The thing I loved most about Colonization over Civilization was the economic model. For me it was much more satisfying to grow sugar, which then got made into sugar at a distillery and then ship that off for sale in Europe, then to magically accumulate trade points because my city was situated by sea tiles.

Apparently Colonization will be totally moddable which makes me wonder whether it would be possible to have Colonization style economics but for the entire world. That would be fantastic.

At least two things would have to change

1) Useful luxuries: If you're going to have the whole world, and have the whole world be playable, as in Civilization, then you can't rely on Natives and Europe to want to buy goods which are useless to player civs: cotton, rum and tobacco. This could easily be solved by making them confer some benefit like luxury resources do in standard civilization.

2) Micro-management. Unfortunately, the resource-based economic system meant that once you got a lot of colonies you got sucked into micro-managing hell and it stopped being fun. This would be even worse on a world-scale civ game. I don't know whether it would be technically possible but I think something more closely based on games like the original Settlers would work better, with your people automatically moving things to where it's needed once you've established the trade routes. I'd love to see my people independently sailing about along sea routes which I then have to protect with my navy. You could design a whole new game on that premise. In fact, I think I'm slipping into imagining my ideal computer game :)

Good to see that great minds think alike, Lumpthing. I was thinking how cool it would be if you had an *automotive factory* which converts aluminium and oil into motor-cars, which you can then trade for a much greater value than both the commodities combined, or distilleries which convert wheat, sugar and corn into Beer and Spirits, or a textile factory which can turn dye, cows, sheep and cotton into clothing and accessories. Obviously it would only turn *surplus* resources into these goods, with the number of trade goods available for trade being equivalent to the amount of surplus you have (thus making the possession of multiple copies of a single resource even more important). Heck, there could even be a crossover between these city buildings and the presence of certain Corporations later in the game.
Thats what I kind of love most about this new game-lots of new code that our brilliant modding community can borrow for use in the basic Civ game!

Aussie_Lurker.

Have you ever played railroad tychoon?

Rubber was sent to a tire factory. Iron and coal to a steel mill. The finished tires and steel were sent to an auto factory to produce (you guessed it): automobiles. Ship those to a big city and you are in the $$$.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=222884

This has long been on my wish-list as well. :)

WIth no Europe/Native trading, i'd expect the world COL mod would have a very slow start with mostly reliance on national trading only. I've played CIVs where trade relations are really bad and I can still make a formidable empire. But I remember how trading in COL was a constant requirement - at first with Europe, then with the natives and perhaps a rival or two. Lack of trade made empire building practically impossible. The more I could trade, the faster my control of the map grew.

There may have to be serious concessions for that in the mod.

Hello (and hello, Gaius Octavius)!

Sounds like I'm in the right place for discussing.
For actually integrating a trade system like the one the new Colonization will supposedly have (plus "backport" to BtS), there's two essential building blocks:
- A quantified resource system (see Gaius' post)
- A generic trade goods system

A trade good would be generated by buildings (or specialists), accepting one or more natural resources as input. Furthermore, trade goods should be able to serve as input for even more sophisticated trade goods (For example: Sheep, wool, clothes). Combine this with an amount per turn (for input and output), and a per-city and/or per-player stockpile, and the foundations would be there.

As for using trade goods, there's still other ideas to be had : Global trade market with varying prices, for example (what Colonization will "only" have between colony/the player and home country).
Or (a separate idea, but fits in with trade goods), a global stock market where you can buy shares from corporations; owning shares gives you access to a certain percentage of the trade goods the corporation could generate; give buildings a corporation as prerequisite, have them generate trade goods and distribute them to share owners according to percentage owned.

So? Suggestions/willing to help?

Regards,
Fabian Aichele

The trade problem occurs because in Colonization you can only trade with foreign nations, and can't sell goods to your own population. If your citizens are allowed to buy the goods you produce, the economic model is greatly improved.

Personally i would like a system where everything is accounted for. I don't want a consumer, whether it's the mother country, a stock exchange, or your own citizens, that has money because... it just does. I think all wealth should ultimately be based on resources, just like in the real world.

Hello!


The trade problem occurs because in Colonization you can only trade with foreign nations, and can't sell goods to your own population. If your citizens are allowed to buy the goods you produce, the economic model is greatly improved.

That is difficult, because your own cities aren't a separate "faction" in the game, with which you can trade items (for example, via diplomacy). What could be possible is to introduce a "maintenance factor" for cities (a certain amount of trade goods per population point, for example), for which you receive gold income in turn (your population "buys" trade goods that way).


Personally i would like a system where everything is accounted for. I don't want a consumer, whether it's the mother country, a stock exchange, or your own citizens, that has money because... it just does. I think all wealth should ultimately be based on resources, just like in the real world.


I just proposed briefly how a trade goods system could be added, not how it could be used afterwards. As for game mechanics, you need some kind of consumer (be it other civilizations you trade with, or your own population via a maintenance factor, see above), or else you won't be able to model trade flows between different parties.

A simple solution would be to improve the plot yields based on technology. Hence when you learn to distil rum your Sugar plantation gains +1 Gold. This uses features which are already in the game and would be relatively simple to include in Civ IV.

I just proposed briefly how a trade goods system could be added, not how it could be used afterwards. As for game mechanics, you need some kind of consumer (be it other civilizations you trade with, or your own population via a maintenance factor, see above), or else you won't be able to model trade flows between different parties.

Yes of course there needs to be some kind of consumer. But I just the hate idea of a consumer who's money comes from nothing.

