Calling all economists: How to create a fun/simple/realistic world market economy?

[Maniac]

How about asking the SDK Core Community Project if they can allow us to use these two tags:
<FreeBonus>NONE</FreeBonus>
<iNumFreeBonuses>0</iNumFreeBonuses>
from Civ4BuildingInfos (preferably more than once) in lots of other files as well. Such as...
Civ4TechInfos
Civ4CivicInfos
Civ4TraitInfos
Civ4SpecialistInfos
Civ4BonusInfos
Civ4FeatureInfos
Civ4ImprovementInfos
Civ4UnitInfos

That would allow quantified resources (Bonus-, Feature- & ImprovementInfos), city-based raw->refined production (Building- & SpecialistInfos) and limited unit capacity (Civ4UnitInfos, eg each swordsman provides -1 Iron).

 

[MrThing]

How about asking the SDK Core Community Project if they can allow us to use these two tags:
<FreeBonus>NONE</FreeBonus>
<iNumFreeBonuses>0</iNumFreeBonuses>
from Civ4BuildingInfos (preferably more than once) in lots of other files as well. Such as...
Civ4TechInfos
Civ4CivicInfos
Civ4TraitInfos
Civ4SpecialistInfos
Civ4BonusInfos
Civ4FeatureInfos
Civ4ImprovementInfos
Civ4UnitInfos

That would allow quantified resources (Bonus-, Feature- & ImprovementInfos), city-based raw->refined production (Building- & SpecialistInfos) and limited unit capacity (Civ4UnitInfos, eg each swordsman provides -1 Iron).

Its amazing how flexable the core game is.

 

[Maniac]

Btw, how does the AI decide it's interested in importing a certain resource? Or do they just try to get one of everything?

Also I'm wondering, doesn't the AI already take supply and demand into account to a certain extent? Or am I just dreaming? I sometimes get the impression the AI asks more for a resource if they are the only one that has it.

 

[Nyte Ryder]

M@ni@c, you do bring up a good point. I have possible theory that could help get this development of the best economial mod under way. But this is going to require some scripting which ery many of us can't do, but someone out there can.

But instead of me taking all day to explain my vision. I found a few good websites that knows more about economics than almost everyone this board:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_agricultural_output
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy

I gerrantee that if we read this stuff, in about a week or two someone would bound to have this MOD up and ready to go. And Who knows it might even be me.

==========================================================
~The Breakdown~ (Here are some breif discriptions that you'll be able to do in the Economy MOD. It was easier to put this in the form of a story.)

The world economy can be evaluated in various ways, depending on the model used, and this valuation can then be represented in various ways (for example, in 2006 US dollars). It is inseparable from the geography and ecology of Earth, and is therefore somewhat of a misnomer, since, while definitions and representations of the "world economy" vary widely, they must at a minimum exclude any consideration of resources or value based outside of the Earth.

For example, while attempts could be made to calculate the value of currently unexploited mining opportunities in unclaimed territory in Antarctica, the same opportunities on Mars would not be considered a part of the world economy -- even if currently exploited in some way -- and could be considered of latent value only in the same way as uncreated intellectual property, such as a previously unconceived invention. Beyond the minimum standard of concerning value in production, use, and exchange on the planet Earth, definitions, representations, models, and valuations of the world economy vary widely.

Now to make the funest and simpeliest up-to-date economics into Civilization IV, we must first look at some statistical indicators such as energy and natural resources.

Now we all know that every country needs energy to survive. But what kind of energy you might add? Well for one thing Oil is the worlds number one source of energy and like it or not, its not all going away. Thats why scientist have always been tring to find an alternative. Can you guesse what it is? Electricity and Solar energy. These two factors will are what stands between us riding horses or cars. Anyway let me tell you guys how this will work.

==========================================================
~How it will Work~

Just like in the real world if a civilization has a major supply to oil they are the world's number one consumer of that sort. So if a another civilization wanted that oil they would have two options on their hands. And thats to pay for it or go to war with them.

-Oil-
Example 1 : Say for example the American empier (us) needed oil to build an army tank. But doing so they would have to negociate with their arch rivals the Persain empier. Once you've asked the AI fot a fair Oil export into the states and when or if they decide yes, the supplier (or in this case Pesian Empier) Will choose how much money he or she wants for thier exports into the states.
They won't be able to choose a high amount, so don't worry about lossing all of your money or going bankrupt or anything. If the AI is friendly towards you they'll offer a somewhat small amount of money. However if they are cautious towards then you can expect a major hijacking? Why? Because thats how the world works. Thats Why!

-The Two Million Oli Population Rule-
Well i've bet most of you are wondering what is this mean huh? Well I'll tell you. This, The two million oil population rule is every city over a population of 2 million needs over 10 barrels of Oil to keep them going. (Oh did I mention theres a limit to the Oil?) Or if unable to supply the large city then the city will cripple and no more what-cha-ma-call-it.

