Reply To: 32-floor building planned for Dublin

AI, well what Medieval Total war does, is it adjusts the AI for various units of soldiers – like some behave with a lot more cowardice than others do. On the other hand, some stay and fight, when perhaps they should actually run. You are expected to understand this yourself, and as a general you are expected to make the necessary adjustments.

I don’t know if I mentioned this in the past, but WWI relied heavily on improvements in defensive war, which were not met by equal but opposite improvements to offensive war.

I.e.

* Tinned food, soldiers fought through the winters.
* Barred wire, stopped cavalry charges, which broke up dead-locks.
* Hydraulic canon firing – no need to reset aim, meaning continuous rate of fire of heavy artillery.
* Telephone – allowed better distribution and organisation of resources along a long front, making breakthroughs more difficult.

Medieval warfare was beautiful – the archers when first introduced could just win on their own – so cavalry was needed to break up the archers, while spearmen were needed to resist cavalry.

PowerRes is something similar to what you said, about submitting work online to do large calculations

http://www.respower.com/news_2004_01_16_max6

I can see, that would be the best direction for rendering and certain AI software like we are discussing.

But in fairness, given the description of Medieval Total War gaming strategy above – I think that the best way to approach something like a building for the public, say it be part of a campus like in UCD, DCU or Trinity – or an extension to the National Gallery of Ireland, or an Olympic Swimming Pool, or a new National COnference centre – is simply to thing of the people using the institution as dynamic units.

Doing so, by using computers to highlight pedestrian flow patterns etc, you could anticipate a heck of a lot more about a design, than simply worrying about the colour of the f*** blinds, mullions, carpets, which are nice to get right, but what architects devote much too large a portion of their time doing.

I can never help when looking at these pictures;

http://www.hughpearman.com/articles3/dublin5.html

how much of the medieval pedestrian narrow street idea has been brought into the architecture there. How people move through the architecture – not like some really static wonder structure like a Mies van der Rohe. I guess people like James Stirling were also instrumental in bringing back some of this dynamic experience of architecture.

Then I see pictures like this one;

http://www.totalwar.com/community/bat9.htm

And I am automatically reminded that the old architecture in those days was much more inhabited, vibrant with lots of characters and busy people. Than the experience you get nowadays of medieval, which is normally something rather desolate and barren, renovated by the OPW! 🙂 Yeah, they had the budget for the nice paving, but something is missing.

Whenever, I come across bits of medieval embedded into parts of cities, that are still in use – I think that medieval architecture, streets and spaces really do still live. I think FIn mentions Italy being a place where that is the case – I know if I ever went there to visit, I would be looking at the architecture from that point of view.

I am not sure what kind of public liability clauses they had in medieval times though, for people falling from ramparts etc, but it was much more fun!