#149 Citizen Behavior

[Will Riley]

Citizens should do something more useful with their
time instead of walking around bumping into polar
bears.
but i love the polar bears.

not every denizen of a city is a citizen, but here's a
potential list
of criteria for citizenship:

each citizen should have a room to sleep in and own a
key to their room.

each citizen should have an occupation that entails a
daily routine like planting seeds or buying bread from
the baker, etc.

each citizen should have a natural lifespan and they
should eventually die.

each citizen (with some exceptions) should seek mates
and have children.

each citizen should have basic needs like food and
water and housing and sex and strategies for meeting
those needs.

each citizen should be able to leave a town and with
some probability migrate to another town. this
probability would include the probability that citizen
wants to move (maybe their basic needs aren't being
met) and the probability that they successfully arrive at
neighboring towns.

each citizen should have a list of rumour items. if the
citizen hears a rumour item that precedes one of their
rumour items, then the citizen should say it. if another
citizen hears it, they pick up the rumour item. citizens
should occasionally forget rumour items and
occassionally automatically move on to adjacent
rumour items. also, citizens should occasionally say
one of their rumour items. the more contingent the
rumour item is, the less probable the citizen should
randomly say it. in effect, the game world could have a
directed rumour graph (maybe a hierarchical tree) with
each citizen referencing a list nodes in this graph.

the distribution of rumour items could be set initially
based on different towns, but as the town grows, more
citizens will potentially migrate and the rumours will
slowly creep across the world.

with these citizens, a town could grow and change.