-The Ups and Downs About Oil-
From the time you connect your first worker on the Oil tile, there is only 50,000 gallons of oil availible. And each civilization with a population over two million deserves 10 gallons. And when the world reaches an Oil Peak (which means running out of Oil) Just about every Civilization will try to get their hands on the Suppliers that holds the oil. Probably only the industrial types will try and fight for it.

-The Warning about Global Warming-
Burning oil cause greenhouse gassess, duh? And Greenhouse gassess causes global warming, so why even burn oil in the first place? Ill tell you why. Because a large city is to crowed to be walking to point a to point b everyday. And thats where automobiles come in. Man loves speed and he'll do what ever he can to get faster.
Now anyway. Just as the oil starts to run out of course people in all cities over the world are gonna panic. Cities populations will start to decrease dramatically all over the world. Hence a great depression in Civ IV! Then building units ect. will start to cost more and more until just about everything is useless.
You'll know when global warming strikes when the temperature becomes arid and you begin to stop producing more hammers because the forest have all stopped growing as well as tiles that were once on the shoreline, from the melting glaciers. Sounds exciting huh?
The world is at war, Oil is running, people are commiting suicide while the cities population decendes, and civilizations crumble like never before. Is there hope? Yes there is.

==========================================================
-Changing Civics to Enviormentalist-
Yet theres hope, if this MOD actually sees the day of light. Yes my friend im talking about enviormentalist. You must first have have already discovered the tech, "Future Tech." Once discovered you not need oil. You'll have... "Future Tech." What about it? Well for starters you'll have to a Polution free bio dome for each city. Oh, and dont forget your crops. Everything you'll need to survive into the new world you'll need a biodome. Meanwhile all the civilizations are begging for you to help them by letting them have your "Future Tech." But Remember eariler in the game when Asoka just about kick your... butt in three deminsions? Well now you can watch him squrim. Or give him a cow or two. Whatever floats your boat.

-The Start of New Beginings-
Then After a few more turns its all over. Or So you thought. What happend was a Polar shift. Now The South Pole is east. What once was your beauitful
tropical city, is nothing but the Polar Ice caps. You and your men must migrate south away from the cold. After a few turns everything seems cool and going your way. But as your expoler is revealing new territory you guys run into the worest trouble ever. What is it you say? Well its no one in particular... it just Julis Ceasure? The very same man who you asked for your help once in a fight aginst the enemy, but you turned them down. Well The roman empier declares war on you and you see that their technology is 10 times more advance than yours. And just as fast as they came it was as if you didn't even know what happend. Game Over. Julis was able to defeat you for one reason only. And thats because before the polar shift Julis had Oil and ICBM's that Saladin had sneaked into the Romain Empier so the U.N. inspector wouldn't find them. -END

==========================================================
New Features for Civilization IV

-All Civilizations will be able to make imports and exports.
-Immigrants from poor countries will migrant to wealthy places.
-If a Civilization hasn't a state religion civil wars may occur.
-The most powerful civilization will experience terrorist attacks.
-Epidemics, influenza, and burning forest will cause unhealtiness to nearby cities and lower populations.
-Eathquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, metorites, hurricanes, tornadoes, and heat waves will wreack havoc onto civilizations.
-If a Civilizaiton is crippeled by a disaster every country is required to donate a sum of money but dosen't have to. And doing so will result in a civilization being cautios more towards you.

-New Buildings-
Olympics: World/National Wonder
Red Cross: Need to give and obtain donations from civilizations after disasters.

I have a whole lot more. But Imma go ahead and stop to see what you guys think first about my idea.

 

[Xereq]

Heres a model I think could be implemented.
example:
Sheep give you mutton as an initial raw recource
with a technology they give you a wool raw yield
a specialist called a weaver can turn wool into cloth at a rate of 4:1
this rate improves with economic and industrial techs
eventually you can create factories that will allow you to turn cloth into pre-fab clothes
in addition to providing thier assingned luxury boni, cloth and prefab clothes will reduce the cost to produce units and thier support costs via supply lines.

Cotton can also be woven into cloth
muttun and other food recources can be peserved, shipped cold, and eventually proccessed.
Proccessed food will give less of a bonus and at first entail some health risk but greatly increace the amount of the recource available for trade and matinence.

There should be two classes of econemic civic: Economy type, and econemic regualation. Lasse fair should be the base economic civic for both classes, no matinance cost, no benefit. For economic regulation,
progressive regulation- decreaces unhealthiness produced by industrial mass production; medium upkeep
lawful regulation - slight reduction of unhealthyness produced by mass production; low upkeep
Environmental protection - Decreaces rate at which refined recources are produced, stops and slightly reduces global warming, health bonuses from 'proccessed' foods; High upkeep

 

[Xereq]

Wow, amazing ideas Nyte Ryder!