In my opinion all civs, the player and foreign civs, should be producers and consumers. So civs should have a motive for wanting to buy things. Each civ's buying power (how much money it has) should be related to it's selling power - how much it could get if it suddenly decided to sell everything it had.

I realise that that's easier said than done; I was trying to think of a system for it but kept running into problems. Perhaps it would be easier to do away with money and just use a bartering system - a more elaborate system of civ's "I'll trade you sheep and corn for your spices".

Okay how about this model? It takes the Colonization model as a base but makes two simple but radical tweaks.

As has already been pointed out, the key reason why the Colonization economic model cannot be turned into a world-scale game, in which every civ has the same potential ranges of actions and is playable, is that the playable civs have no incentive for buying most manufactured goods. So if every civ was playable, there would no-one to sell it to. So to solve, that, how about creating an incentive:

1) All citizens consume not just food, but also rum, cloth and cigars (and whatever manufactured goods it is decided to use). If they don't get their fill of these goods, they get unhappy.

But where does the money to buy other civs' goods come from? In Colonization, the mother country and native civs just had money from the start - it came from nowhere and was apparently infinite. All the playable civs' money came from either the natives or the mother country. Obviously this isn't workable in a game where every civ is playable. So...

2) Civs manufacture money (let's call it coinage) from gold in exactly the same way that they manufacture goods from other resources.

IMHO it is just a matter of adding some resources and reworking the corps a little.

The thing I loved most about Colonization over Civilization was the economic model.



2) Micro-management.
Yes, in the original colonization you could not do anything without micromanagement.
With the size, complexity, and number of resources in CIV-IV, it will become hell.

Micromanagement for economy in the original Colonization was due to:
1. assigning citizens and specialists to various works (e.g. cigars factory)
2. sell your goods

1. this is not so different from the specialist system we already have in CIV-IV
You can have the AI placing citizens automatically with the optional possibility of micromanagement.

2: meant you had to manually put your stuff on a caravan or ship, and bring it to destination where it will be sold (europe, natives, or foreigners) or used (your own colonies).
However in Colonization you could create a trade route and make it automatic: the AI was very limited and it left to the human to create those routes manually.
In CIVIV you can have the AI automatically creating the trade-routes, you'll just need to specify some global setting (valid for all cities) to define the share of each product for internal and external market.

I'd love to have really the system like Colonization that game you the possibility to move around basic resources like food (for population grow) and wood (for building).
In this way you can boost colonies with poor production, or help others at the border of your territory... something that could be really great to have in standard CIV-IV. :)

I agree that an economic system for civ V based on the one of Colonization will be great. It will also be good to introduce the concept of manpower, so the number of units for your army will depend on your population and on the political system you have in place, and also gold maintenance. This will be an incentive to upgrade old units to modern ones and will end the behemoth armies that are supported by civs with only 2 or 3 cities.

It will also be good to introduce the concept of manpower, so the number of units for your army will depend on your population
The system in the old Colonization worked wonderfully, but I doubt that can applied to CIV-IV in general.

the system in Colonization was very simple and direct:
Take a standard citizen and:
- give muskets, they become soldiers
- give horses, they become explorers
- give muskets and horses, they become cavallery
- give them training (move for a few turns in a school with a veteran soldier or explorer) they become veteran

This was possible because in Colonization we had a very limited number of units types (soldier and cavallery only)

In Civ-IV you have a huge number of unit types with completely different equipment: that will really become the hell of micromanagement!

I'm also not really keen on the concept that army-size must be directly proportional to population-size.
That's true only for conscript armies of foot soldiers.
it does not appliy to ancient armies (no real conscription, limited size compared to total population, especially in middle age), nor to contemporary armies (tanks, airplanes, navy are independent from population size, but mostly connected to economy and production).

If my memory doesn't fail me in CIV-I the military support was city bases (horrible) and each unit costed 1 unit of production (shield in CIV-I, hammer in CIV-IV terms).

The army maintenence should be not proportional to gold like now, but to production and food exces (or a mix of those).
This will give larger armies for more efficient civilizations (or civs with small suprlus but a lot of cities).

Hello!

So, to assemble a list for possible additions to BtS concerning a more detailed enonomics system.

First, you have to take care not to add too much micromanagement; that's why in my opinion including the Colonization solution for economics (assigning specialists to specific resources, manual trade route establishment, manually moving ships back overseas) is not a good way to go. Also, upgrading single units based on specific trade goods (muskets etc.) is adding too much manual management in my opinion.

So here's my list of suggestions:
- Add quantified resources (as foundation): Each resource produces a certain output per turn (if it's "used" by a citizen); the output gets summed up per city and/or per player.
- Add trade goods: Buildings accept certain resources as input, and produce a certain amount of more sophisticated goods per turn; these are also collected per player/per city.

As for how to use these resource and trade goods stacks:
- Unit production and maintenance: Make units require a certain amount of resource/goods for training and maintaining them (for example, fuel for armored units).
- City and building maintenance: For example, power plants require certain amounts of coal or uranium in order to produce power, or a city requires certain amounts of food resources per population point.
- Trade with other civs: Just like trading resources now, only with amounts per turn.
- Adding a trade route mission (for ships): Ships travel back and forth between two cities (automated similar to automated worker builds), transporting resources/trade goods, adding/substracting to the resource/trade good stacks of the two target cities. Each city gets assigned a certain number of maximum trade missions it can accept/conduct (based on buildings, for example).

How would that sound?

Hi faichele, just a quick question to help me understand that properly: Am I right in understanding that in your system there would be no generic 'arrow's and 'shields' to represent trade and production like in normal civ? Everything would be a specific resource like in Colonization? Or would the specific resources be on top of the generic resources like in Civilization?

