Economics Modcomp discussion

So guys, this is my first set of ideas about how Economics can be simulated in RoM. These ideas require new XML tags, so I'm counting with Afforess' abilities to make it real.

I'm learning about the inflation mechanics in order to provide a better model of it, but this is far more sensitive than these initial ideas. If I messed up with inflation, this would be game breaking, so this is going to take a while. Inflation in Civ is a function of turns elapsed . So its % rises through time, when the verificated in history was the contrary.

So, here it is, for your discussion and suggestion.

I'm unsure if changing Inflation is the best way to solve economics in Civilization, especially with it being a relatively un-tampered with feature as of now.

However, I will provide the new inflation XML tags you need. From looking at this, it seems that you need a iInflationModifier for Techs, Buildings and Civics. Is that correct? I will add those so you can play with inflation in the AND 1.60 beta.

For now, I'd start by getting my feet wet in the XML.

Looking through your chnages/additions i see many '+' and few '-'. This means that in the end the player will gain more money. in the last RoM game i played i had far too much commerce and inflation was a way to lower that commerce overflow a bit. however since Afforess changed the food boni form buildings/resources the situation has changed. still i advise you to be cautious.

and in my opinion Barter should deactivate inflation since you don't have money. it's not a good civic one would choose. maybe there should be nothing good about barter then no inflation.

Afforess said:

I'm unsure if changing Inflation is the best way to solve economics in Civilization, especially with it being a relatively un-tampered with feature as of now.

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I'm not trying to solve economics in Civ, I don't think t's broken, although it can be improved. In RoM and AND what we have is a little lack of balance, which is different. What I'm trying to do is add another variable to the game, another thing for us to be worried about. Why inflation? For 3 reasons: because it's already in the game although paralyzed; because it's a variable that real civs watch closely; and because I'm a lunatic.

Afforess said:

However, I will provide the new inflation XML tags you need. From looking at this, it seems that you need a iInflationModifier for Techs, Buildings and Civics. Is that correct? I will add those so you can play with inflation in the AND 1.60 beta.

For now, I'd start by getting my feet wet in the XML.

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I was thinking that if you liked it, you'd do it for us as a part of AND, like you did for Hydromancerx and his buildings. Even because what you do in an afternoon coding, I'd take a month. I'm not a modder.

Look, I'm not trying to throw all in your back, if you lack the time or the will to do it, I'll struggle my way in the files, and we'll be still pals!

Killtech said:

Looking through your chnages/additions i see many '+' and few '-'. This means that in the end the player will gain more money. in the last RoM game i played i had far too much commerce and inflation was a way to lower that commerce overflow a bit. however since Afforess changed the food boni form buildings/resources the situation has changed. still i advise you to be cautious.

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Yes, I'm one of the founders of the club "Cut down these bonus". But the majority of what I proposed are indisputable improvements invented by mankind. How give them negative bonus? But I was conservative in the bonus, of this you can't complain.

Killtech said:

and in my opinion Barter should deactivate inflation since you don't have money. it's not a good civic one would choose. maybe there should be nothing good about barter then no inflation.

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In the real world you couldn't be more right. No currency, no inflation. Only changes in the relative prices, according to the rarity of goods being bartered. The exception to this would be if there is an abundant and broadly accepted good taking the coin function, like salt did in real world. This eventually would create a "salt inflation". But if I turned off inflation till Currency tech, early empires would be unbalanced rich. I gave barter inflation because I wanted to evidence it as a bad economy civic, but it's debatable. But your comment was noted, and in my inflation modeling I'll try to do this, although it'll be very difficult.

konradcabral said:

In the real world you couldn't be more right. No currency, no inflation. Only changes in the relative prices, according to the rarity of goods being bartered. The exception to this would be if there is an abundant and broadly accepted good taking the coin function, like salt did in real world. This eventually would create a "salt inflation". But if I turned off inflation till Currency tech, early empires would be unbalanced rich. I gave barter inflation because I wanted to evidence it as a bad economy civic, but it's debatable. But your comment was noted, and in my inflation modeling I'll try to do this, although it'll be very difficult.

