MineSet

Interactive simulation for sustainable forest management in the Congo Basin

Based on the ComMod approach, MineSet is a role-playing game developed in the context of the CoForSet project. It was first created as a board game before being ported to Cormas in its digital version.

 Board game
   The board game

Description of the game

MineSet is a game where up to 9 players take the role of a forestry or mining company. Players must try to make their company prosper while taking into account the environmental and societal impacts of their activities. To develop their strategy, players can negotiate with each other. For their actions, they own a small set of tokens that they can place on the board:

  •     Road segments that open access to new game cell. The more roads there are on a cell, the more trucks can circulate and the more people can settle.
  •     Trucks are placed on the roads so that they can harvest wood or iron resources. There are two types of trucks that differ only in their transport capacity and rental costs.
  •     Plantation tokens enable rapid regrowth of the forest.
  •     Guard tokens prevent migrating populations from using or settling on the roads. They can also expulse the population if the player wants to.
  •     The Mine tokens must be placed on a cell with no population. They are used to harvest iron resources.

The other tokens are not placed by the players and have various roles:

  • The populations which represent the social aspect of the game. We distinguish between indigenous populations that do not degrade the environment and others that limit the maximum capacity of the forest on a cell.
  • Unique habitats represent animal species that are found only in particular places. They are affected by the state of the forests in their cell. Once destroyed, a unique habitat does not regenerate.
  • Redwoods are found in all cells on the board at the beginning of the game except those with roads. They represent a precious wood that does not grow back during the game but brings more money when sold.

The board represents a forest basin. It is divided into cells whose color depends on the state of the forest (from dark green for a very good state, to yellow for fragmented and degraded forests). A set of 9 forest cells constitutes a forest concession in which a player can exploit the resources. Forest concessions are sold in an auction at the beginning of the game. Mining concessions only appear during the game: players choose when they can enter the game. A mining concession can only be placed on a cell where there is an iron deposit, their size varies between 1 and 3 cells. Finally, two city cells are located at the edges of the board. These cells are connected to only one other cell of the forest board. The cities are the departure point for the migrating populations and the arrival point for the trucks to sell and unload their merchandise.

MineSet Grid on Cormas
  The MineSet board under Cormas

The game takes place over a total of 5 time steps, each representing 10 years. At the beginning of their turn, players must converse and organize themselves to lay down their tokens or exchange parts of concessions. They can also set up an agreement between them that, in exchange for a certain respect for the environment, gives access to a more lucrative market.

Quelques indicateurs du jeu
  Evolution of some indicators (global on the left, individual on the right)

A hybrid game

With MineSet, it is possible to move away from the interactive game in order to explore strategies. Thus, a MineSet simulation can be autonomous, just like a classic simulation. This option also allows participants to play MineSet even if there are missing players. In this case, the missing players are replaced by autonomous agents. This is a true hybrid simulation in the sense of Le Page et al (2010). Thus, after specifying the number of players, MineSet opens an initialization interface where each player chooses his name, the type of company he wants to manage and a color :

Initialization interface
   MineSet initialization interface

To complete the game board, autonomous agents are created. In order to simulate their behaviors, we have defined three types of autonomous agents corresponding to archetypes of players. Three caricatured strategies are thus defined :

  1. The "Profit" strategy, which aims to set up as many trucks as possible in order to harvest as many resources as possible. Focused only on its own profit, it has no consideration for environmental aspects. It is a short and medium term strategy with, at best, the implantation of plantations to produce a maximum of wood. It is also a strategy that invests heavily at the beginning of the game to acquire a concession that is easily accessible from a city and that allows borrowing to make large investments quickly.
  2. The "ProEnvironment" strategy manages its concession by trying to protect the forest as much as possible. To do this, it will not exploit some of the cells in its concession at all. In addition, it prevents populations that could degrade the forest from settling in its concession. Secondly, this strategy aims at taking only a limited quantity of wood which will regenerate during the turn. The company thus carries out rather small harvests. Finally, it takes the risk of investing at the beginning of the game to obtain a central concession in order to protect the environment as much as possible from other players.
  3. The "Passive" strategy manages its concession by minimizing the number of actions. Unlike the other two, this strategy aims to reduce its risks and invests as little as possible. It is also a hybrid strategy between environmental protection and personal profit. To do this, it sets up a rotation to exploit the cells in its concession. To protect the environment, a small part of her concession is not exploited. On the other hand, she does not prevent populations from settling on the concession.
Animated GIF
Example of a simulation with 9 autonomous agents divided into 3 "Profit", 3 ProEnvironment" and 3 "Passive" strategies

For a more detailed description, download Anton Bommel's dissertation (translated in English).

  • Download the model (zipfile, 88Ko, Cormas 2021)
    For more information, contact the authors.

 


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