1) All citizens consume not just food, but also rum, cloth and cigars (and whatever manufactured goods it is decided to use). If they don't get their fill of these goods, they get unhappy. So, essentially using the economic and POP models from Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun in CIV. Hmmmm, I think that might work, but the idea just sounds scary now. :lol:

Hello!

What I'd have is an additional trade goods/resource system on top of Civ's generic "shields", yes. Adding this on top of the existing system is less work than attempting to replace Civ's default system, if that is possible at all.
And yes, each bonus resource could be treated as a separate good with individual amounts generated per turn/traded/available from a bonus.

Hi faichele, just a quick question to help me understand that properly: Am I right in understanding that in your system there would be no generic 'arrow's and 'shields' to represent trade and production like in normal civ? Everything would be a specific resource like in Colonization? Or would the specific resources be on top of the generic resources like in Civilization?

Hmm, well I'm all for decreasing micro-management but for the whole point of bringing in Colonization economics (or something vaguely like it) is to replace the silly generic shields and arrows with something entirely based on moveable resources.

So, essentially using the economic and POP models from Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun in CIV. Hmmmm, I think that might work, but the idea just sounds scary now. :lol:

I'd never heard of that game until now, but looking at the wiki article for it, it sounds similar, except that you don't sell stuff to the population, they just consume it. You only sell stuff to other civs.

Obviously micro-management could be hell, so I was thinking that, maybe, once you've set up roads and sea trade routes (which would be something new), goods and resources just automatically flow along them to where they're needed.

So here's my list of suggestions:
- Add quantified resources (as foundation): Each resource produces a certain output per turn (if it's "used" by a citizen); the output gets summed up per city and/or per player.
- Add trade goods: Buildings accept certain resources as input, and produce a certain amount of more sophisticated goods per turn; these are also collected per player/per city.

As for how to use these resource and trade goods stacks:
- Unit production and maintenance: Make units require a certain amount of resource/goods for training and maintaining them (for example, fuel for armored units).
- City and building maintenance: For example, power plants require certain amounts of coal or uranium in order to produce power, or a city requires certain amounts of food resources per population point.
- Trade with other civs: Just like trading resources now, only with amounts per turn.
- Adding a trade route mission (for ships): Ships travel back and forth between two cities (automated similar to automated worker builds), transporting resources/trade goods, adding/substracting to the resource/trade good stacks of the two target cities. Each city gets assigned a certain number of maximum trade missions it can accept/conduct (based on buildings, for example).

How would that sound?

I like all of those ideas. I just think that system should entirely replace the generic trade and production points, instead of being on top of them.

Hello!

That's the one thing I would rather not attempt; it's much easier to say "Unit X requires Y 'shields' PLUS A units of resource B, C units of resource D" than completely dropping the 'shield' system altogether; I doubt this is doable within reasonable time, if it's possible at all to completely dump the "shield" output used as foundation for any kind of game object (unit, building etc.).

Apart from the programming, it's also much easier to handle with modding, if you add an additional resource system on top of the existing one and make it optional instead of mandatory to use it. That way, you can simply continue using the "shield" system for units, buildings, processes, and only make some game objects require additional support in form of resources and trade goods.

I like all of those ideas. I just think that system should entirely replace the generic trade and production points, instead of being on top of them.

I've done any real programming-style modding but I would have thought the arrival the new Colonization would make the job much easier, because that could be used as a base.

The question is how the Colonization SDK will actually implement quantified bonus resources and how it'll manage the flow of trade goods, and how big the differences between the BtS SDK and the Colonization SDK will be.

Well from everything revealed so far it looks like the new Colonization is being kept as close as possible to the original. I'd be extremely surprised if they have shields and arrows (are trade points arrows? I can't even remember) because that would make Colonization a completely different game, and much more like a Civilization mod.

It is an interesting concept, but how do you propose handling research of new techs in the ancient era without commerce? Will Palace allow a scientist - and/or other specialists? (Or is the specialist system also to be canned?)

The thing I dislike about trading to your own people. If your stock of fur, rum and other product goes down each turn because your people just use them you would have no produce to sell and this would impact game progress due to lack of funds.

So what system could be used to implement this? Why would you send goods back to the mainland, trade with indians and other nations if all your citizens bought the goods anyway? It removes part of the challenge and fun for me.

I think the idea of having a local shop/trade channel where you can specify stocks to sell to your citizens could be an options if you really wanted to use the idea. Simply add an extra layer to stock held in each colony. I would heavily penalise value of each item sold. End of day your home country is expecting you to bring goods back to sell and would pay well for them. Why send a ship to trade goods if your colonist just buy them anyway.

I would also restrict the sales to finished goods once they have left the factories.

I do think the size of these colonies is going to be 100's rather than thousands of people. So demand is likely to be minimal anyway. The whole idea of the game is to build a trade empire makes lots of money. Build your colonies and armies and then declare independence.

Hmmmmm food for thought.

It is an interesting concept, but how do you propose handling research of new techs in the ancient era without commerce? Will Palace allow a scientist - and/or other specialists? (Or is the specialist system also to be canned?)

Personally I would ditch the science rate completely. Instead, buildings would generate science points. Educational buildings would generate the most science, but all other buildings would generate a little science too, since historically, many new ideas have come simply from craftsmen improving their equipment. Perhaps trade in itself could also generate a little science, because trade means exposure to new ideas (especially trade with a more advanced civilization).