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you are right. i remember that there was a hard inflation of gold and silver - as a good, not currency - because of the huge import form the colonies.

but i just had an evil idea: running barter economy would disallow you to convert any bit of commerce into gold, cities and units of course could not cost any maintainance. bacause traiding without a currency is very nasty you would get a natural commerce malus and severe mali for trade routes... if any would be allowed anyway.

except for the 'no commerce into gold' part it would even be realizable without changes to the Dll i think.

it's just an idea you and Afforess might consider. it would make 'barter' a very unique civic at least. though the bad commerce income (and therefore science) it wouldn't be a real alternative for the later ages - so no balance issue i hope. naturally overall inflation would need to go a bit steeper to compensate the now-inflation time at barter...

konradcabral said:

Spoiler :

Government
Monarchy: + 5% inflation
Communism: +1 unhappiness with Stock Exchange, +2 unhappiness with Wall Street
Fascism: +5% inflation

Society
Proletariat: +1 unhappiness per active speculator in the city

Economy
Barter: Remove the -10% gold in all cities and give +10% inflation
Slavery: +10% inflation
Coinage: +5% inflation
Guilds: +5% inflation
Mercantile: +15% inflation
Free Market: -5% inflation
Planned: +10% inflation
Corporatist: +1 happiness with Stock Exchange, +2 happiness with Wall Street
Regulated: -15% inflation
Green: -5% inflation

Welfare
Public Works: +5% inflation
Subsidized: +10% inflation
Socialized: +5% inflation

Obs.: Total ∆% of inflation by civics is between -15% and +25%

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i think your inflation changes on the civics are reasonable. but effectivly for the games balance it's a buff & nerf for the different civics. you might consider to compensate some of the civics nerfs by something else because they might become very unattractive otherwise. though i didn't test all RoM civics to say if that is needed.

Killtech said:

but i just had an evil idea: running barter economy would disallow you to convert any bit of commerce into gold, cities and units of course could not cost any maintainance. bacause traiding without a currency is very nasty you would get a natural commerce malus and severe mali for trade routes... if any would be allowed anyway.

except for the 'no commerce into gold' part it would even be realizable without changes to the Dll i think.

it's just an idea you and Afforess might consider. it would make 'barter' a very unique civic at least. though the bad commerce income (and therefore science) it wouldn't be a real alternative for the later ages - so no balance issue i hope. naturally overall inflation would need to go a bit steeper to compensate the now-inflation time at barter...

Click to expand...

Wouldn't this be too much crippling for early civs?

Killtech said:

i think your inflation changes on the civics are reasonable. but effectivly for the games balance it's a buff & nerf for the different civics. you might consider to compensate some of the civics nerfs by something else because they might become very unattractive otherwise. though i didn't test all RoM civics to say if that is needed.

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Inflation itself is a % of the sum of all expenses, and I also was very conservative on the % changes. Did you notice the last phrase of my post, "Total ∆% of inflation by civics is between -15% and +25%"?

konradcabral said:

Wouldn't this be too much crippling for early civs?

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early civs usually don't lose much form trade routes mali. only direct commerce mali hit them. so if you set them up like -1 on every tile that has minimum 4 it would have near to no effect on early civs. but on the other hand AI players pay no unit upkeep and therefore cannot cripple themselfs too much by overproducing military.

but that's just an idea. maybe better not to implement it.

konradcabral said:

Inflation itself is a % of the sum of all expenses, and I also was very conservative on the % changes. Did you notice the last phrase of my post, "Total ∆% of inflation by civics is between -15% and +25%"?

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My fear is just that you punish the economies most with inflation that already reduce gold income like mercantile and regulated. this might strike them double and push them out of the game.

Killtech said:

AI players pay no unit upkeep and therefore cannot cripple themselfs too much by overproducing military.

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The AI pays upkeep. It only gets a handicap (several more free units, ~10-20) than the human (on Noble Difficulty).

Afforess said:

The AI pays upkeep. It only gets a handicap (several more free units, ~10-20) than the human (on Noble Difficulty).

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ehh.. a misunderstanding. i know that. my comment refered to an alternative concept for barter civic: as i wrote above since it would not allow gold income thus all expenses has to be annuled too - including city maintanaince and unit upkeep.

thinking of it there must be a stronger commerce malus because otherwise barter might become too good.

ah, better forget about this idea. nvm.

Killtech said:

My fear is just that you punish the economies most with inflation that already reduce gold income like mercantile and regulated. this might strike them double and push them out of the game.

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For Regulated, I proposed a -15% inflation, it's the highest counter-inflationary benefit in my list. It reflects the rigidity of fiscal and monetary policies that I talked about in another thread.

konradcabral said:

For Regulated, I proposed a -15% inflation, it's the highest counter-inflationary benefit in my list. It reflects the rigidity of fiscal and monetary policies that I talked about in another thread.

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oups sorry i mixed up the - with a + in my thought. forgot that inflation is something negetive, oops. my bad

Afforess, do you intend to write this modcomp for me and make it a part of AND 1.60 or 1.61?

konradcabral said:

Afforess, do you intend to write this modcomp for me and make it a part of AND 1.60 or 1.61?

