Who else hates the unholy trinity of hammers, coins and food?

I love civ, but I find these aspects of it's economic model very unsatisfying:

1. Cities never export their food or building materials.
2. Trade is 90% a weird abstraction that just magically grows from the land.

I much prefer Sid Meier's Colonization's model:

1. Food and building materials can be moved around.
2. Trade is the based purely on the movement of goods and resources.

The only thing I don't like about Colonization's system is that it relies on an off-stage market (Europe) to make sense. I would prefer it if all wealth were accounted for in the form of resources and goods I get to see being moved about. A market with a magic unaccounted-for supply of money is almost as disappointing to me as the magic coins which currently grows from the land.

So anyway, I was curious as to whether anyone else feels the same and is similarly afflicted with tantalizing visions of an entirely resource/goods-based economic model?

lumpthing said:

So anyway, I was curious as to whether anyone else feels the same and is similarly afflicted with tantalizing visions of an entirely resource/goods-based economic model?

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the unholy trinity of hammers, coin, and food shall remain, as it is simple enough to be fun, and complicated enough to make gameplay interesting.

resource/goods based economy with internal and external demand, trade routes like the Silk Route is cool, but can such system be made simple enough to be fun and complicated enough to not feel like the unholy trinity and yet to have the player be in control of things?

introducing things that are out of control of the player, like some "private sector" and/or internal demand managed by the computer (or you expect players to manage every city if they have 30 or more of them?) is not fun primary because the computer control tends to do stupid things or not what the player wants to be done.

P.S. Master of Orion 3 is a great example of what i am talking about

Well I think the SM's Colonization economic model is simple and fun, a lot more fun for me than Civ's model. The problem is when your empire gets big and it turns into micro-management, but I find that is a problem for Civ too. That's certainly something else that could be improved.

Age of Empires, Settlers are Caesar are three other extremely fun and successful games that have entirely resource-based economies. That's a big part of what makes them fun for me.

I agree with you that an AI-controlled private sector would be a bad idea. That's not what I'm looking for.

Hail said:

the unholy trinity of hammers, coin, and food shall remain, as it is simple enough to be fun, and complicated enough to make gameplay interesting.

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Shields, coins and food, darn it. Mallea delenda est.

resource/goods based economy with internal and external demand, trade routes like the Silk Route is cool, but can such system be made simple enough to be fun and complicated enough to not feel like the unholy trinity and yet to have the player be in control of things?

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I would say that it was in Civ 2, fwiw.

introducing things that are out of control of the player, like some "private sector" and/or internal demand managed by the computer (or you expect players to manage every city if they have 30 or more of them?)

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*insert choking-up-spleen noises here*

200 cities is a big game where having to manage everything every turn is a bit of a drag, 30 cities ? Is barely an empire worth having.

rysmiel said:

Shields, coins and food, darn it. Mallea delenda est.

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some traditions are good and should not be deviated from

rysmiel said:

I would say that it was in Civ 2, fwiw.

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is civ2 city's trade demands where randomly chosen, could change over time, and vaguely depended on the age or tech progress. as i recall some tech makes "Oil" a resource and some makes "Uranium" a resource. other than that, it was all random.

rysmiel said:

200 cities is a big game where having to manage everything every turn is a bit of a drag, 30 cities ? Is barely an empire worth having.

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Yields can be mostly rationalized. Remember, coins only occur where there are citizens working the land. That is those citizens making (or earning through services) trade goods that are good for export, not necessarily for feeding population or improving the material culture with durable goods such as buidlings and the equipped institutins they represent (that tend to be made of local materials anyway). Food tends to spoil, and until modern times you had to have productive farms nearby to have a big city, except that especially good supplies (represented by bonuses) can be traded.

However, with increasing technology, cities are not dependent on local food supplies. Thus in the late game after certain techs, a percentage of money should just convert itself to food in each city, depending on civics (you can force the people to NOT spend money on imported food).

Taking the place of local food should be a new yield, Power.

Hail said:

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Yeah, I'm fairly certain rysmiel is actually a cyborg. That's how he can keep track of all his stuff.

The "unholy trinity", as it's called, isn't a bad model early on. If we think about it, we can trade major luxuries with other players, simulating major trade routes. However, food was largely grown and consumed on a more local level. Where this breaks down is during the Industrial to Modern period.

Somebody put together a decent mod where trade routes (connecting cities) would also give bonus food and production, simulating the exchange both within your economy and outside (different techs could give bonuses, so after Refrigeration food yield is increased from trade routes, etc.). I think it was Vanilla/Warlords, though, so unless you have an old CD lying around, you might be out of luck.