Personally I would ditch the science rate completely. Instead, buildings would generate science points. Educational buildings would generate the most science, but all other buildings would generate a little science too, since historically, many new ideas have come simply from craftsmen improving their equipment. Perhaps trade in itself could also generate a little science, because trade means exposure to new ideas (especially trade with a more advanced civilization).Yes I understand that, but when you start out you will have none of that available - no buildings, no crafts, no trade etc. Or if you suggest they do then what types of buildings does a society just stepping out of the stone age and settling down have? If it is based on buildings that come with starting techs I can see some grave inbalances from starting or not starting with certain techs (a lot more so than in a game using regular civ mechanics).

In essence I am asking about how you invisage this happening in a reasonably balanced manner on day 1 from settling your first city?

The thing I dislike about trading to your own people. If your stock of fur, rum and other product goes down each turn because your people just use them you would have no produce to sell and this would impact game progress due to lack of funds.

...

I do think the size of these colonies is going to be 100's rather than thousands of people. So demand is likely to be minimal anyway. The whole idea of the game is to build a trade empire makes lots of money. Build your colonies and armies and then declare independence.

Well the idea is for the supermod to be the scope of Civilization, not Colonization

Yes I understand that, but when you start out you will have none of that available - no buildings, no crafts, no trade etc. Or if you suggest they do then what types of buildings does a society just stepping out of the stone age and settling down have? If it is based on buildings that come with starting techs I can see some grave inbalances from starting or not starting with certain techs (a lot more so than in a game using regular civ mechanics).

In essence I am asking about how you invisage this happening in a reasonably balanced manner on day 1 from settling your first city?

Well the palace could be the most important science-generating building in the ancient age. Also, we could say that everyone, even farmers, generates one science point. I mean, farmers improve their equipment and create progress. I'm sure there are other easy solutions too.

Well the palace could be the most important science-generating building in the ancient age. Also, we could say that everyone, even farmers, generates one science point. I mean, farmers improve their equipment and create progress. I'm sure there are other easy solutions too.OK, sounds like a reasonable starting point. :)

EDIT: When using a model like that it would make sense, if the research generated by each worker was modified based on their profession in relation to what was being researched. Ie. hunters give a bigger yield towards military techs, farmers a bigger one toward engineering/medical techs and more specialized workers higher yields toward more specific tech etc..

Another thing to consider though, guys, is that though science buildings could produce "science points", the amount they produce should still be determined by how much of your budget you allocate to Research and Development-though this should be something different from the old science slider. Civics should also continue to impact on the science your empire pumps out.

Aussie.

Hello!

Based on the thread subject, I thought the focus was exclusively on resources and refined goods based on these? Now also replacing the science commerce is desired? I didn't want to do this, but what already is in the World of Civilization code base is an additional type of commerce called "philosophical", which is intended to be an additional requirement for non-technical results of technologies you research, like enabling new civics: The plan is to add a "philosophical" requirement to civics, so that you can only switch civics if you have enough of the new commerce AND the tech requirement instead of only the tech requirement. Would that be (part of) what you intend?

Oh, and before I forget: There's also a second new type of commerce calles "spiritual", which works similar for religions.


Another thing to consider though, guys, is that though science buildings could produce "science points", the amount they produce should still be determined by how much of your budget you allocate to Research and Development-though this should be something different from the old science slider. Civics should also continue to impact on the science your empire pumps out.

Aussie.

OK, sounds like a reasonable starting point. :)

EDIT: When using a model like that it would make sense, if the research generated by each worker was modified based on their profession in relation to what was being researched. Ie. hunters give a bigger yield towards military techs, farmers a bigger one toward engineering/medical techs and more specialized workers higher yields toward more specific tech etc..

This is really an interesting idea!
The direction of your science will be determined by the "nature" of your CIV and only partially by your explicit choice, making it easier (faster) technologies that are in synch with the nature of your people.

I would add more.
It will be nice to have a system similar to the old "master of Orion" where you can explicetely select which technology to reserch, but only to allocate % of reserach point to categories.

Hello!

Based on the thread subject, I thought the focus was exclusively on resources and refined goods based on these? Now also replacing the science commerce is desired? I didn't want to do this, but what already is in the World of Civilization code base is an additional type of commerce called "philosophical", which is intended to be an additional requirement for non-technical results of technologies you research, like enabling new civics: The plan is to add a "philosophical" requirement to civics, so that you can only switch civics if you have enough of the new commerce AND the tech requirement instead of only the tech requirement. Would that be (part of) what you intend?

Oh, and before I forget: There's also a second new type of commerce calles "spiritual", which works similar for religions.

What's World of Civilization? I don't really understand this idea of new type of commerce called "philosophical" or "spiritual". How are these generated?

The reason I would prefer to get rid of the science rate system is that I don't like the way that in civ the purpose of your economy is simply to generate science. Wealth, and the power it brings (science spending being only one facet of that power), should be the object of trade and commerce, not a 100% science rate.

Hello!

World of Civilization is the "mother of all modding platforms" ;).
See: http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=276
http://www.woc.dreamhosters.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

As for the commerces: They can be generated just as other types of commerce by specialists and buildings; I plan to tie them to religions and civics as additional requirement for switching to more advanced types of civics besides researching the required techs; this kind of "splits" the science commerce already, I think, though not for the pure research of techs, but rather for representing new ideas and philosophies, a point that's missing in Civ in my opinion.

What's World of Civilization? I don't really understand this idea of new type of commerce called "philosophical" or "spiritual". How are these generated?

The reason I would prefer to get rid of the science rate system is that I don't like the way that in civ the purpose of your economy is simply to generate science. Wealth, and the power it brings (science spending being only one facet of that power), should be the object of trade and commerce, not a 100% science rate.