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It's not going to make 1.6, I'm afraid. Top of the list, along with the Election Modmod for 1.7 though.

OK, that's fair enough. In the meantime, the forum could discuss it little more, and give a few more ideas, don't you guys agree?

konradcabral said:

OK, that's fair enough. In the meantime, the forum could discuss it little more, and give a few more ideas, don't you guys agree?

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Well, a few more things off hand.

-Civics
Bourgeois: +1 Happiness per Speculator. +10?% Inflation.
Marxist: Cannot turn citizens into Speculators (Now that is Civics XML tag which is fun to work with).

-Some mechanic which causes the AI to value resources based on the amount available to trade. Example: AI will value Sheep more if there are only three on available than if there ten available; it does not matter if a civ has a monopoly or if all belong to different civs. This way, Resource Spamming is counter productive and should result in supply-demand for international trade.

Heck, I'd be thrilled if I could ever get the AI to actually trade me the amount it values my resources at (Yay! Another 4 gold per turn! I'll try not to spend it all in one place...)

Is there a reason the Stock Exchange requires Free Market to construct? Since, I can think of a number of countries with Corporatist or Regulated economies which have Stock Exchanges, ones that have been built during them having such economies.

generalstaff said:

-Some mechanic which causes the AI to value resources based on the amount available to trade. Example: AI will value Sheep more if there are only three on available than if there ten available; it does not matter if a civ has a monopoly or if all belong to different civs. This way, Resource Spamming is counter productive and should result in supply-demand for international trade.

Click to expand...

I don't know why the AI doesn't do this already. However, I shall add it.

Praetyre said:

Is there a reason the Stock Exchange requires Free Market to construct? Since, I can think of a number of countries with Corporatist or Regulated economies which have Stock Exchanges, ones that have been built during them having such economies.

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You are correct. I'll update the OP later today.

Hey guys, I'm gonna post here some ideas from an economical thread in main RoM forum. Now it turns mostly around inflation, but i shall add more suggestions later on.

I have 2 new principles that affect inflation on my mind:
1) any time you use money to hurry production, this should increase inflation, since you pour money from treasury into economy
2) inflation could be also slightly affected by your end-of-turn bugdet. If you are consistently in green numbers, inflation should drop a little bit (bcoz you are taking money from economy to treasury). If you are in red numbers, inflation should increase (new are flowing to economy).) Imagine this work in game, you would be persuaded to keep at least balanced budget most of the time. Running a big deficit consistently now would be less effective, or at least must be balanced by adopting some low-inflation civic. Even trading techs away for gold would have some minor drawback now, because if you want to spend the earned money to invest, by bringing new money to your economy, inflation rises up a little bit. For me, this looks quite historically accurate.

Then i suggested to add new civic category - Monetary system:

Barter
- no upkeep
- -25% in all cities
- -100% inflation rate
- no inflation costs
- -50% from Market
- no effect of Bank
- -50% trade routes yield

National Mints
- high upkeep
- +5% with gold
- +5% with silver
- -50% foreign trade routes yield
- -30% inflation rate

Market Enterprise
- no upkeep
- +25% hurry cost
- hurrying has no effect on inflation rate
- +50% from Bank

Gold Standard
- medium upkeep
- +5% per gold resource (up to +30%)
- +50% foreign trade routes yield per gold resource (partner with Gold Standard, up to +300%)
- -15% inflation rate
- +5% inflation rate per gold resource (up to +30%)

Silver Standard
- medium upkeep
- +5% per silver resource (up to +30%)
- +50% foreign trade routes yield per silver resource (partner with Silver Standard, up to +300%)
- -15% inflation rate
- +5% inflation rate per silver resource (up to +30%)

State Bank
- no upkeep
- +50%
- +200% inflation rate
- -50% hurry cost
- hurrying has triple effect on inflation rate
- -25% from Bank¨
- -25% trade routes yield ...keep your priceless currency, dude

Federal Reserve System
- high upkeep
- +35%
- +25% from Bank
- +25% inflation rate
- +100% foreign trade routes yeld (partner with Federal Reserve System)


As you can see, there are +inflation and -inflation civics, each of them good for various playstyles.

Also, with the gold and silver standard, i expect the silver and gold blocs being formed and competiting each other. Imagine yourself having access to many gold sources. How could you make some serius use of it besides trading it for cows ? Just persuade as many rivals as possible to join the gold standard, maximize your foreign trade routes potential by building the TGL and adopting free market, and create your own gold-based trading empire