Here is an idea that I have searched for and not seen posted. It seems relatively easy to implement within the current game system and would open up new strategies and add another interesting aspect to the game.

I propose adding a way for a player to borrow money and deficit spend. Here's how it would work:

After researching the Currency tech (Banking comes too late) a new game feature, called "The Bank" would show up. The Bank is basically another AI which dosen't have a physical presence on the map and is always neutral toward all players. Players could go to The Bank and negotiate loans which would need to be paid back, with interest, over a set number of turns. The player would have to put up collateral for the loan in the form of units, buildings, wonders or whole cities.

Once the loan is made, the payments would be deducted automatically from the player's treasury. If the player defaulted on the loan by missing a payment, The Bank would seize the collateral. If units put up for collateral did not exist at the time of default, buildings, wonders and or an entire city or two could be seized.

Here's where it gets interesting -- any other player can buy the seized assets from the bank at a discount, and any player can also perform the functions of The Bank by loaning money to other players and, if the debtor defaults, seizing assets. To prevent abuse, any two civs that have a current loan arrangement couldn't declare war on each other.

The only conundrums I can think of are that in the current system, you can't buy units or buildings without Universal Sufferage (which is kind of non-sensical IMO anyway) and near the end of the game, borrowing would have be cut off, due to the fact that repayment terms would exceed the length of the game.

Another possible feature would allow players to sell resources or buidings to the bank for cash - perhaps after researching Economics. The Bank would be programmed not to pay a premium, because it would try to sell them at a profit to another player.

These would open up a number of new and interesting game strategies:


You could borrow to finance a war, for offense or defense. Obviously a risky strategy, but one that could turn a game around.

You could borrow to finance an overseas expedition or rush a settler to more quickly expand your territory

You could borrow to maintain high tech spending during a period of expansion and count on those cottages later providing cash flow for you to pay off the loan.

A player could even pursue a "financial strategy". A financial player could maintain a small geographic empire and use his excess cash to make loans to other players or buy and sell assets. Buy buying discounted units, resources and buildings, he could be a world power without commanding a huge physical empire or having resources within his borders. The war protection afforded through a loan deal would allow him to avoid getting stomped by other civs with larger armies.


There could even be an ability for the bank to hold auctions or even to for a player to buy futures contracts from the bank. For instance, pay the bank 50 gold now for the opportunity to buy gems for 5 GPT if they become available in the next 50 turns. But maybe I'm getting too complex here.

This new feature would really open a whole new world of possibilities and would ensure that no player would never be totally out of the game, especially in multiplayer.

I thought about this feature because I'm disappointed in Civ's clumsy economic/trading systems and by the fact that in real-world history, financing and trading has been so important.

In Civ, there is simply no way to be powerful without commanding a lot of territory. Throughout history, small resource-poor nations have become powerful through finance and commerce. Think of Venice and the Netherlands during the Renaissance, who financed expeditions to the new world. Japan and Korea became industrial powerhouses and Singapore and Hong Kong, tiny one-city nations, control billions in commerce.


Footnote: I know it might not be "realistic" to have a building or unit removed from a city and relocated to another, but there are a lot of things in Civ that make for good, balanced game playing that aren't necessarily "realistic".

First of all, :goodjob: Wow, You really put a lot of work in to that, and it's a really neat idea! :goodjob:

Minor thoughts: Why would a player buy something from the bank, when you could buy it from another player cheaper?

What would the bank do with a city? First of all it would not make much sense, but most all it upset gameplay if the bank sold it to the highest bidder.

Lastly, Isn't Currency already overpowered with the extra trade routes and improvements?


Edit: As for another idea this could add another victory setting, where if you control a set amount of the world's money, or income per turn you would win the game, although it would have to be a larger number.

Minor thoughts: Why would a player buy something from the bank, when you could buy it from another player cheaper?

The Bank would sell items at a discount (perhaps a substantial one) from their original "price", based on what it would cost to rush the item in Universal Sufferage. Also, the bank would sell to anyone. Civs, both AI and human often "red out" items or ask a very high price for them in light of their strategic importance. The Bank doesn't care. It just wants to unload the property.


What would the bank do with a city? First of all it would not make much sense, but most all it upset gameplay if the bank sold it to the highest bidder.

I would imagine that cities held by the bank would have some kind of "Neutral Zone" around them. Units would be relocated to the nearest open square and the borders would be sealed (just like when a rival civ closes its borders). I also think that the city itself wouldn't be held by the bank for long. Someone would buy it immediately. In a single player game, if the human loses a city, one of the AI's would likely buy it by the time the human's next turn comes around, appearing nearly instantaneously.

As for who gets the first chance to buy any seized property (human or AI), I guess this would require some kind of auction or "sealed bid" process.

Regarding upsetting gameplay - Borrowing is risky. Borrow too much and you just might find one your cities owned by a rival civ. (maybe I didn't understand your point, though)

Lastly, Isn't Currency already overpowered with the extra trade routes and improvements?
The bank is neutral, and of course borrowing can be a good thing or bad thing, depending on how intelligently you use it. So, the ability to borrow when Currency is researched isn't really a new "power", merely another option that the player may choose to use or ignore.

Edit: As for another idea this could add another victory setting, where if you control a set amount of the world's money, or income per turn you would win the game, although it would have to be a larger number.

