You have to keep in mind that if they walk around let's say a somewhat round block, it means that if they have come more than half the way around, they will not turn around but continue the shortest way back, which means that they will just keep walking.

In Caesar3 the walkers started their jurneys going in one direction (let's say east) then the next time they go for a walk, they try going in a different direction... although I don't know if it works in the same way in Pharaoh though

Moquel

Today is yesterday's effect and tomorrow's cause - Phillip Gribble

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Moquel,

Let me clarify: I was using a long, straight road to test distances on.

Regards,

--Jimhotep

Ah... have you tested it in different climates? it just might make a differance...

Anyway, I will do so now (some walker range testing that is), and I think I'll do it on ever walker in every climate. So I'll se you tomorrow, I've got some testing to do...

Wow. Impressive and helpful (and obsessive).

Once you're done with these numbers, you should put them in a chart and get them posted in the strategy section.

Thanks for checking this stuff.

-- JWorth

Did a little bit more work on walker ranges. The results still look a little funny- I'm tempted to go and check the earlier figures, to make sure that I wasn't counting 43's as 44's or whatever. The little variations might be due to where the walkers appear.

Anyway...

Police have journeys of 44/52 (ended up -44/52)

Tax collectors go 37/46 (always in the same direction, i.e. 37/37/37/46)

Architects go 44/52 (44/44/52/-44)
I'm pretty sure this is the same as the Firewarden, though I gave its range previously as 43/52.

Water carriers go 26/36 (26,26,36,-26).
This is the same as the physician.

I didn't check the Magistrate again- as far as I know it is
a 48/54 (specifically a -48/54, but I suspect its normal pattern of journeys is something like 48/48/54/-48)

I think, but have not yet confirmed, that services that help people (like physicians and Magistrates) will move into a two part mode if all their clients are on one side. Otherwise three quarters of their trips will be in the preferred direction.
(e.g. 26/-26/26/36 instead of -26/36)

I also hypothesize that other services only care about where the longest road is (or possibly what takes them closest to the city center). Fire and Architect are in this category, as is, surprisingly, the tax collector.

magne,

I set up situations where walkers were presented with little 1x1 stub roads. Some of the walkers ducked in and out up to six times, and more than once they bounced back and forth between the stub roads. After a while they got tired and took the straightest route home.

Maybe there is something different about stub roads when they occur in venues? Could you look again and see if your walkers are in fact bouncing or changing direction every now and again?

--Jimhotep

There seems to be something special about the numbers 26, 36, 44 and 52. Walkers sometimes go other distances (I've even seen a few go 71 squares and then vanish!), these are by far the most common. Now, as Nerdicus would say, the game designer didn't just pull these numbers out of his... hat; there is a reason behind them. But what?

I have a theory. As Nerdicus has discovered, walkers go through a cycle of 12 animations when they walk. There are 51 animation steps in a day, and 16 days in a month (the 4-day work week, he calls it). Five cycles (60 steps) is equal to 4 squares; there are 15 steps per square.

51 steps a day, times 16 days in a month is 816 steps; at 15 steps per square this is 54.4 squares a month.

Now suppose you are a pharaoh game designer, and you want to set the distance a walker might go. What would you use? A month's walking would be nice, though 816 steps is not a very natural number. A multiple of 60 steps would be good two, as this is 4 squares and five cycles. So you choose the biggest multiple of 60 which is less than 816; 780, or 52 squares. This is the maximum distance for your long range walker.

780 is 13 times 60; half of this is the standard short range (26 squares), or 6.5x60. 6.5 is almost 7, and between 7 and 13 are two other odd numbers, so these odd multiples of 60 fill in the gaps. In other words

13x60=780 steps= 52 squares
11x60=660 steps= 44 squares
9x60 =540 steps= 36 squares
6.5x60=390 steps= 26 squares

This is why the numbers 26, 36, 44 and 52 tend to reoccur when you count how far walkers walk.

When I double-checked my walker distances they fell into these categories. I did not find any consistent pattern of 48's or 54's or anything.

One thing I did do was count from the middle square of a length 3 building- not from where the walker appeared.

Since I only counted squares, not animation steps, some of these numbers might be off a trifle. Please confirm and extend these results if you have the time or inclination.

--Jimhotep

I want to reverse myself (again) and say that the distances are from where a walker appears, not from the center of the building. I don't know if the place where they appear is always the same. Something for a future investigation- I doubt it will ever make a practical difference. (Though it might make a nuance of difference- should you put Fire then Architect, or the other way around...? Too subtle for me).

The long walkers (44/52) are Fire Marshall, Architect, Magistrate and Police.

Everyone else seems to be a short walker (26/36).

I occasionally think I see a variation from these distances, but I'm not sure. I'm also not too sure of the exact proportions of walks. Sometimes it seems to be 3:1, other times the two trips seem to occur in equal proportions. Again, more investigation required.

Will keep you posted.

BTW, I'm leaving for Edmonton for 9 days. Might not be posting in that time. I'm going for a job interview- wish me luck!

--Jimhotep

P.S.

I'd better look at the tax collectors again. They don't fit my theory.

