It seems like if you sell off a little land in the first few years to plant as much land as possible, you'll keep having enough wheat everything going. Within a few years you'll be able to buy that back and then some.<p>And then you have a plague.
I don't get why people criticise the game here. If I understand correctly it's not really a remake but a copy of an old game which was simply made available to us with all it's flaws, bugs and other happy memories.
People loved me when I let 2.5% die of starvation but ended up with almost 11 acres per person, and hated me when I kept every single person fed but ended up with 8 acres per person.
I remember we had to play this game in high school, back in 1983. I had a political science teacher who thought this was a very clever game. He was fascinated with the primitive simulations that were available then. There was another one where we had to manage a restaurant, buying ingredients and selling meals. I did very well with that one. Funny how everything became a lot more sophisticated within 10 years. 1983 was still the era of personal computers that had 16 to 32 k.
I really don't see how it can be seen as a favorable outcome (A fantastic performance!!! Charlemagne, Disraeli and Jefferson combined could not have done better!) when over a 10 year period, my population has dropped 62% and the state has sold off 16% of its land just to feed its people. Obviously that's not sustainable.
Yep, I first heard about Hammurabi in the book <i>Basic Computer Games</i>. Per the wiki, it was the first computer book to sell a million copies.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_Computer_Games" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_Computer_Games</a>
This game seems horribly buggy. It deducts bushels even when your move is rejected ("Thank again!".) Currently I have -2 bushels, but I don't think the concept of credit was intended to come into play.
The randomization is VERY sever in this. On 5 new games, always doing 2000 food and 800 seeds, i get a Year 2 bushel total of: 748, 800, 1650, 2800, 4000.<p>That is a 536% swing in return for [seemingly] identical starting conditions.
I translated to Scheme at my blog: <a href="http://programmingpraxis.com/2010/07/27/hamurabi-bas/" rel="nofollow">http://programmingpraxis.com/2010/07/27/hamurabi-bas/</a>.