HAMURABI.BAS
July 27, 2010
The game strategy implemented below is to always use exactly enough grain to feed all the people, selling land as needed to achieve that objective, and to always plant as many acres as possible; but don’t sell more land than necessary, as the rats will have less to eat if your silos are nearly empty. In the last round, buy enough land to assure at least ten acres per person; it is better to err on the side of too much land rather than too little, as the incoming steward will be able to sell land if needed.
> (hamurabi)
HAMURABI
CREATIVE COMPUTING MORRISTOWN, NEW JERSEY
TRY YOUR HAND AT GOVERNING ANCIENT SUMERIA
FOR A TEN-YEAR TERM OF OFFICE.
HAMURABI: I BEG TO REPORT TO YOU,
IN YEAR 1, 0 PEOPLE STARVED, 5 CAME TO THE CITY,
POPULATION IS NOW 100
THE CITY OWNS 1000 ACRES.
YOU HARVESTED 3 BUSHELS PER ACRE.
RATS ATE 200 BUSHELS.
YOU NOW HAVE 2800 BUSHELS IN STORE.
LAND IS TRADING AT 17 BUSHELS PER ACRE.
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO BUY? 0
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO SELL? 0
HOW MANY BUSHELS DO YOU WISH TO FEED YOUR PEOPLE? 2000
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO PLANT WITH SEED? 1000
HAMURABI: I BEG TO REPORT TO YOU,
IN YEAR 2, 0 PEOPLE STARVED, 3 CAME TO THE CITY,
POPULATION IS NOW 103
THE CITY OWNS 1000 ACRES.
YOU HARVESTED 4 BUSHELS PER ACRE.
RATS ATE 0 BUSHELS.
YOU NOW HAVE 4300 BUSHELS IN STORE.
LAND IS TRADING AT 26 BUSHELS PER ACRE.
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO BUY? 0
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO SELL? 0
HOW MANY BUSHELS DO YOU WISH TO FEED YOUR PEOPLE? 2060
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO PLANT WITH SEED? 1000
HAMURABI: I BEG TO REPORT TO YOU,
IN YEAR 3, 0 PEOPLE STARVED, 3 CAME TO THE CITY,
POPULATION IS NOW 106
THE CITY OWNS 1000 ACRES.
YOU HARVESTED 2 BUSHELS PER ACRE.
RATS ATE 0 BUSHELS.
YOU NOW HAVE 3740 BUSHELS IN STORE.
LAND IS TRADING AT 25 BUSHELS PER ACRE.
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO BUY? 0
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO SELL? 0
HOW MANY BUSHELS DO YOU WISH TO FEED YOUR PEOPLE? 2120
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO PLANT WITH SEED? 1000
HAMURABI: I BEG TO REPORT TO YOU,
IN YEAR 4, 0 PEOPLE STARVED, 3 CAME TO THE CITY,
A HORRIBLE PLAGUE STRUCK! HALF THE PEOPLE DIED.
POPULATION IS NOW 54
THE CITY OWNS 1000 ACRES.
YOU HARVESTED 2 BUSHELS PER ACRE.
RATS ATE 0 BUSHELS.
YOU NOW HAVE 3120 BUSHELS IN STORE.
LAND IS TRADING AT 25 BUSHELS PER ACRE.
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO BUY? 0
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO SELL? 0
HOW MANY BUSHELS DO YOU WISH TO FEED YOUR PEOPLE? 1080
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO PLANT WITH SEED? 1000
BUT YOU HAVE ONLY 54 PEOPLE TO TEND THE FIELDS. NOW THEN,
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO PLANT WITH SEED? 540
HAMURABI: I BEG TO REPORT TO YOU,
IN YEAR 5, 0 PEOPLE STARVED, 9 CAME TO THE CITY,
POPULATION IS NOW 63
THE CITY OWNS 1000 ACRES.
YOU HARVESTED 1 BUSHELS PER ACRE.