Okay I understand now. Well that sounds good but personally I'm more interested in abolishing generic 'commerce points' altogether. I think all commerce should be actual transactions of goods and services, like in Colonization.

Hello!

Has this economics idea vanished again? Or is there still interest?
I'd just like to mention that the World of Civilization SDK will contain the most important building blocks for the economics system sketched out here in the more or less distant future.

First: Restricted resources, allowing to specify capacities for bonus resources (production per turn and overall capacity for limited boni like metals or oil).
Second: A resource conversion function, which will allow to transform basic bonus resources into more refined types (iron ore -> steel) via buildings in cities.
Third: A more generic trade goods system (also using capacities), allowing to trade resources with other civs, and/or requiring them as input for city maintenance.

If anyone with programming/art/XML skills is willing to help, or as soon as the first working prototype will come up, to test, you're more than welcome to join!

I'm still interested of course, but I'm only interested in something that abolishes the immovable generic food/trade/production points of Civ and completely replaces them with movable resources and products like in Colonization.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrician_3One thing that struck me as I read through this thread was that several of you should check out Patrician 3 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrician_3).

It has a very complex economy that uses buildings and citizens to generate goods but the citizens that work for you also buy your goods. It has shipping between ports and as you empire grows your own decisions determine if the world ecomony grows like crazy or spirals out of control.

You know, back when Colonization was announced, and before I found out it was a stand alone game and not an expansion. I dreamed that it would add to the "core game"

1) Add a more advanced Economic Model (as mentioned in this thread), as the "core' adjustment (like Espionage was in BTS)
2) New LH Trait (something trade related)
3) Add a few more civs that are were big "colonizers" (Phoenicia) or the product of a colony (Brazil, Mexico)
4) New Trade based units/buildings/wonders. Caravans, Inns, Silk Road
5) A Mod/Scenario that is what the Colonization ended up being.

Anyway, To make it work, the basic function of Colonzation would have to be mimiced.
By this, I mean eliminate resources and the yield, in the sense of what they are in civ, and just change the "Yields" to be the raw materials. Things like Grain ( I dont think there is a need to be too specific), Vegetables, Wood, Iron, Copper, Gold, Silver, Gems, and maybe a few others, which then an be processed by the buildings, creating the "goods", which are then convered into the +:health: and +:) boosts.

For example: You have a Grassland, it produces say 1 grain. have a worker build a specific farm i.e.
a) Grain Farm
or
b) Vegetable Farm

Then inside the city, the grain can be used to
a) Food --> City Grows size
b) Brewery ---> Produce Beer --> Beer sold/traded to other countries for Commerce/Goods --> Commerce is then "procesed" into Gold/Research/Culture/Espionage and the Goods produce more Health/Happiness.
Likewise Vegetables
a) Food (more) This would be the "specialized" thing that just was used to make the cities grow.

I personally don't think that Colonization's economic system is transferrable to Civ4. There are several reasons for this...

1) The luxuries - In Colonization, you sell luxury commodities off to Europe where they simply cease to exist. It's a commodity to be traded elsewhere rather than a product to be consumed by your citizens. In Civilization, those luxuries would have to actually do something. Currently, it's easy... if you have a source of Incense, you get +1 Happiness. But if you have stockpiles of Incense, how would you determine happiness based on that?

2) Diplomacy - you can't trade quantified amounts of Resources. It sucks, and in spite of all the cool new diplomacy stuff released in the last patch, they kept that little window that pops up to enter (a gold) amount hard-coded. Why? No clue... but since a later patch seems unlikely, we probably won't ever see that accessible to modders.

3) The overload factor - There's a lot more facets to Civ4 than Colonization. The result is that having all of that extra stuff plus maintaining a series of complex supply lines may simply overload the user.

For more on the hotly debated issue of a Colonization-type resource system in civ, check the main Civilization 4 Customization forum for the Quantitative Resources (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=222884) thread.

man dom pedro puts the ice on great ideas :)

actually thats true - the mechanics cant perfectly port over as i under stand it. i guess the closest is to make resource units like great merchants but when the execute an order they cause an effect -> send gold to the maker and science, happiness, health etc bonus for a limited number terms using the event system's code. maybe.

i dont think diplomacy would be the way to go. just request or demand a resoure and have that create a quest event where you have to send x number resource units to the other civ.

storing and capturing as well as the variable price may be tough.

of course i'm typing it like its easy to do but I'd love to see this!

maybe the colonization sdk may enlighten people on making one.

That said, DPII, I believe a "semi-quantitative" resource model is do-able, using the code inherent in corporations. This is how I would envisage it working:

1) If you have 1 iron, then you have 1 iron as per usual. However, if you have 3 iron resources, then you get +1 hammers to all cities connected to your trade network. 5 irons gets you +2 etc etc.

2) If you have 1 incense, then you get your regular happiness bonus. If you have 3 then you get the happiness bonus and +2 gold or commerce per turn.

Now, as far as refined goods go, well different refined goods could produce altered yields and commerces for cities on your trade network. So, for example, 3 gold gives you +1 happiness and +2 commerce per turn, but if you convert it to jewelry, then it gives +2 happiness and +1 culture and +1 gold per turn.

Would that work DPII?

i would be very interested in this. It would be great if you coudl mod the col basis into a normal civ game,

I personally don't think that Colonization's economic system is transferrable to Civ4. There are several reasons for this...

1) The luxuries - In Colonization, you sell luxury commodities off to Europe where they simply cease to exist. It's a commodity to be traded elsewhere rather than a product to be consumed by your citizens. In Civilization, those luxuries would have to actually do something. Currently, it's easy... if you have a source of Incense, you get +1 Happiness. But if you have stockpiles of Incense, how would you determine happiness based on that?


