A civ supermod based on Colonization economics

[lumpthing]

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

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

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.

 

[Mesix]

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 $$$.

 

[Gaius Octavius]

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

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

 

[Rexflex]

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.

 

[faichele]

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

 

[Androrc the Orc]

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.

 

[lumpthing]

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.

 

[faichele]

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.

 

[Jabie]

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.

 

[lumpthing]

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".

 

[lumpthing]

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.

 

[r_rolo1]

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

 

[wolfigor]

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.

 

[Kurgan]

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.

 

[wolfigor]

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).

 

[faichele]

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?

 

[lumpthing]

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?

 

[wilcoxchar]

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.

 

[faichele]

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?