Yes - I've thought about how to incorporate a financial victory condition too. The problem is that with the current game mechanics, it can't be done. Basically, the only way to increase your "liquid net worth" is to reduce tech spending, which is suicidal until very late in the game.

There needs to be more revenue opportunities, but those opportunities would have to be initiated as part of an overall strategy, and carefully balanced with a need to maintain an adequate military, like a cultural victory. My idea would give a player the ability earn revenue through loans and buying and selling commodities, units, cities etc. I also think a few more financial wonders could be added, especially early in the game.

There would also need to be some way in the early increase trade routes even more. Maybe your geographic location would allow you to earn money when you are situated between two trading civs, if you build certain buildings or wonders. How about a "bazaar" improvement - or a new world wonder, "The Rialto", the trading center of Venice.

There could even be a new trait, "Mercantile", which would provide +1 trade routes in all cites, plus half price markets, grocers and banks.

A financial player need to make decisions to maximize revenue, minimize expenses (fewer cities and a smaller military) and persue strategies to avoid war with powerful military civs (making loans to them would work). He would increase his power and influence through the ability to finance, buy and sell at a profit. A warmonger might want to ally himself with a financier to finance his wars, and would offer protection in return.

:thumbsup:
Financial markets would be a very welcome addition to Civ, to balance the ability of small commercial civilizations' abilities to compete with large aggressive nations. But the complexity of financial markets makes implementation difficult.

I am not sure a neutral player such as "the Bank" (which might be named the "World Bank" or "International Monetary Fund") should be controlling the loans. Rather, the individual civs themselves should run the financial markets, and perhaps another type of entity, "corporations," should be introduced to promote the movement of capital. The game dynamic could even shift to resemble modern globalization as these corporations become more powerful. Economic wars could become mroe common than military wars, which could be an interesting alternative for the modern era.

Roibeárd, your idea has much potential, and should be considered in more detail. :goodjob:

Loans wouldn't be "controlled" per se. "The Bank" is an abstracted (and admittedly over-simplified) mechanism that represents access to capital. Whether it's the Medici or Fugger families of the Renaissance right up to present-day bond markets, the concept is the same. So, I guess characterizing it as a "neutral player" was a bit of a misnomer on my part. By "neutral" I simply meant that capital its suppliers are neutral and not subject to AI attitudes.

I avoided calling it the World Bank or IMF because those are modern institutions that have specific purposes.

Loans themselves would also be very simple under my proposal. All loans could simply be an amount of gold at say, 10% interest payable over 20 turns for example (Adjusted for game speed).

I would expect in typical gameplay that taking out a loan would either an act of desperation or a risky power gambit, either of which could turn a game around -- for better or worse -- for the player.

Just browsed through this thread without giving it too much time, yet.

Nevertheless, the idea seems to be very good and I may return in short to add some of my thoughts about the "international" trading, which I feel could fit well into such a concept.

Anyway, the OP's idea looks very promising in my eyes! :goodjob:

My proposal would also have "The Bank" act as an international market.

Basically, any player could sell a resource or to the bank for a small amount of cash per turn, and buy available resources for cash as well (at a higher price, because The Bank is programmed to try to make a profit). For resources, the deal would be locked in as a contract for a set number of turns. At the end of the contract period, the deal could be cancelled or re-negotiated. Even technology could be bought and sold. Techs would be priced based on their power and "newness" (older techs cost less). The player would be free to use anything he buys, or could trade them to other players.

Again - "The Bank" is just an abstraction that represents a marketplace, from the Medieval trading leagues, right up to modern-day commodities markets.

This would get more interesting if there were a larger number of tradeable resources, and the distribution of those resources were intentionally not as balanced. A player might have 4 horses but no iron, so he'd have to go buy iron on the market and perhaps pay for it by selling horses.

The idea of buying simple futures contracts is also intruiging. Let's say that a player figures out that he won't acquire coal any time soon, so he pays 50 gold in advance for the right to buy a 20-turn contract for coal for 3 GPT when it becomes available. But let's also imagine that another shrewd player or AI figures that someone will need coal soon, so he buys up the futures contract one turn earlier and sells it to the coal-less player for 100 gold, netting him a 50 gold profit, which he uses to buy up some cheap seized riflemen to bolster his city defenses. The possibilities are interesting and really make a "financial strategy" viable.

The key to unlocking financial strategies is to simply make cash a more powerful and versatile weapon. Right now, there's not much you can do with cash - especially in the early-to-mid game. I assume most players just maximize tech research spending to keep up. If you could put cash to work to make shrewd trades and earn real profit, you could "buy" power.

A good financial player could wheel and deal commodities, be a technology broker, or even an arms dealer (including nukes!).

I'm eager to hear feedback on this concept.

Alpha Centauri and Alien Crossfire both had the concept of a financial "cornering the world market" type of victory. It seems that would be easy to add.

They also had the concept of borrowing money from the other players, with interest of course, which I think is a better model than the World Bank suggested above. It would also be easy to implement into the same diplomacy screens currently in use. For example, getting that 200 gold now for a promise to pay 15 gold per turn for 20 turns.

I like this idea. Is it possible to incorporate it now or would you have to wait for SDK