-The Two Million Oli Population Rule-
Well i've bet most of you are wondering what is this mean huh? Well I'll tell you. This, The two million oil population rule is every city over a population of 2 million needs over 10 barrels of Oil to keep them going. (Oh did I mention theres a limit to the Oil?) Or if unable to supply the large city then the city will cripple and no more what-cha-ma-call-it.

-The Ups and Downs About Oil-
From the time you connect your first worker on the Oil tile, there is only 50,000 gallons of oil availible. And each civilization with a population over two million deserves 10 gallons. And when the world reaches an Oil Peak (which means running out of Oil) Just about every Civilization will try to get their hands on the Suppliers that holds the oil. Probably only the industrial types will try and fight for it.

I also think that cities of certain population sizes should require a certain volume of foodstuffs in a mod where recources are in a pool.

Something I always found odd about civilizations, it either progresses along a historical timeline or an alternate timeline, never both. What if your civilization was stuck in a position where it was likely never to gain access to oil. (no one will trade it to you and you don't have any access to it at all.) You discover steam power. What if, instead of the model T becoming popular, your civilization focused on more efficient steam powered cars, and were able to engineer them so thet they didn't blow up all the time. There was an opportunity for this in america, if Stanley's steamers hadn't had the drawback of blowing up and killing people, we would be driving steam/hydrogen cars by now because they are more effecient and have a more readily available fuel source. We would have stations where we could refill our cars with water and coolant. What if there were split trunks in the tech tree, the ability for industrius civilizations to invest more heavily in development for zeplins and steam engines? Went the high tech ceramic route instead of sticking with steel? Wouldn't that be cool?

 

[Arkaeyn]

Oh my God, if you could put an Imperialism-style economy in Civ4, I would weep with joy and never play another game. One of the biggest problems with Civ's economy is that it's simply GROW GROW GROW MORE MORE MORE instead of attempting to find economic balances as Imperialism had. Making army size/style dependent on, well, anything except how fast you can churn units out would be fantastic. I'll think on this - it might not be useful for your mod you seem to be going in a different direction, but anything to be reminded of Imperialism

(also, Imperialism 2 was superior in most every way, so if you can find that one, give it a shot!)

 

[Padmewan]

I was playing Imperialism all weekend, to the detriment of my mod (see sig), and after playing it I think making even the much-simplified proposal I laid out earlier would be a huge undertaking -- which is not to say impossible (very little is thanks to the SDK), just huge amounts of time from someone who really knows how to code (I'm just a dabbler/tweaker).

IMO, the key to making a real economy isn't more resources, but a MARKET with player (human or AI) incentives to buy, sell, and invest. As Arkaeyn identified, the fundamental problem with Civ4 from this perspective is that the game keeps insisting that you grow, grow, grow -- the only thing stopping you (this time around) is "maintenance." Now, to be fair Civ4 is meant to model an entire CIVILIZATION, not necessarily a nation, and furthermore the timeframe is so extended that a market is pretty silly (Imperialism's turns were seasonal).

In order for a mod to capture the concept of economy well, IMHO, it needs to do the following:

• Give real, in-game incentives for players to buy and sell goods
• Provide some mechanism whereby players can generate or refine goods
• Have AI that can handle both of the above

Now, if we took out the need for the AI to be competitive, I think it would be possible to mod the game in the way I laid out in the last page, with the exception of the User Interface suggestion I had. To reiterate, the idea was:

Yields would accumulate across the entire civ, rather than be city-specific. Each would go into its own pool, like gold -- but not like commerce!

Specialists would combine yields to produce refined yields, e.g.,

2 foods = 1 granary
2 hammers = 1 industry
2 commerce = 1 money
1 hammer + 1 commerce = 1 beaker
1 food + 1 commerce = 1 culture
1 hammer + 1 food = ???

... each of these could even be combined again.

Cities, then could either produce via a "process" anything a specialist could do (turn a raw yield into a refined yield), or turn refined yields into a final product, which could include
* research (2 beakers = 1 research)
* gold (2 money = 1 gold)
* population (2 granaries = 1 food bar)
* control (2 culture = 1 control)
* buildings (allow more specialists, any combination of resources)
* units (any combination of resources)

The above was based on my experience of Imperialism. I think it also minimizes the amount of changes needed to the Civ4 engine (though, again, the changes are huge!). Stripping away the bonuses (iron, copper, etc.), this would also give a "Settlers of Catan"-like elegance and simplicity. More complexity can be added later.

==========

The alternative to this, in my mind, is simply creating bonus "pools" rather than straight bonuses, and then create a market for that. Instead of trading X gold for 1 bonus per turn, players would trade 20X gold for 20 bonuses at one shot. Unfortunately, the way Civ4 set up diplomacy, it would make it harder for players to interfere with each others' trades, since they are episodic rather than ongoing. Convincing the French to stop supplying the Mongols with horses suddenly becomes a lot harder and also less fun... (?)

