Quote Originally Posted by waldronate View Post
Start by searching for "central place theory"
I really love it when the answer to my question is "Know these three words, in this order, and a new domain of knowledge will open at your feet!"
This was really useful information and you have earned both my respect and my thanks.

A further question - half-asked in my post - concerns tech trees and/or dependencies. Is there a similar magic spell for, tech tree dependencies // food webs ... eg: firearms? Well you need ammo for that, whic requires fine tooling a source of lead (or similar) and black powder, steel for the gun barrels. So black powder - you'll need nitrates, sulphur and ground charcoal for that. Steel? you need high temperatures to remove all the impurities from that iron you smelted .. etc...
I imagine that for each resource in demand, one could model CPT to represent the links and, again, consider value of resource in terms of final availability?