Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Modeling hoplite combat

I have, after years of trying off and on, finally gotten in contact with Rob McDermott. If you have not seen his simulation of hoplite combat take a look:

http://www.ddv.co.nz/hoplites/

There are many elements that could be added to raise the realism of the model, but the most important thing is to show how a group behavior, such as phalanx combat, can be self-organized. In this model there is no leader. Each simulated hoplite is an "agent" endowed with a list of very simple responses. The only information they recieve is from their immediate surroundings- from the few men around them acting to push or fight them. One of the biggest problems that those who follow my blog have with my view of phalanx combat is that they don't see how such crowd-wide behavior could be coordinated. Rob's model gives an example, though I would change/add a variety of the details I've exposed in previous posts. I plan to create a model with those elements in the future.

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