 

[Starship]

I've never played Imperialism, but I wanted to suggest a simple fun and playable model. Supremacy. Simple World Market that had a Bear to Bull slider, that affects pricing. You trade with the market, not with individual civilizations. You also buy from the market, never with individuals. The market would be an interface simialar to the civics screen, or religion screen.

 

[Starship]

Also it seems like making a market trading structure would be easier than making....game mechanisms for rough vs refined resources, and/or having units directly relate/use resources for movement/abilities. Though if you had all of these components together, it would really be something. Some people say that doing so would be "tedious." I think it would add strategic depth.

 

[John_Deere]

Question: If a unit is produced by an improvement or wonder, can it be converted into shields?

If the answer is yes, I believe I could help out. Please note that I am mainly a Civ3 gamer, who only plays Civ4 sparsely right now. Therefore, this is somewhat of a Civ3 oriented approach.

Say that a Civ has the oil resource. They use a worker, and connect to it. The worker can then build a tile improvement such as an oil well. A nearby city can build an improvement(that requires oil to be in the city radius) that produces a unit such as an oil barrel. The oil barrel, once produced, could be directly converted into hammers, speeding up production time in a city. This theroretical unit could be immovable, and be able to load and unload, allowing for it to be transported via tankers to other cities, however if they were to be converted in other cities it would require some tweaking of the rules, I believe. A notable improvement in Civ4 over Civ3 is the fact that units can be traded, and that improvement could be utilized right here. Civilizations could trade for "oil barrel" units, in an attempt to speed up production time in their city. Since oil is the new gold standard, having oil could also make citizens happy because it brings stability to their country. This would be an added incentive that means countries will want to get their hands on the "black stuff". This model, if viable, might be able to be applied to other resources.

This is just a thought, and hopefully it does address the problem. However, an over arching problem,is that even if all of the above could get done, would the AI know how to handle this, and use it effectively? It's up for discussion.

 

[Nyte Ryder]

Of course. I think the AI would be able to handle for sure.

I was thinking that we could probably put a fet of these features into the new economic Civ IV mod probably some of this information could help.

Capital Gain
An increase in the value of a capital asset (investment or real estate) that gives it a higher worth than the purchase price. The gain is not realized until the asset is sold. A capital gain may be short-term (one year or less) or long-term (more than one year), and must be claimed on income taxes.

Asset
A resource having economic value that an individual, corporation or country owns or controls with the expectation that it will provide future benefit.

Capital Loss
The loss incurred when a capital asset (investment or real estate) decreases in value. This loss is not realized until the asset is sold for a price that is lower than the original purchase price.
For example, if an investor bought a house for $250,000 and five years later sells the house for $200,000. The investor would realize a capital loss of $50,000

Capital Asset
A long-term asset that is not bought or sold in the regular course of business.
Notes: Examples include land, buildings, machinery, etc. Generally, these are assets you can't turn into cash quickly.

Capital Markets
Markets where capital, such as stocks and bonds, are traded.
Notes: Capital markets are used by companies to raise additional funds.

Stock
A type of security that signifies ownership in a corporation and represents a claim on part of the corporation's assets and earnings.

 

[Tholish]

Also, it would be interesting if biological resources (or "bonuses") could be made prerequisite to research techs that make the resource obsolete, or replace it with a more common one.

For example, Horses originally existed in only one area in Asia. However, that resources is no longer the only source for horses. They are bred and found everywhere. So, a better model would be if the rare resource OriginalHorses were prerequisite to research the tech Horse Breeding. Researching horse breeding represents making the application of the tech widespread throughout the civilization, ie horses are everywhere. Once the tech is researched, the resource Horses would no longer be required for anything, or perhaps instead a new and very widespead resource HorsePasture, representing viable places to breed horses, would appear or perhaps you could simply build an improvement HorsePasture that functions as the Horse resource. So, Horses could only be researched by lucky owner of the original tech, but then anyone who got it by trade would also get a viable supply of breeding horses. But then, how does that explain the Comanche, who simply got runaways? I guess maybe tech leakage by adjacency and antiquity? If you share a border with a civ there is a chance you will get a tech from it that you have the prereqs for equal to its cultural pressure or something, even if you are a barb, and then barbs trade techs among themselves. But I stray from economics and simplicity both. I think eliminating bonuses is a bad idea. They just need tweaking, which involves making more varieties that do more varieties of things in more different ways. So, if you do that how do you get rid of something to keep things simple, along the lines of getting rid of the ideas guiding the upgrade from civ3 to civ4? I don't know that more complexity is bad if it actually adds to gameplay richness in the right way, ie it's intuitive and goes along with everything else (health) as opposed to it's a wierd concept that doesn't have a function (pollution cleanup).

Civilization is about the saga of technological progress more than anything else, and so much of that saga is about new resources and new applications of them.