I've noticed that when you trade resources to the natives tey use them up at a certain rate.
Now imagine the same being done in civ.
Assume you have a stockpile of 100 incense. This incense is used up at 1 unit/turn/city*(connected to the road-network).
So if you have 1 city, you use 1 unit of incense per turn. Two cities, two units, 3 cities... You get the idea.
The result is that you have a pressing need to continue and raise your production of said resource. Managing that might come from being able to set which cities get the resource, there could be techs that boost production, maybe new improvements on the map that allow production outside city-radius (or even outside your cultural borders: colonies in the true sense).
International trade might be arranged the same way that gold-exchange is done: an exchange of a lump of resources or x-amount/turn.

*you could maybe adjust rates of useage depend on city-size and buildings (e.g. a city size 1 uses 1 unit, city size 5 uses 2 units, city size 10 uses 3, etc.)

If this is to go forward, the first priority is actually coming up with a workable way of automating the trade flows otherwise the AI won't be able to handle it and the micromanagement becomes unbearable. The problem is difficult from a coding standpoint as pathfinding is a fairly expensive (processor time) operation and you're likely looking at hundreds or thousands, if not more, of pathfinding calls per nations turn just in trade calcs.

The best approach that I can see, would be to have each city find the nearest city in a given direction and then calculate the trade cost which would be based off time distance (turns to travel) and cargo capacity. Then you can pass demand along the trade network based off trade cost. Demand would travel until it met sufficient supply. The route could then be calculated just by taking a trade good surplus from the supply to whatever node (city) has a higher demand.

The one factor that's harder to handle is dangerous routes. But that could be handled by factoring in the trade cost as percent of lost cargo + transport (piracy rate). Eventually the trade would divert to route around the pirate troubled areas. It's just a little more dicey for the AI to be able to handle coming back from piracy after it gets resolved. That is if a large enough percent of transports get taken.

If you can get auto resource trade implemented, one of the bigger gameplay issues is resolved.

Hello!

Time to answer here again :).
I've added basic support for restricted bonus resources to BtS already; next in line are two question concerning the usage:

How can the BtS bonus resource system be modified to go from "have or not have" a bonus to using a number-based representation without having to rewrite the entire bonus resource implementation?
How do we trade with quantified bonus resource items?


As for the first:
For food and luxury resources, I'd suggest this: To achieve one unit of food/health/happiness bonus, I introduce a weight factor per population point in a city. For example, if you have wheat providing +1 :health: in a city with 6 population, and a weight factor of 10, you'll require 60 units of wheat to be able to gain the +1 :health: per turn.
For metals/stone/oil/coal etc., this is a different matter; up to now, I'd make these required to train units/build buildings in certain quantities, and/or perhaps also making them required for city maintenance in a way similar to the wheat example above (a weight factor per "shield" produced by a city perhaps.

As for the second:
I'd suggest a combination of the trade system in Colonization, plus allowing an "automatic" flow of restricted resources along the trade routes of a city (for example, allowing to set a global trade percentage for resources, which will then be distributed along existing trade routes), plus adding a trade route mission similar to the way the wagon trains in Colonization work, to allow additional trade between cities that don't have direct trade route connections.

I believe these ideas can be brought to BtS without breaking the BtS "core concept" (food/shields/bonus resources), while still allowing for a more realistic trade system and resource usage system.

I'm open to suggestions, of course! Feedback is always welcome.

man dom pedro puts the ice on great ideas :)

I can be a bit of a buzzkill at times, I'll admit. My greatest strength seems to be poking holes ;)

actually thats true - the mechanics cant perfectly port over as i under stand it. i guess the closest is to make resource units like great merchants but when the execute an order they cause an effect -> send gold to the maker and science, happiness, health etc bonus for a limited number terms using the event system's code. maybe.

I don't think that'd be a good idea. But saying "resource unit" makes me think about something that I noticed in the code for Colonization. For reasons I can't possibly fathom, the game developers decided to make "yield units". So every time you load a yield onto a transport, it actually creates a unit.. like a Muketeer or a Cannon... but it's for that particular yield. I have no idea why they chose this route.

i dont think diplomacy would be the way to go. just request or demand a resoure and have that create a quest event where you have to send x number resource units to the other civ.

I think removing resource trading from the game would seriously cripple diplomacy in the game. It's a critical piece of leverage.

maybe the colonization sdk may enlighten people on making one.

Certainly, it will be interesting to see if people can find a way to make it work. I too would like to see an alternative to Civ's binary system.

1) If you have 1 iron, then you have 1 iron as per usual. However, if you have 3 iron resources, then you get +1 hammers to all cities connected to your trade network. 5 irons gets you +2 etc etc.

2) If you have 1 incense, then you get your regular happiness bonus. If you have 3 then you get the happiness bonus and +2 gold or commerce per turn.

I assume you mean 1 source of iron rather than a stored unit of Iron like Colonization. All of this is pretty doable right now. But you'd have to come up with some way to set the bonuses per instance of a resource. That might get pretty complicated from both a coding perspective and from a gameplay perspective since it's not simply giving +1 happiness or something for each instance of a resource but is actually giving different rewards for each new tier you reach in quantities of that resource.

Now, as far as refined goods go, well different refined goods could produce altered yields and commerces for cities on your trade network. So, for example, 3 gold gives you +1 happiness and +2 commerce per turn, but if you convert it to jewelry, then it gives +2 happiness and +1 culture and +1 gold per turn.