RATS ATE 0 BUSHELS.
YOU NOW HAVE 2310 BUSHELS IN STORE.
LAND IS TRADING AT 20 BUSHELS PER ACRE.
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO BUY? 0
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO SELL? 0
HOW MANY BUSHELS DO YOU WISH TO FEED YOUR PEOPLE? 1260
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO PLANT WITH SEED? 630
HAMURABI: I BEG TO REPORT TO YOU,
IN YEAR 6, 0 PEOPLE STARVED, 4 CAME TO THE CITY,
POPULATION IS NOW 67
THE CITY OWNS 1000 ACRES.
YOU HARVESTED 2 BUSHELS PER ACRE.
RATS ATE 0 BUSHELS.
YOU NOW HAVE 1995 BUSHELS IN STORE.
LAND IS TRADING AT 25 BUSHELS PER ACRE.
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO BUY? 0
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO SELL? 0
HOW MANY BUSHELS DO YOU WISH TO FEED YOUR PEOPLE? 1340
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO PLANT WITH SEED? 670
HAMURABI: I BEG TO REPORT TO YOU,
IN YEAR 7, 0 PEOPLE STARVED, 8 CAME TO THE CITY,
POPULATION IS NOW 75
THE CITY OWNS 1000 ACRES.
YOU HARVESTED 5 BUSHELS PER ACRE.
RATS ATE 0 BUSHELS.
YOU NOW HAVE 3670 BUSHELS IN STORE.
LAND IS TRADING AT 21 BUSHELS PER ACRE.
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO BUY? 0
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO SELL? 0
HOW MANY BUSHELS DO YOU WISH TO FEED YOUR PEOPLE? 1500
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO PLANT WITH SEED? 750
HAMURABI: I BEG TO REPORT TO YOU,
IN YEAR 8, 0 PEOPLE STARVED, 10 CAME TO THE CITY,
A HORRIBLE PLAGUE STRUCK! HALF THE PEOPLE DIED.
POPULATION IS NOW 42
THE CITY OWNS 1000 ACRES.
YOU HARVESTED 4 BUSHELS PER ACRE.
RATS ATE 897 BUSHELS.
YOU NOW HAVE 3898 BUSHELS IN STORE.
LAND IS TRADING AT 17 BUSHELS PER ACRE.
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO BUY? 0
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO SELL? 0
HOW MANY BUSHELS DO YOU WISH TO FEED YOUR PEOPLE? 840
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO PLANT WITH SEED? 420
HAMURABI: I BEG TO REPORT TO YOU,
IN YEAR 9, 0 PEOPLE STARVED, 6 CAME TO THE CITY,
POPULATION IS NOW 48
THE CITY OWNS 1000 ACRES.
YOU HARVESTED 5 BUSHELS PER ACRE.
RATS ATE 1424 BUSHELS.
YOU NOW HAVE 3524 BUSHELS IN STORE.
LAND IS TRADING AT 25 BUSHELS PER ACRE.
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO BUY? 0
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO SELL? 0
HOW MANY BUSHELS DO YOU WISH TO FEED YOUR PEOPLE? 960
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO PLANT WITH SEED? 480
HAMURABI: I BEG TO REPORT TO YOU,
IN YEAR 10, 0 PEOPLE STARVED, 5 CAME TO THE CITY,
A HORRIBLE PLAGUE STRUCK! HALF THE PEOPLE DIED.
POPULATION IS NOW 26
THE CITY OWNS 1000 ACRES.
YOU HARVESTED 3 BUSHELS PER ACRE.
RATS ATE 581 BUSHELS.
YOU NOW HAVE 3183 BUSHELS IN STORE.
LAND IS TRADING AT 24 BUSHELS PER ACRE.