 

[Impaler[WrG]]

How about asking the SDK Core Community Project if they can allow us to use these two tags:
<FreeBonus>NONE</FreeBonus>
<iNumFreeBonuses>0</iNumFreeBonuses>
from Civ4BuildingInfos (preferably more than once) in lots of other files as well. Such as...
Civ4TechInfos
Civ4CivicInfos
Civ4TraitInfos
Civ4SpecialistInfos
Civ4BonusInfos
Civ4FeatureInfos
Civ4ImprovementInfos
Civ4UnitInfos

I also think it would be wise to control the stockpilable nature of Bonus at the XML level by use of a new tag <bstockpilable> which can be set to true. Resorces without that tag would maintain the old Firaxian style ware as thouse with it become stockpilable commodities.

Adding Maniacs subjested tags to Tech, Civic, Specialist and Unit sounds doable but Bonus, Feature and Improvment would be trickier. If we followed the Imperialism model their would be a sequence of 3 improvments which each generate more output so all the output variation should be in the Improvment rather then the Bonus. Fortunatly I just finished a little mod that allows improvments to require another improvment, in essence creating an upgrade chain. The normal game seems to take 1 unit of Bonus per plot as a given so it will be nessary to over-ride that if something else is specified in the improvment. I dont see why Features should be able to provide Bonuses as the current system works through Improvments, perhaps you were thinking of getting lumber from the forest Feature? If so I recomed a new Lumber Bonus and the lumbermill improvment activating it so as to keep things consistent and minimize nessary changes.

I see Padmewan refer to "Yields" for the commodities/bonuses, I would hope his is not planning to actualy add all the games resorces (Copper, Iron ect) as types of Yield (Food, Hammer, Commerce). This is illadviced because of the large hit your likly to take in game speed and memmory. Every plot on the map has a Yield Array and the AI evaluates these arrays when picking what plot to work, if that array were to grow to the size nessary to hold all the 20-30 bonuses the burden would be quite a lot.

Your ideas for Specialist based convertion of Resorces sounds interesting, it should be very simple to add these data members to Specialists and have them add or remove from the Empires pool. The next issue that should be adressed is that of Capacity which was vital to Imperialism. Civ already has the consept of Specialist "slots" that can incresse with new buildings. Imperialism has a general "Infastructure" that get increesed to add more workers. It seems the best compromise is a linear sequence of building upgrades so for example SmallFactory (1 Enginner), MediumFactory (2), LargeFactory (3). I was planning a mod for Building upgrading anyway so this dosn't look like a big hurdle.

 

[Padmewan]

Thanks for all the ideas everyone, let's keep it going. Unfortunately I haven't had the time to even think about coding any of this (except thinking about a worldwide market, but not looking at code yet).

Also it seems like making a market trading structure would be easier...

I agree, so this is something I'm going to start looking into as soon as I root out all the bugs from my mod!

Question: If a unit is produced by an improvement or wonder, can it be converted into shields?

Yes, basically that is what a Great Engineer does. However, the AI for trading units would be no less hard than trading abstract bonuses, and then the player would be stuck with manipulating lots of little oil barrels rolling around the countryside. Probably would get tedious. Better to turn oil into money and allow cash-rushing.

If we followed the Imperialism model their would be a sequence of 3 improvments which each generate more output so all the output variation should be in the Improvment rather then the Bonus.

Actually, this is why I suggested specialist-based bonus "upgrades." The raw stuff still comes from the fields, while refinement goes on in cities. Actually makes sense!

Fortunatly I just finished a little mod that allows improvments to require another improvment, in essence creating an upgrade chain.

Very convenient... I was going to start looking into this myself as a workaround for the AI's self-crippling improvement decisions. Right now I am jerry-rigging it so that Improvement A creates Feature B which enables Improvement C. This is because the AI refuses to build Improvement A when it sees Improvement C "around the bend" because Improvement C is better, even though if it doesn't build Improvement A, it won't survive to Improvement C. Anyway, in your mod, does the AI "know" about this prereq and properly plan for it?

I see Padmewan refer to "Yields" for the commodities/bonuses, I would hope his is not planning to actualy add all the games resorces (Copper, Iron ect) as types of Yield (Food, Hammer, Commerce).

No, I meant that to simplify the economic model down to a managable 3 possible "raw" units, I was thinking of dumping bonuses altogether for the time being. If you look at my proposal, from these 3 raw resources you can derive 3 semi-refined resources and then another 3+ finished goods -- enough to create a very naive market (which is my starting point after all).

I was trying to think of a way to preserve Civ's core game mechanism -- city-based infrastructure and yield-gathering -- within a more sophisticated economic model.

Your ideas for Specialist based convertion of Resorces sounds interesting, it should be very simple to add these data members to Specialists and have them add or remove from the Empires pool. The next issue that should be adressed is that of Capacity which was vital to Imperialism. Civ already has the consept of Specialist "slots" that can incresse with new buildings. Imperialism has a general "Infastructure" that get increesed to add more workers. It seems the best compromise is a linear sequence of building upgrades so for example SmallFactory (1 Enginner), MediumFactory (2), LargeFactory (3). I was planning a mod for Building upgrading anyway so this dosn't look like a big hurdle.