Well, that's essentially what we have already with the exception of commerce bonuses in addition to health and happiness bonuses. So, doable? Of course.

I've noticed that when you trade resources to the natives tey use them up at a certain rate.
Now imagine the same being done in civ.
Assume you have a stockpile of 100 incense. This incense is used up at 1 unit/turn/city*(connected to the road-network).
So if you have 1 city, you use 1 unit of incense per turn. Two cities, two units, 3 cities... You get the idea.
The result is that you have a pressing need to continue and raise your production of said resource. Managing that might come from being able to set which cities get the resource, there could be techs that boost production, maybe new improvements on the map that allow production outside city-radius (or even outside your cultural borders: colonies in the true sense).

The problem is that you have cities of varying sizes, and does it make sense to have each city requiring the same amount of a resource to get the same bonus? But then if you have some cities requiring 2 units for +1 happiness, you can either give them +1 happiness or not. There's no in between. So what if they can only get 1 unit per turn?

This is where the system starts to founder for Civ IMO.

International trade might be arranged the same way that gold-exchange is done: an exchange of a lump of resources or x-amount/turn.

Can't be done for the limitations Firaxis put on us that I explained above.

*you could maybe adjust rates of useage depend on city-size and buildings (e.g. a city size 1 uses 1 unit, city size 5 uses 2 units, city size 10 uses 3, etc.)[/quote]

If you lack enough of a resource to go around to all the cities then you need to say these cities get it based off some set of rules, probably based off civics. One choice would be to the largest first, another would be closest to resource/import location, another would be based off need (the city that's way happy doesn't exactly need another luxury but the one with discontent does). Thus, some civics might be better at managing resources in some situations.

The other way to deal with fractions is to eliminate them. Yes, firaxis didn't code in the possibility of non integer values, but nothing says you can't increase the scale and then reduce the effectiveness. Like food, you can bump up the granary size by a factor of 4 and scale all the food production values by the same to get the equivalent of having quarter units of food. The only limit of this method is the max size of the values and the limits of the interface.

This would be a dream! Just imagine: you are playing as Egypt and making eco food and then sell it to Europe for increased profit, because they chose to invest in researching modified food and had bonus +2 on all 2 foods, but due to your political powers aka FF you managed to give modified food some disadvantage like negative public opinion. Modern weaponry sale! Using cheap developing countries' labor! Making uber sharp swords! Using some cold hearted unobvious political tricks which lead to promoting your good! Sell vodka to natives to make em weak!
Only cold-hearted despots will win. If this mod existed before then Hitler wouldnt start (not sure here :D) WW2, he would be playing it instead.
This mod would be like a dream game, game taking the strategic genre to the hardcore limits. Only few will play it but it will be heaven :D

I'd pay for it ;)

True, I was referring to 1 source. As I indicated, couldn't we use the corporation code to make this happen? It already has a +x per resource type that could be hijacked and put to our use. It would make getting more than one copy of a single resource much more important-both pre and post corporation-than is currently the case.

Aussie.

I see some basic problems with Current Civ/Col-game-mechanics which should be removed in the more complex economy system :

1. population growth so far is based on food
For a realistic economy, population growth should not result in loosing stored food. Food-surplus was a way to support armies and specialist (or a decadent king and his orgies.) and to trade for ressources which you could not produce on your own (or at least not at that costs).
Many countries have a population which is much higher than what their food-production would allow. (U.K. around WW2 had to import 50% of the food the population needed to survive. They traded finished goods for food but were vulnerable to a blockade.)

2. Before you can use money, you have to research currency ... eventually by trading a lot ressources and gaining Trade-Science-Points ...

3. Your population will consume goods and will work - but not for free ... Population might be divided into employed workers and kind of freelancers. Employees will require wages while freelancers will require a market where they can trade/buy/sell ressources, goods and services to earn money. All these people will also need a market to buy things for consumation (food, luxuries, etc.).

4. It is very likely that your economy in the game will tend toward a communist economy since both are kind of planned economies. The communist systems in human history mostly vanished due to failure of human beings in general to plan complex economies .... (too much micromanagement) ...

If you lack enough of a resource to go around to all the cities then you need to say these cities get it based off some set of rules, probably based off civics. One choice would be to the largest first, another would be closest to resource/import location, another would be based off need (the city that's way happy doesn't exactly need another luxury but the one with discontent does). Thus, some civics might be better at managing resources in some situations.
First of all, love the name. I bow before your superior bastardry :) (one of my favorite lines from the Milkman Dan strips)

Secondly, I think this will get potentially very confusing. Even if you aren't managing it manually, things are going to be going on and changing every turn in your empire, and it will potentially make the game too random for many of us who like to know exactly what's going on and why.

The other way to deal with fractions is to eliminate them. Yes, firaxis didn't code in the possibility of non integer values, but nothing says you can't increase the scale and then reduce the effectiveness. Like food, you can bump up the granary size by a factor of 4 and scale all the food production values by the same to get the equivalent of having quarter units of food. The only limit of this method is the max size of the values and the limits of the interface.
Yes, there will be an issue there with the interface. Bumping up the number significantly could help solve some of these issues, but the numbers can get a bit daunting in addition to the fact that considerably higher numbers of yields per tile will not be displayed properly on the map.

True, I was referring to 1 source. As I indicated, couldn't we use the corporation code to make this happen? It already has a +x per resource type that could be hijacked and put to our use. It would make getting more than one copy of a single resource much more important-both pre and post corporation-than is currently the case.

Aussie.

Yes, that is how it works for corporations. But if I understood you correctly, you're talking about different bonuses for different numbers of sources of a particular resource.