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO BUY? 0
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO SELL? 0
HOW MANY BUSHELS DO YOU WISH TO FEED YOUR PEOPLE? 520
HOW MANY ACRES DO YOU WISH TO PLANT WITH SEED? 260
HAMURABI: I BEG TO REPORT TO YOU,
IN YEAR 11, 0 PEOPLE STARVED, 18 CAME TO THE CITY,
POPULATION IS NOW 44
THE CITY OWNS 1000 ACRES.
YOU HARVESTED 1 BUSHELS PER ACRE.
RATS ATE 633 BUSHELS.
YOU NOW HAVE 2160 BUSHELS IN STORE.
IN YOUR 10-YEAR TERM OF OFFICE, 0 PERCENT OF THE
POPULATION STARVED PER YEAR ON AVERAGE, I.E., A TOTAL OF
0 PEOPLE DIED!!
YOU STARTED WITH 10 ACRES PER PERSON AND ENDED WITH 22 ACRES PER PERSON.
A FANTASTIC PEFORMANCE!!! CHARLEMAGNE, DISRAELI, AND
JEFFERSON COMBINED COULD NOT HAVE DONE BETTER
SO LONG FOR NOW.
Programming Praxis 
Here’s my rendition in Java. I’m really new to it so your thoughts on how I can improve my code are appreciated
oh… Sorry.. here’s the link: http://pastebin.com/j32JaSEw
One more rendition, in lua: http://codepad.org/pc8FSfnQ
It seems that average size of population in optimal game should be somewhere between 380 and 390 (if we remove restriction on the game duration).
Hm… How INT and RND are work in the basic? Is INT(5*RND(1)) uniformy distributed in {0, 1, .., 4}?
Wish you were allowed to edit your posts here.. or maybe you can and I don’t know how.. anyways. I think I figured out how to embed the code in the comments here…
> Hm… How INT and RND are work in the basic? Is INT(5*RND(1)) uniformy distributed in {0, 1, .., 4}?
IIRC yes. INT will truncate a floating point number (cut off everything behind the point), and RND returns a floating point number between 0 (including) and 1 (excluding).
(The argument to RND will be used as new seed, when negative; create a new seed, when zero; and use the existing seed, when positive.)
So here’s my reimplementation in Common Lisp: http://lisp.pastebin.com/wnUkj52V
I started with using tagbody/go for the control flow, but I had replaced all uses of these before I arrived at a working version.
Sorry, there was a problem with the paste. The URL is now: http://lisp.pastebin.com/r1gL4zYT
I wrote a version in Factor and blogged about it:
http://re-factor.blogspot.com/2010/08/hamurabi.html
The implementation can be seen here:
http://paste.factorcode.org/paste?id=1833
[…] HAMURABI.BAS « Programming Praxis Your task is to reimplement HAMURABI.BAS in a more modern computer language. Don’t peek at the solution unless you want to deprive yourself of the sheer joy of working out the spaghetti code and figuring out what the variables really stand for. When you are finished, you are welcome to read or run a suggested solution, or to post your own solution or discuss the exercise in the comments below. (tags: dev compsci programming todo) […]
http://wiki.tcl.tk/26775,
Loaded an etcl version of Hamurabi with
either a small console demo version or
a larger etcl canvas version.
I’m calling it Game kingdom of Strategy
gold
Here’s my solution in ruby:
http://pastie.org/681968
Wow, this is an old thread. I was thinking about the early days of home computing, and remembered playing Hamurabi in school and a web search brought me here. TravisH82’s java code ( http://pastebin.com/j32JaSEw) is not bad, but never resets death back to zero. I noticed that if 29 people starved, even if I fed everybody in the subsequent turn I still had 29 deaths again.
This corrects the problem:
There also seems to be a problem with calculating sowable land in turn 1. I can start with 2800 bushels, buy 10 acres 18 each, give 2000 bushels in food and still sow 1010 acres when I ought to have been limited to 620.
OK, I understand now… each bushel suffices to sow two acres of land.
I worked it out on Visual BaSICK. Now I only need to translate ancient english words to civilised languade. All that MORISTOWNs, GOVERNINGs, ACRESsss…