random thought I just had. Maybe it’s been suggested already, but maybe also it would be a pity if this was left aside without writing it…
I just thought that having the possibility to develop characteristics in your animals could be a very interesting feature, alongside just adding e.g. dogs, cats or hens with the Animal Companion DLC.
In clear: in the first eras of Neolithic, you’d have every advantage to favorise hunting characters in your dogs. For later eras, maybe you could turn them very, very slowly to wardogs.
On the contrary, if your tribe progressively specialize into sheep herding and trade lot of wool and cheese, maybe it would be far better to have loyal dogs, able to help your characters limiting the losses in your herds by keeping wild animals away and guiding the herd.
The same may be said about cows: if you’re in mountains or in an area with very rough winters, natural selections and a decision to favorise robust cows could be very beneficial. On the contrary, if you’re in a temperate climate, having cows giving lot of milk or lot of meat would be far better.
In every case (hunting, combat, sheepherding) it could be a simple trait added to each animal, quite randomly. A decision to favorise one trait once it appeared into the genetic stock would help keeping it: if a male has a trait and a female not, there is 50% chance the puppies have the trait. If you take the active decision to favorise this trait, you may add 10 or 20% chance to help keeping it in the next generation genes.
Another solution would be a simple modifier: with each passing generation (let’s say every 15 or 20 years) you add for instance 0.05% more to the modifier, so that every dog in the village could become more oriented towards one peculiar characteristic.
One way or another, I’m sure something kept light (regarding game memory and scripting work) could be found to have such a nice feature: what would be necessary would not be characteristic as complex and as developed as in human characters, but just adding one more layer to the game, with very long-term effects.
I think the idea is sound because after all a Animal is a Animal is a Animal whether it be a cat, rat , bird, fish, mammoth or Villager so in general you need to create a animal Class and assign it a group of properties/traits then program the properties/traits to change, grow, modify as needed all in all sounds like a simple task.
Problem comes with balancing and unknown interactions it just gets overwhelming and tedious and prone the potential for exploits so my suggestion is this should be left to the modders.
What can or should be used by the developers from your excellent suggestion is the list of properties/traits to be included in the Animal Class
Hunting Ability
Loyalty Trait
constitution trait
So i disagree with this because to me it would be best if instead of adding more different underlying objects to the game “farm animal”, “hunted Animal” “Human” etc just have Animal and provide a modifiable list of traits sort of a one size fits all.
In general I would like to accept the challenge of someone finding a trait that applies to man that does not apply to beast and Vice versa
This is how it works in general.
If you are talking about physical traits, you are right.
But humans have other traits related to human culture and behaviour that animals don’t have, because in animals they don’t have sense -like religion belief- or because it would be a technical resource overkill as humans -being the core of the game- are simulated in more detail than animals.
2 Likes
First my statements are related to Programming not Real life as there is no “Belief” in the game there is only cause and affect.
Religion is nothing more than a property and could easily be relabeled “routine” as a programmer there is no difference between a mating ritual and a religious ritual one has a chance to spawn a new animal one has a chance to improve morale or provide a brief/permanent increase in some other trait. I can only assume that a objects traits are a linked list not a check/mail box list
I both agree and disagree there will always be limits to how many traits/properties each object can have and still be technically possible. As far as humans being the core or simulated in more detail I hope not I hope the only difference between a human and a mammoth is the decision tree and the number of traits used/linked in. You have made it clear that individual control of humans will not be available so things like Path finding , movement in general , lifespan, reproduction etc are all part of the AI so why would you not apply this AI/Logic to all objects equally. In other words in tribe of 8 people with two dogs and 4 deer why not let player micro manage all animals. When the population grows past a point the simulation will only be able to handle a population of "X"on the screen at a time at that point whats the difference between if the player is micro managing 10 people or 8 people and 2 dogs in detail.
My final point/question what is the difference other than artwork between the inter actions of Human to Dog and Human to Child and therefor what are the differences between the traits/actions/depth of simulation between Dog and child
If you are going to decide who rules a group, like a pack of wolves or a group of hunters, we simplified the decision for the wolves and make the strong becomes the new leader, but we account for a lot more to decide that for humans, so physical strength is taken into account, but also charisma, will, or what others in the group think about of him based on his traits, etc… Any trait that is not going to be used to make logic decisions just doesn’t need to be there wasting memory, so if wolves never use their charisma, we just don’t model charisma for wolves.
Memory and CPU power.
Both are limited so you have to make a decision here:
1- Animals and humans fully simulated leading to reduced number of total population that can be simulated.
2- Simplified animals and fully simulated humans allowing for more population simulated at the same time.
Unless you really are into biology for the kind of game AC is the answer is easy.
Good news is that in the future more complex behaviours and/or traits can be added for animals.
But even in the future the question still stands. Should we use that resources to improve animals, or use them to improve human behaviour?
5 Likes