For example:

1 source of Sugar = +1 Happiness, +5 gold/turn
2 sources of Sugar = +1 Happiness, +8 gold/turn (first 5 + 3)
3 sources of Sugar = +1 Happiness, +10 gold/turn (5 + 3 + 2)
etc. etc. etc.

This is doable. The question is whether it's desirable. And this is a fairly simple model. But as the benefits of each tier become more complicated (especially if they vary from resource to resource), the bigger the headache becomes for players to keep track of what they're actually getting bonuses from.


1. population growth so far is based on food
For a realistic economy, population growth should not result in loosing stored food. Food-surplus was a way to support armies and specialist (or a decadent king and his orgies.) and to trade for ressources which you could not produce on your own (or at least not at that costs).
Many countries have a population which is much higher than what their food-production would allow. (U.K. around WW2 had to import 50% of the food the population needed to survive. They traded finished goods for food but were vulnerable to a blockade.)


I think that the best solution to this problem is to have yields be able to be stored on a national level and redistributed accordingly. I've been working on this for a while. The only problem is that due to a Firaxian decision to keep some of the trading screen code hard-coded in the executable file, there's no practical way to add trading yields to the trade screen (eventhough you can add just about anything else!) :mad:

Ahhh, no DPII. What I was specifically thinking is almost an exact replica of the corporation model. So sugar would produce +1 happiness no matter how many sources you have (though I confess, a system where you get +2 happiness from 3 sources and +3 happiness from 6 sources etc would also be nice), but each source of sugar would give you +0.5 food (rounded down) to every city in on the trade network. Later in the game, if you build a distillery, your sugar gets converted to the "Rum" resource, which grants an additional +1 happiness and +0.5 gold/+0.5 culture per source of rum.

Now, what I'm not so sure of is if you would be able-in the context of the BtS model-to determine how much of your sugar gets converted to Rum.

Hope that makes sense.

Aussie.

I see a lot of good ideas here. Is there anyway you guys can institue one small part, release it, and then add to it later? i think that way it'll be easier to get something going instead of trying to put all the mechanics at one.

I think the first one would be adding the code from corporations that lets you produce hammers and food based on the numbers of resources you have (instead of just one resource). I found where the code is and think I know where to do it. but not sure what to do with AI. (and I havnt even thought about compiling it).

I do like civ4 colonization's (micromanaging) way of trading resources b wagons and boats whre you have to enter the city. i was thinking that to replicate the 'Return to Europe' function of the game just make it so that you can only go to that screen by going to your capital.

just some thoughts

I've got an important building block for such an economic system in BtS in the making currently, code-named "trade goods" (part of the World of Civilization SDK).
Currently, I've implemented a mechanism that allows buildings to convert certain quantities of bonus resource (which have an output amount per turn) into more refined types of goods.

A first "proof-of-concept" prototype of this system will introduce required input amounts of trade goods in order to train units.

awesome faichele! count me in for testing it out!

also have looked into having specialists convert bonuses into other bonuses instead of just buildings? i figure its the same code

also have looked into having specialists convert bonuses into other bonuses instead of just buildings? i figure its the same code

Yes, already thought about specialists and improvements as well.
But I first need a stable code base (that's why I start with buildings) before I add even more sources for trade goods, especially if I don't stop with only bonus resources as input for conversion, but also the possibility to create trade goods from other trade goods.

awesome faichele!

I'm really looking for a mod that does resources like colonization (store trade goods or convert them) and uses the specialists like colonization does.

does your code include stuff like:

-if you stock pile gold resource you can convert it to gold (as in the cash)?
-convert cow stock pile into health?
-convert coal, or oil into production (like colonization does for lumber)
-convert 10-20 silk o other luxuries to happiness?
-convert 1 or 2 tobacco to happy but also add unhealthiness?

- and be able to ship these goods to other cities and civs?

basically you can see I (like many others) would like to have a civ game that works like colonization but with no king or independence war :)

awesome faichele!

I'm really looking for a mod that does resources like colonization (store trade goods or convert them) and uses the specialists like colonization does.

does your code include stuff like:

-if you stock pile gold resource you can convert it to gold (as in the cash)?
-convert cow stock pile into health?
-convert coal, or oil into production (like colonization does for lumber)
-convert 10-20 silk o other luxuries to happiness?
-convert 1 or 2 tobacco to happy but also add unhealthiness?

- and be able to ship these goods to other cities and civs?

basically you can see I (like many others) would like to have a civ game that works like colonization but with no king or independence war :)

Currently, I work on the creation and storage mechanisms only, so I haven't looked into possible conversion paths yet. What I wanted to achieve is having trade goods to serve as requirements for certain game elements originally, so for example to train and maintain units, or introducing a "city maintenance" where each population point costs you certain amounts of different trade good classes.

Trading the goods is on the list as well; to start, along the default trade routes each city possesses, later perhaps as a trade route mission for units (more or less like in COL).

out of curiousity are you using the colonization code as a base or totally from scratch? it looks like the YieldInfos.xml in both civ4 and col are very similar

out of curiousity are you using the colonization code as a base or totally from scratch? it looks like the YieldInfos.xml in both civ4 and col are very similar
I implement(ed) this from scratch, using a new XML info class to avoid having to hard-code trade good types into the SDK (as new yield types, as it is done in COL). What'll be useful from the COL SDK in the end is the trade routes code, but I haven't extensively gone through that yet.

What'll be useful from the COL SDK in the end is the trade routes code, but I haven't extensively gone through that yet.

cool. I know jeckel is working to improve it for col too