Yes, quite right. No need to upgrade, either, except to keep the UI from getting cluttered. Food plant 1 would enable 1 specialist; Food Plant 2 would enable another 1 (for 2 total); Food plane 4 would enable 2 more (for 4 total), etc... sure, you can knock out the previous building, but why bother? Also, that would be disasterous if you lose the city and one of the buildings is destroyed.

For the specialist XML, having something like the following would be ideal:

<BonusTypeStructs>
	<BOnusStruct>
		<BonusType>BONUS_STEEL</BonusType>
		<iBonus>1</iBonus>
	</BOnusStruct>
	<BOnusStruct>
		<BonusType>BONUS_COAL</BonusType>
		<iBonus>-1</iBonus>
	</BOnusStruct>
	<BOnusStruct>
		<BonusType>BONUS_IRON</BonusType>
		<iBonus>-1</iBonus>
	</BOnusStruct>
</BonusTypeStructs>

 

[chef pablo]

I had posted this a while ago ive added ideas and rethought some, but this is my idea in essance.
1. trade everything,food,resorces,weapons,raw goods ,maufactured goods,techs,workers(slaves)
2. different production system,useing workers ie. population or beast of burden ie,horses and cattle, in your city center for raw production capacity and material ie. resorces, neccesary for that item.
3. every tile having resorce, some of these tiles would be simple,ie.forest having wood resorce,hills having stone etc. others more paticular such as gold ,oil,iron,etc.
4. resorce veins,this could be represented by shields,same as production and food shields in civ2 and 3.
5. All production items would require more than just a connection to a resorce,rather x amount of that resorce.
6 growing resorces,should be able to grow "living" resorces ie.horses,wheat,cattle,corn etc.growing these resorces would require technology advances to grow in extreme northern and southern latitudes,would also require new tiles, such as cold weather plains,temprate grasslands,etc.
7. A tiered road and port system allowing a limit on the amount of resorces to move through your empire,each level of tier allowing more resorces to be used or traded by a city.
8. improvments that would turn raw resorces into finished resorces ie.weapons factory,tank factory,textile mills,breweries etc. these improvements should have a significant maintanance applied to them to balance the benefit.That benefit being more commerce and happiness for finished product than raw. Some units and improvements would require finished product to build.
9. resorce neccesary techs,to create minor civs.
10. resorces having a set amount would require x amount of population and or x amount of beast of burden to access. multiple improvements on the resorce would lessen the amount of required population by x%
11. roads and ports would have a maintanance cost applied to limt the spread of road networks.This would help in the concept of supply on the battle field.
12. 3 types of cities
A. the basic civ style city responsible for growth,science,production and culture.
B. collonies responsible for resorce collection outside of cultural borders.
c. millitary cities ,responsible for the production and training of offensive units,ie. army bases, naval ports, air bases.These would collect finished materials and population % (or shields in my idea) to produce multiple units per turn proveded enough resorces are available.
13. All resorces and excess population would go into a general slush fund ,such as gold does now,and be imported or exported to be used by cities depending on what level trade network connects them to other cities.
14. city improvements to multiply amounts of resorces,such as a refinery would increase the amount of oil being produced in a citie by X%

if this is at all intesting below is a more detailed discription.

resorces-this should be a simlpe shield set up tiles would read 10 shields ,20 shields ,30 shields all variable but in incraments of ten to keep it simple, these are raw goods,oil ,grain,silk,etc.. and finshed goods ,food, armor,ammo,cloth etc..there are 3 basic types of these resorce/shields.
1-growth.should include high capacity grain ex-wheat.low copacity grain. ex-corn .high cappacity meat, ex-cows ,wild meats-game,low capacity fish-exe-crab,medium capacity fish exe-shellfish,domesticated fish exe-fish
2production-should be broken down into 3 catagorys-building material,ie clay,stone,hard wood,steel and aluminium.building capacity,this should be population shields and beast of burden shields.ie horses and cow.supply shields,food ,iron,oil,coal and uranium.
3luxurie this is the simplest of all.
how to collect these resorces is this,everything should be in shield form including population, say 10 shields for every population ,these shields along with beast of burden shields carry out the grunt work for the civ,building improvements, collecting resorces, building , supplieing millitary and so on .In collecting of resorces every resorce shield should require a population shield or beast of burden to collect it ,this could be an automatic thing in much the same way it is now,but the shields are neccesary( i'll explain down the road). To increase the amoant of a resorce that is being collected you should have improvements that you can continue to add to each improvemaent adding a 10% increase in collection.ex-A tile outside of city A has 10 shields of iron .you would have to allocate 10 population shields to harvest all 10 shileds ,now you add a mine .the amount of required population shields to collect the iron decrease to 9 .add another mine and it decreases again to 8 and so on.of course to make it ballanced your going to have to have a maintanance cost on every improvement,thats the job of cottages and towns.