Wishing you luck

------------------
Homage to thee, Osiris, Lord of Eternity, King of the Gods, whose names are manifold, whose forms are holy, thou being of hidden form in the temples, whose Ka is holy."
-- Book of the Dead (1240 BC)

Great work Jimhotep. I've been studying entertainment walkers (plan on posting the results soon), but I only measured how many "days" the random walkers walked (easier than counting squares or steps). The values I got were 10 days (most of the time) and 11, 12, 13 or 14 days (some of the time). I think I need to take your approach and count the squares. My 10 and 11 day walks could have both been 36 squares (10.59 days), and my 12 and 13 day walks could have been 44 squares (12.94 days). I'll let you know when I've had a chance to check.

[This message has been edited by Nero Would (edited 04-19-2000).]

Great work Jimhotep, I had this topic on my list of "things to look at when I have WAY to much time on my hands". Though recently the contests have been sucking up much of that time.

From the little bit of work I did on this a while ago, I would tend to agree that the walks are square based instead of time based. In my tests I put down a plaza on the square that the walker turned on and when the walker returned to that square it seemed to turn around exactly in the center of the square. The walkers seem to appear in the center of a square as well, so the "everything is a multiple of 60" rule would still work well.

Also the walks differ for labor seekers (my test subjects) depending on the side of the road (right or left) and the direction (North-South or East-West) that my long straight test road took as it passed the building. Despite what I have heard, changing the road geometry did not affect my small sample (ie adding very large loops, snaking paths -vs- long straight,...).

Nerdicus,

My impression is that the preferred direction of most walkers is towards the longest length of road. If they are in a loop (where the road directions must be the same in both directions) they tend to go clockwise. Can you confirm this impression?

I'm not sure how the walkers know where the longest stretch of road is. Do you recall the discussion re labor coverage where it was hypothesized that housing had a "labor field" analogous to desirability? I wonder if road tiles exert a similar field to encourage random walkers to walk down them.

A way of exploring this might be to send the walkers down a straight road with a little stub road attached, and gradually lengthen the stub road to see if the probability of the walker's turning increases.

I have a feeling that walkers who povide services to houses (physician, say) may be affected by where the housing is, although general service providers (fire house, architect) do not.

I also have a feeling that their path changes over time; they may initially explore a side road every time they come across it, but after a number of journeys (4?) will start to ignore it.

Lots of little details in this game...

Regards,

Jimhotep

P.S. I got the job!

Jimhotep,

I haven't confirmed it with any controlled observations, but I think you're right that residential service types (and labor recruiters) are affected by the local direction of housing.

On the stub road question, I've repeatedly used 50 square loops with a 1 square stub road extending off a corner and found that water carriers/physicians will go all the way around every time (with a trip into the stub each time as well). This doesn't support the theory that walkers will learn to ignore stub roads, but at least they don't get stuck going back and forth in them (or at least not in my observations).

This could be completely wrong, but I think I've observed that walkers have an initial bias towards walking towards a city's center of population, regardless of the sizes of any connected road networks. I've done a few tests on straightline roads extending away from a city, and I've found that adding huge road networks with nothing on them at the end of these roads (out in the boondocks) doesn't seem to affect walker behavior at all.

JWorth,

Could you distinguish between the walkers moving toward the center of population as opposed to the center of the map?

I've created situations where 1 square stub roads do in fact cause walkers to reverse in direction and even bounce around. I wonder why they don't do it in your loop?

--Jimhotep

I'll have to check some saved cities, but I think I have observed this on maps with off-center central developments. I must admit, now that you ask I'm not positive. I may have been overlooking something obvious here...

As far as stubs and loops, I had a 50 square loop in North Dashur -- a 21x2 block to get workers out to the mines -- with a stub for a bandstand at its end and I tested it before building. I watched several (more than four) successful loop trips by the physician and water-carrier (with no out-and-back trips) before I decided to use it, and it was rock-solid throughout the game. Perhaps the walkers are smart enough to distinguish stubs at corners (making 3 way intersections) from stubs off of straight roads? What kind of stub roads have you found to be a problem for walkers?

JWorth,

Now that you mention it, the problematic stub roads were of this variety:

=================
.................=...............

Walkers would enter the stub, turn around, leave the stub, turn around, re-enter the stub... anywhere from four to six times. All this bumping of their heads would sometimes make them forget which direction they were going.

I suppose this type of stub road is much less problematic:
===============
...........................=..
...........................=..
...........................=..
...........................=..

If a little walker comes in from the left, it explores the stub road, bumps his nose, and continues down. He doesn't turn back.

I wonder if it depends on whether the walker is going clockwise or counterclockwise if it gets reversed. My Pharaoh disk is in another city, no way to check for now...

--Jimhotep

[This message has been edited by Jimhotep (edited 04-22-2000).]

Jimhotep
They newer turn around, but continue their tour. And they only enter the stub the coming from one direction, but I don’t remember whom. Think it’s then thy walk straight into to stub. I studied this some because of my housing block.

Hi Jimhotep,

since I build loop housing blocks most of the time,
I've tested some walkers in a rather big 5*27 loop (-> length = 68 tiles).
The loop can be found in South Dashur, which I submitted yesterday.

