Choosing patch analysing neighboors netlogo

Question

I am trying to model an community that engages in shifting cultivation. For that I want each household to change the patch every year. Each household can have a different crop area, depending on time and number of people working. I want them to be able to choose a patch that has the amount of forest patch need to open their crop. For example, one household has a crop area of 3, so the new location needs to be a forest patch with two other forest patch neighbors. Any idea how can I specify that?

Thanks

Answer 1

Here is a possible solution:

patches-own [ patch-type ]
breed [ households household ]

to setup
  clear-all
  ask patches [ set patch-type one-of ["forest" "rock" "sand"] ]
  let forest-neighbors-needed 2
  create-households 100 [
    let candidate-locations patches with [
      not any? households-here and
      patch-type = "forest" and
      count neighbors with [ patch-type = "forest" ] >= forest-neighbors-needed
    ]
    ifelse any? candidate-locations [
      move-to one-of candidate-locations
    ] [
      error "No suitable location found!"
    ]
  ]
end

This method is not the most efficient, because it rebuilds the set of possible location for each household it creates, but if your model is not two big, it shouldn't make much of a difference.

Note that you don't give us a lot of detail about how your model is organized, so I had to make a few assumptions. Next time, please tell us bit more: what breeds to you have, what are their variables, etc. Ideally, post a bit of code showing what you already tried.