to move the resorces the road network and trade needs to change.first i think that you should have more than just a road that connects to be able to collect that resorce,there should be stages of road ,each increasing the amount of resorce that can be moved.back to city A: your collecting 10 shields of iron from your iron tile and the city is connected by a levl 1 road (each level should be able to move 10 shields per turn)city A also has 2 other iron tiles ,each with 10 shields .they are also connected to the city with a level one road. now you have 30 iron shields in city A.to move these shields in total to your capitol would require a level 3 ( for 30 shields) road.obviosly to be able to trade with other nations, is going to require building up of a road network or trade network..to handle trade on coastal cities, ports should handle this and should be treated as the same as roads .each port you build in a city increases your export/import capacity by 10,there is a point i want to make about supply on this but later.
how to use the resorces-first of all tiles that dont have resorces should have 3 basic shields :clay for grassland and plains, hard woods for forest/jungle and stone for hills .All improvements should require a raw good and a prodution amount (raw goods would be building matreial shields and production would be population shields)ex. a foundry should require 5 stone shields or 5 hard wood shields and 15 production shields. outside of building basic millitary,science,and gold, all improvemnts should be for increasing the capacity of shields.ex.city A has 30 iron in the city ,build a foundry and now you icrease your capacity by 50% ,now CityA is producing 45 shields of iron.
back to building the foundry,you have 3 population in your city(30 shields)cityB is collecting 20 stone and is connected to the capitol by level 2 road. that means you have accass to 20 stone in city A(every resorce should use the road indapently ,all resorces go into a general slush fund and roads are the limits on how much a city can import/ export)each iron tile has 3 mines on it (keep in mind that every improvement decreases your population needs by 10%) which would only require 7 of the 10 population shields to collect the resorce ,meaning there are 3 population shields left over on each tile .those shields go back to the city and become your production shields or hammers as we know them in civ 4,meaning that the 9 production shields(3 from each mine) will take 2 turns to build the foundry that requires 15 shields ,with 3 shields left over for the next turn.
for units this should require x amount of population shields and x amount of building material shields. Most units should have a supply shiled attached to them and used every turn ex. legions should have a food shield that they need to be supplied with that is automaticly taken out of the slush at the begining of the turn,rather than stopping the unit if supply is cut it should have collateral damage applied to it every turn. some units having higher % of collateral than others.units that run on fuel should have the highest% ,while foot units the lowest.the amount that that can be supplied depends on the road the unit it is traveling on ,a level 1 road can supply up to 10 shields,because units that require fuel along with food will require more supply shields ,you wont be able to move large amounts of armor in enemy terratory unless thier trade network is built up .as for navy ,your ports should determine when your navy is out of supply ,this should aslo work for trade,each port level should grant one tile of supply . in other words a level 3 port would mean that your gally can move 3 tiles out from the city before it begins to recieve collateral damage .as for trade it should be 3 tiles for every level of the port.this is the base level and as techs increase the amaont of tiles for port level would increase
in general, grasslands ,plains and hills should have 1 food shield respectavly,farms and techs would increase this of course but for the most part they are low yeild. flood plains would have 2 shields,untill cultivation .This tech would allow the first civ and only the first to see the wheat resorce, once you begin to farm wheat you can use a wheat shield to grow new fields ex. civA researches cultivation and has a wheat icon pop up in one of thiere tiles ,with a shield of ten,they place ten pop shields to harvest. ten shields of wheat go to the city,they take one shield of wheat and place it on a empty flood plain tile and another wheat icon pops up in that tile ,this should be ten shields no matter what .that civ can also trades the wheat shield to other civs and the wheat shield should also act like religion in that it would naturally grow to their civs along trade routes,now to grow beasts of burden would require grain shields,if you discover domestication and you can grow wheat ,you should be able to take a horse shield and a wheat shield to create new horse resorces in an empty tile
live stock shields should also break down like this ;horse shields should be used for millitary,and production.cows should break down to food and production. you should be able to "grow"cows and horses in any terrain.pigs are only for food,sheep are for luxery and food. pigs can grow only in plains and grassland ,sheep in hill tiles.
corn,rice and wheat would have also have limmits on where they can be grown.

as i said all improvements outside of science and gold are for improving your collection amount or turning raw goods into finished product.
In building of units,simple defensives units should be able to build inside your city but offensive units should require something eles,military bases either army,navy or airforse. these should function similer to cities but you can only build units in them.resorces neccesary for the building of units should be allocated here,in your cities you should be building the capacity for millitary might but not the millitary. this would not include ancient times but i think once you get to the bronze age it should come into play.to make a legion would require a weapons factory improvement. in city A this factory takes x amount of iron shields and turns that into x amount of weapons ,these shields go into a slush fund that incompases your intire empire, and when you go to your army base it gives you options to build units depending on what shields you have available in the fund .these shields can be traded to other civs.ie the iran contra affair.
I ralize this is kind of a book but none the less here you go.

