RFC Europe: Venice and Banking

[Hangly Man]

Since we're on the subject of unique civs already with the Papal States, how hard would it be to make Venice so it plays more like the bank of all Europe than just a regular civ?

Just spitballing here, but could there be a button next to the mercenaries button where civs can borrow (and the Venetians can lend) money at interest? One of Venice's UHV conditions could be to earn x amount of gold through usury.

For extra historical accuracy make the Burgundians credit fiends who will defend Venice at any cost.

[st.lucifer]

Originally Posted by Hangly Man

Since we're on the subject of unique civs already with the Papal States, how hard would it be to make Venice so it plays more like the bank of all Europe than just a regular civ?

Just spitballing here, but could there be a button next to the mercenaries button where civs can borrow (and the Venetians can lend) money at interest? One of Venice's UHV conditions could be to earn x amount of gold through usury.

For extra historical accuracy make the Burgundians credit fiends who will defend Venice at any cost.

A few counter-arguments to this proposal:

First, while there's some legitimacy to the proposal of making one of the Italian city-states a 'bank of Europe', Venice isn't very well suited to it. They've got clear territorial goals and were an often aggressive state - it's hard to see a human, let alone the AI, pulling off both a conquest/settlement condition and a lending condition. If Florence were in as a civ, this might be good for them, but they're really too minor to consider. Genoa might be a better fit than Venice, but I have some other issues with the proposal.

The biggest problem in terms of gameplay I see with this is that we don't really have much use for money, except to pay maintenance costs. Presumably, borrowing money at interest would involve increasing one's maintenance costs - which would be counterproductive, without much of a short-term gain involved.

Finally, the biggest objection I have to this proposal is the amount of work involved. We'd have to create this entire system from scratch, and I'm not sure that there's enough potential benefit to justify the amount of work it would take. To implement successfully, we'd have to change the role of money in the game, the way in which inflation is calculated and applied (may already be happening, but my impression from the people working on it is that this is a major headache), and there would be a number of other, currently unanticipated factors that we'd then have to balance later. This would also make the learning curve for the mod that much steeper, which is something we're generally trying to avoid.

I get the principle behind the proposal, and it's a neat idea - I just don't think it fits with what we're trying to do here. We are representing at least one banking family/house in our proposed alterations to the corporation system, so the role of Italian banks in the development of Europe won't be totally absent from the mod.

Thanks for sharing your idea - your suggestions are appreciated, even if we don't use them all.

[Whitefire]

Playing the devil's advocate for Hangly:

Originally Posted by st.lucifer

A few counter-arguments to this proposal:

First, while there's some legitimacy to the proposal of making one of the Italian city-states a 'bank of Europe', Venice isn't very well suited to it. They've got clear territorial goals and were an often aggressive state

Originally Posted by st.lucifer

The biggest problem in terms of gameplay I see with this is that we don't really have much use for money, except to pay maintenance costs. Presumably, borrowing money at interest would involve increasing one's maintenance costs - which would be counterproductive, without much of a short-term gain involved.

I would consider this opinion uninformed. Early, cheap money, especially before access to Courthouses, would allow a large nations to wreak military havoc on their neighbors. With it's military dominance (through accessible credit) later real economic gains would be even more pronounced.

Venice's military actions were a direct result of their aggressive politics. Besides, any gains Venice had relied far more in political maneuvering and
a vast store of wealth than actual military power. Venice relied on Mercenaries, like most Italian states at the time, and was never guaranteed in it's own military power.

Originally Posted by st.lucifer

it's hard to see a human, let alone the AI, pulling off both a conquest/settlement condition and a lending condition.

There is far too much coddling of the player in this mod. I would rather see if some players can pull this off before using it as an excuse not to implement such a change.

That said...

Originally Posted by st.lucifer

Finally, the biggest objection I have to this proposal is the amount of work involved.

Exactly. As "cool" as this might be, the work involved just to implement and debug this one addition would be astronomical.

However, if you (or a C++ savvy friend) is interested, there should be a relatively simple way to implement this change. First, you would have to change the trading rules relative to Venice. In particular, the the minimum turns for a GPT agreement would need to be 20. Then, make the non-Venice AIs willing to trade gold per turn for lump sums of gold in return that are less than the 20 minimum turns of gold paid out. It would not be difficult to set a standard return on this. It would even be a minor adjustment to make this a dynamic function (although the variable would be near impossible to pin down).

The only issue would be finding a way to prevent a human Venice player from taking advantage of this money lending. I can't see one, which actually breaks the idea, but maybe you can find one Hangly.

[Hangly Man]

Originally Posted by st.lucifer

The biggest problem in terms of gameplay I see with this is that we don't really have much use for money, except to pay maintenance costs.

Mercenaries, dude. Mercenaries paid for with Italian credit.

[st.lucifer]

Originally Posted by Whitefire

I would consider this opinion uninformed. Early, cheap money, especially before access to Courthouses, would allow a large nations to wreak military havoc on their neighbors. With it's military dominance (through accessible credit) later real economic gains would be even more pronounced.

Point taken. I rarely use mercenaries, as I usually value a faster tech rate over a stronger military, but I can see the argument. As mercenaries currently stand, I'd still say it's debatable...

Originally Posted by Whitefire

Venice's military actions were a direct result of their aggressive politics. Besides, any gains Venice had relied far more in political maneuvering and
a vast store of wealth than actual military power. Venice relied on Mercenaries, like most Italian states at the time, and was never guaranteed in it's own military power.

Originally Posted by Hangly Man

Mercenaries, dude. Mercenaries paid for with Italian credit.