The distance of walkers who distribute something (Water Carrier, Bazaar Lady..)
also depends on the number of houses (or people?), he/she passes.
If you add two more Common Residences (where the gaps are), the CRs at the bottom won't get water.
The pattern of the Water Carrier was: -32, +32, +27, -27, -32, +32, +27, -27, ..
He never looped, if you build a house opposite to the water supply, it'll never get water.

The Fire Marshal and the Architect didn't behave the same way.
The Fire Marshal looped every time in the same direction: +68, +68, +68, +68, ..
The Architect followed this pattern: +44 and vanished, +68, -68, -68, +44v, +68, -68, -68, ..
Nice detail: after the Architect vanished, you could see his red spot on the radar screen
finishing the loop, but without any effect.

Max,

Have I taken the opportunity to congratulate you on the "Max block"? A very elegant solution to the "intersection problem" inherent in entertainment venues. If I have been remiss, consider yourself congratulated.

When I tested walker ranges, I didn't use a loop. I found it hard to tell when the walkers wanted to go home. On a straight line they would always turn around when this happened; in a loop they'll just keep walking if that's the shortest way back.

When counting squares, did you count the square the water carrier appeared in? I mean, did he appear and then walk 26 squares, or did he appear and then walk 27?

Nice observation about the water carriers. I had never considered them distribution workers like the bazaar ladies. If there were more of them, do you suppose that they would be able to loop?

I wonder why the architect and fire marshall behaved in such different ways. And that vanishing behavior is downright weird.

Thanks for contributing to the understanding of these wacky little walkers!

--Jimhotep

I've been having a problem with my temple walkers. I have a housing block I use for population-dense, middle-class housing which is basically a U shape. My less-desierable buildings are placed on either of the arms reaching the open end and the housing fills the middle and down each side. When I first started using this block I was putting the temple so that it "filled" most of the open end. Recently I tired moving the temple to a point about half-way down one of the long arms, both to increase the overall desireablility of the housing and also make room at the end for other services. The problem is that now the priests leave the temple and EVERY time they walk in the direction of the curved part and down the oposite side. This gives access to about 80% of my homes, but all the houses on the little piece of road between the temple and the opening of the U are left untouched.

It would appear that temple walkers are the type who always head in the direction of highest population density, since I have built this block facing every possible direction and never had a connection between where they walk and the center of the map. Is this correct? If so, is there a way to get them to go in the other direction once in a while? Most walkers seem to change thier starting direction but since moving the temple in amongst the houses I have seen the spaceous apartments right next to the temple devolve to huts because of no religious access.

------------------
Lawrence Tilly
New Hampshire AnlaShok
"We live for the code
We die for the code"

Jimhotep and all:

Excellent information on difficult subject. I've also been playing with walkers but one that has not been discussed.

I've been trying to analize the habits of the tower sentry.

They are also walkers as long as you provide them with a walled walkway of two tiles thick and direct it away from the tower.

I've been trying to extend their walkways out and back from the same tower or tower complex versus just creating walls between towers.

I have been able to build adjacent towers (next to roads) and extend walls from one of the towers out in a loop fashion (no roads required along the loop).

On some loop extensions I have been successful in having the sentries walk the entire distance on others I have not. Influences seem to be direction of the wall and placement of neighboring towers. Will probably play around with it a little more this weekend as your postings have fueled new ideas.

Also, I agree with your comment concening population density and service providers tending to move in that direction. On serveral of my large circular housing blocks I've noticed my water carrier will tend to move most of the time in the direction of denser population and all but ignore the portion of the loop that was less populated.

Keep up the good work

Regards,
Vriesea

NH_AnlaShok,

What happens if (by a strategic placement and undo of a roadblock) you make the priest turn around? Does he revert to his old ways, or does he clue in that some of his flock lives in the opposite direction?

--Jimhotep

NH_AnlaShok,
Sometimes, depending on location and other things, walkers always go the same way when leaving a building. I had a fairly large loop in Buhen that worked fine for a while (several years?), then the priest started to always walk the same way. I switched the temple and courthouse and the block started working again. My conclusion (from this and other experiences) is that it's risky to depend on a walker either going in both directions or occasionally taking a longer walk. If I build a block that depends on either of those behaviors by any walker, I check frequently (at least until the road network is complete) to see if it's still OK.

Thanks Jimhotep ,

I checked the water carrier again: on the short trip he appeared and then he walked 26 tiles.
I added a second water carrier, but none of the guys looped.

RE: replies to my Temple Walkers post
When I roadblock the priests and force them to walk in the other direction, they "forget" that there were houses there when I remove the temple. I haven't had time to play with just "test blocks" (my game time is limited so I always play "for keeps"), so my observations are based on live cities. The block I encounter problems on happens to have the longest-road and highest density in the same direction from the temple and I don't know which of these two attract the priest the most. To avoid this I moved the temple back to where I had it (on one end of the U) and put the physician and some gardens in its old spot (the doc heads off at random and the combo gives a great disireability boost).

------------------
Lawrence Tilly
New Hampshire AnlaShok
"We live for the code
We die for the code"