 

[Maniac]

Adding Maniacs subjested tags to Tech, Civic, Specialist and Unit sounds doable but Bonus, Feature and Improvment would be trickier. If we followed the Imperialism model their would be a sequence of 3 improvments which each generate more output so all the output variation should be in the Improvment rather then the Bonus. Fortunatly I just finished a little mod that allows improvments to require another improvment, in essence creating an upgrade chain. The normal game seems to take 1 unit of Bonus per plot as a given so it will be nessary to over-ride that if something else is specified in the improvment. I dont see why Features should be able to provide Bonuses as the current system works through Improvments, perhaps you were thinking of getting lumber from the forest Feature? If so I recomed a new Lumber Bonus and the lumbermill improvment activating it so as to keep things consistent and minimize nessary changes.

That list was made under the principle "More modding options is always better", but indeed as you say about everything could be done with these tags in Civ4ImprovementInfos and Civ4SpecialistInfos.
You'd be my hero if you could make this possible.

 

[The Dopelganger]

What I think is realy funny is that this sounds a lot like Chef pablo's posts. I read this web link he put on another post about growing resources and it's totaly inspiring! EVERYBODY, LOOK IT UP!!!

http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/index.html

It's about a book turnes into a short series, but it basicly explains theories of how civilization began and why europe became a super power!

 

[scottland]

I would be interested in working on an economy mod, if there' still interest in making one. I was thinking more along the resource stockpiles idea posted on the previous page, but I think each city needs its own stockpile so that trade routes between cities remain important.

Have been playing around with the SDK and >3 resources and city stockpiles seem to work, not sure how much performance impact late in the game they'll have but it shouldn't be that much.

 

[chef pablo]

impearlism=crack, thanx guys more reasons for my wife to yell at me.
the model that i put above seems more of a impearlism style model than civ.
If you make resorces the neccesarry building blocks for everything,include population as the "engine"behind production,you have the impearlism model.
Like the game impearlism every improvement should have a material cost associated with it. this material cost determins if you can build the improvement or not (if you have enough material you can build it )production value ie.population determin how long it will take to build it.
this resorce driven model clearly needs to happen on a national ,international level and infistructure determins how much access indivisual cities have,this was why I suggested road and port levels to detrmin this access.You shouldnt have to move resorces around to build items ,this is far to much micro managment ,my thinking is build an infistrucure that naturally moves the material around for you ,and build the infistrucure in cities that 1 allows you to have access to material and the enhancement of that material 2 to build improvemrnts that are very goal spacific for a city,ie. education cities,production cities,trade cities,and growth cities.By restricting movement of resorces in levels of road and port infistrucure and the addition of a general slush for all resorces, we create the speacialized cities and a larger scope of commerce and trade.
Trade should have a range,only being able to move a certain amount of resorces over a certain amount of tiles before it has to move to a trade spacific improvement such as a market or port within a city.this range would improve as technology advances but should be kept a small range in the beggining.This would allow building of trade spacific cities and key to a good trade/commerce model.
If trade is limited by infistructure,than commerce goes along with it ,by the limiting how far trade can happen it becomes neccesary to make a general slush for resorces in much the same as it is done on the national level,it will be on th international level.It will be neccesarry to create an open market that civs sell and buy resorces from.roads and ports allow the access of these resorces making it neccesarry that trade would have to involve any civs geographicly between 2 civs trading.Again this is infistructure that creates this movement of resorces and would be an automatic movement rather than micro management.In true form large port facilities and markets purchase all goods available to them and resell on the open market ,some goods imported and exported in the same port at a profit.This is handled in the private sector,not by the goverment,the goverments role in this is the building of infistructure to handle the trade.
In game play you would have resorces moving through your civ that you dont use, those resorces should have a commerce attached to them perhaps one gold for every resorce that passes through a port or market in your civ( all resorces should have free range within a civ ).This would mean that the original cost that is set would be higher by the time that it gets to its destination ,the further from the sorce of the resorce the more expensive it is .the civ that the resorce originated from would not profit entirely from the resorce ,it would get its selling price that it set, once its purchased but every port and market that handled this good would get one gold for every resorce.The ending price would depend on how many ports and markets it passed through.
By creating open markets to handle trade and making it neccesary for other civs to handle the movement of some of this trade,we create some very interesting options for stratagy. Embargoes and blockaids become very powerfull tools .Embargo would mean that you could create a break in a trade link,if this is the bulk of commerce (which i think it should be)than it becomes a way to cripple a civ without even firing a shot.Embargo against a civ would not allow any goods originating from that civ to pass through your ports or markets.
blockades would block all goods from entering a civ,and because the neccesary for levels of ports to access the trade network ie. trade cities ,blockade would be a viable stratagy.