After spending much of a 15-hour drive mulling over this set of suggestions, I think that this might be the angle to explore further. Of course, you're right about the reliance on mercenaries; we tried to represent this in the Genoan UP (same as Carthage), but it really fits both city-states. The AI doesn't really take advantage of this power, but this may in part be because the AI doesn't really know how to use mercenaries. As a player, I don't use mercs very often because you can't control where they initially show up, the maintenance costs add up quickly and severely hamper tech progress, and the mercs available are often pretty useless.
But what if we were to change these things? If, rather than having Jute warriors or Celtic chariots, we had Florentine condiotteri, or Bavarian arquebusiers, or Swiss pikemen? If we were able to ensure that the units available in the merc screen were period-appropriate and more militarily useful, and give the player or AI control of where they appeared when hired, the merc system would become a lot more attractive. This also creates a way for us to include/reference some of our minor civs (as in the examples above).

Additionally, to represent the dependence of the Italian city-states and other small civs on mercenaries, I'm going to make the following proposals:

-While running Merchant Republic, you cannot build military units, but can only hire mercenaries. (workers, spies, missionaries, and settlers are exempt.) If you switch into MR from another civic, your existing units take on a maintenance cost equal to that which you would pay if hiring as a mercenary unit.
-To partially offset this increased set of costs and difficulties, Merchant Republic increases the commerce in all cities by a large percentage. Currently it's set at 25%; I'd recommend increasing it.
-Gold trading should be moved up earlier in the tech tree.
-Both Venice and Genoa should start as merchant republics.
-Both Venice and Genoa will need new UPs, and possibly revamped UHVs.
-I'd like to see one UHV goal for both be control of Italy (which would involve conquering or vassalizing the other.)

I'm not sure how difficult these things would be to implement, particularly the reworking of the mercenary system. Still, it seems like that's an area that clearly needs some tuning - and it doesn't seem like the rest of these ideas would be very difficult to code.

What do people think of these ideas?

[Cethegus]

In Civilization Colonization, someone has made a mod that allows money-loaning from a foreign European nation. Maybe it should be done that way instead of making the money-loaner nation be Venice? This suggestion in itself would require quite a lot of work although money-loaning is a good idea, also it would severely take away Venice's attention from actually playing the game. It would have to do four things at the same time: complete the UHV, accumulate wealth, spread credit all around Europe and generate international politics of their own. Even making an unnamed Jewish bank would make more sense balance-wise than making a real player civilization accountable for money-loaning.

Keeping this in mind, I was wondering if it's possible to make a corporation accountable for this kind of bank-activity. What sort of benefits this corporation would have and should the mother nation be part of the money-loaning in any way, that I don't know. (Why should it be? Personal bankers loan money, not nations.) I don't think any nation has enough money to be lending it to others without allowing money-lending be made international. If this is considered too inbalancing or hard to code in terms of game mechanics, perhaps go back to the corporation idea and make money-loaning possible after the foundation of a certain corporation? Maybe only in the cities the corporation was spread to? (This would make money-loaning too rare a sight, though)

However, I have one mercenary-related suggestion too: How about the mercenaries are determined by militarily the most developped nation in the world? I don't want to send Axemen against Macemen and Catapults against Musketmen, for example. This would make it somewhat harder for the nations that are high up in the tech tree but would at the same time encourage an arms race of sorts. At least I see it that way.

[Hangly Man]

Originally Posted by st.lucifer

What do people think of these ideas?

They're good ideas. I still wish it were possible to use the power of leveraged debt as a weapon, but as a really crappy programmer myself it's not really my place to make demands :P

I was envisioning playing Charles the Rash of Burgundy: up to my eyebrows in debt and throwing wave after wave of knights I purchased on credit against the pikes of the Swiss. Now that would be fun.

[st.lucifer]

Originally Posted by Hangly Man

They're good ideas. I still wish it were possible to use the power of leveraged debt as a weapon, but as a really crappy programmer myself it's not really my place to make demands :P

I was envisioning playing Charles the Rash of Burgundy: up to my eyebrows in debt and throwing wave after wave of knights I purchased on credit against the pikes of the Swiss. Now that would be fun.

I've got the same issue, which is why I'm reluctant to make or embrace Big suggestions.

The biggest trick in the balancing of your proposal would be preventing Charles the Rash from buying up the Swiss pikes, too. We could have true Italian mercenary wars, down to the choreography, but I'm not sure how that would work for gameplay.

[Whitefire]

Originally Posted by Cethegus

In Civilization Colonization, someone has made a mod that allows money-loaning from a foreign European nation. Maybe it should be done that way instead of making the money-loaner nation be Venice?

Not gonna happen. The way civs are setup in Civilization is far different from Col. Plus, creating money out of nothing (assuming this lending civ is unplayable and controls to cities) will just break the game.

[onedreamer]

In reality, all exotic goods followed precise trade routes. These goods were fundamental for people (especially aristocrats) and Civ4 more or less implements this aspect. The problem is that the trade routes I mentioned were mostly controlled exactly by the merchant republics due to their strategical position and their politics. This ensured them to aquire vast amounts of money with tolls. But in RFCE, any civ is allowed to control these routes if they build appropriate wonder, if I understood well. Also the merchant republics did have a big military power but that relied in their fleets. No christian empire, as big as you can mention, had a bigger fleet in the Mediterranean, so if they had to escort/transport something or someone through the Mediterranean, which happened a lot especially during the Crusades age, they would have to ask for protection or just rent all ships alltogether from these small states, and this costed a lot. This is also the reason why England adopted St.George's cross (used by Genua) as the maritime flag.
Like I already said in the civ thread, once these trade routes moved from the east-through mediterranean-to europe to the new world-europe, not surprisingly the merchant republics lost their power.
In short, if it was banking their source of wealth, they wouldn't have lost it because of the New World. That's rather Switzerland.