I think that trade like it is nowadays in Civ series is a good representation of average internal trade. It allows to win money (by the state or the civ) out from internal commerce. the only thing i feel is deceiving is the way trade routes between cities are managed. They should be selectable by the player, and put into emphasis in order to the player to actually take it into account. (like an advisor to pop up when your first trade route is possible)

Where I feel a little disturbed is when it comes to food and production. Babies do not born in the cabbages, therefore population should stop to grow with the amount of food there is in a granary. That should be more based on a fertility rate, based on several things like happiness, particular "golden ages" (baby boom - maybe after a war), and civics allowing to give some benefit to big families. The food should interact only with existing population. For example, 2 foods should be needed for good citizen support, but only 1 food should suffice, at the difference that it would affect the mortility rate.

As to production, I feel it highly unrealistic: people do not build things out of the land. They are gathering ressouces out the land, but do not build things out of it. Therefore, hammers should be obtainable only with specialists. I always tought specialsts where so optional, that would be an occasion to make them essential. Maybe the return of shields, that would exist belong hammers. Shields would be the ressouce got out of land working, and hammers the effective specialized output of specialists, that require food but can't work it.

Antilogic said:

Yeah, I'm fairly certain rysmiel is actually a cyborg. That's how he can keep track of all his stuff.

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rysmiel is not a "he".

rysmiel is by profession a designer of large-scale web databases and also has been a designer and implementer of whole-factory-floor software suites, and hence is used to managing large quantities of information in detail and quite enjoys it. (Also to using the third person.)

Well I'm so sorry, but writing s/he or xhe or whatever else just looks silly, and calling you an 'it' is just insulting. I was using the neutered pronoun.

i think wimsey's economics model is a good method of making the economy manageable while creating a realistic economy

who is this mysterious wimsey and what is his or her )) economic model?

food/commerce can be done, it's in a modmod called Fall Further and is done by a civic, Vehem and Xienwolf are the people you want to talk to for that

Antilogic said:

Well I'm so sorry, but writing s/he or xhe or whatever else just looks silly, and calling you an 'it' is just insulting. I was using the neutered pronoun.

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Singular 'they': good enough for Chaucer, good enough for Shakespeare, good enough for me.

lumpthing said:

who is this mysterious wimsey and what is his or her )) economic model?

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Me. I'm a he by the way (Well, never scientifically tested, but I'm fairly sure).
My economic model is around here somewhere. I actually think it's too complicated for a good game now, but there are definitely some interesting bits in there given some modification and simplification.
At least it shows something of how difficult it is to make an economic model that mimics real life to a certain point and is neither micromanagish or chaotic. (I think my model leans towards the latter).

I think food/commerce/production is getting a little old, 4 games already, and could give way to something closer to realism. It was a great idea in 1991, but I guess both computers and players have increased their capasity since then.
Especially production is a little weird, since it seems to represent both manpower (as in citizens and engineers) or materials (from a mine).

Wimsey said:

I think food/commerce/production is getting a little old, 4 games already, and could give way to something closer to realism. It was a great idea in 1991, but I guess both computers and players have increased their capasity since then.
Especially production is a little weird, since it seems to represent both manpower (as in citizens and engineers) or materials (from a mine).

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I totally agree, but I would be willing to bet a lot of money that they will NEVER change it in future versions of civ. They're too scared of breaking the magic formula.

I look forward to investigating your economic suggestions when I get the time.

I love it.

Wimsey said:

I think food/commerce/production is getting a little old, 4 games already, and could give way to something closer to realism. It was a great idea in 1991, but I guess both computers and players have increased their capacity since then.
Especially production is a little weird, since it seems to represent both manpower (as in citizens and engineers) or materials (from a mine).

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agree about production, and what do you propose instead?
imho food/commerce/production is a fine balance between realism and gameplay.

My friend and I have pondered this for some time, and tried to think up a system that would more reflect the real world. Our first thought was this:
"In Civ, city growth is dependent solely on the production of food in that city, however there are many cases of small agricultural towns that export food, and of large cities that spring up along trade routes in the desert."
How would we model this?
We came up with an idea of population growth being based on the economic conditions of the city, rather than simply its food supply. Wealthy cities have citizens who are better off and more able to support their families but, more importantly, they attract immigrants.

Of course, then we ran into the fundamental question of economics: What is wealth?

We decided that there should be cities more in the style of colonization where cities would work the land around them (to varying degrees of efficiency) to produce food and other goods the population needs. Small cities would be fairly self-sufficient, but as time went on, the restrictions of the land around them would force cities to specialize in certain areas and import what they could not make for themselves. Goods would then flow along trade routes between cities, and cities through which many trade routes ran would be able to take a small cut of the money of each one (supplying caravans, buying at low prices & selling at high prices, etc.) and so accrue wealth from trade.

This was the basic idea, and as we looked into it further, what we realized we were going for was more of an economic simulation than a civilization game. Like maybe "Sim Economy", or "Adam Smith's Civilization", or something.