dunkleosteus
Roman Pleb
This is the amalgamation of a number of ideas I've been toying with for a while. I'm a software developer by profession, but I've never worked on a Civ 6 mod before. I fully want (I've started looking into developing the simplest aspects of this mod concept. Openly accepting anyone that wants to work on this with me) to work to make this mod a reality, at least for my own peace of mind, but I hope there are others out there that would appreciate playing this as well. If there are any interested in working with me or that have any experience modding Civ games, that would be much appreciated.
This Overhaul aims to tackle a number of aspects of the game: economy, tile yield, amenities, and more. Because of the scope, I may not have all my ideas organized and so I might edit this post to consolidate and reorganize my thoughts to better present them.
We'll start with Economy. In Civ 6, (and previous Civilization games) economy is loosely modeled. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it's not the only way that it could be done and I'm interested in exploring how a deeper economic system would function in a game like Civ. Civ 6 changed a number of things about trade, specifically how gold is generated for each party (namely that usually no gold is generated for the receiving city), that roads are formed by land trade routes and that land and sea trade routes are done with the same unit.
However, Civ 6 has an entirely independent form of economy in diplomatic trading: you may offer to exchange gold or gold per turn for resources and other items. My economic plan largely works to combine these features, and to provide a reasonable incentive for trade beyond just getting more gold. Gold actually becomes incredibly more important throughout this mod. It's already said that Gold is King in Civ 6, but this mod will make this fact even more apparent.
I'll note however that diplomatic trade will still exist; especially for negotiating peace or for trading in non-commodity goods like great works. For the most part though, trade will operate with trade units. This makes trade supreme above all else: a strong economy is the difference between success and failure.
I'll quickly review: as Civ 6 stands, trade routes are built in cities and sent to your own cities or foreign cities to generate gold, food, production, science, culture, or faith in many different combinations. Rather than this, I aim to focus on specifically WHAT is being traded and for how much.
Resources of all kinds become much more important with these changes for keeping your city running efficiently. Of note is that I intend that luxuries should not be limited to only 4 cities. In fact, your luxuries may apply to as many of your cities as possible, however you will need an extra copy for every additional 4 cities.
There are different kinds of amenities. Amenities come in levels, with the most basic version being level 1. As your city grows and amenity demands increase, they will require more and more amenities and higher level amenities. Level 1 amenities are most basic luxuries: jade, sugar, salt, cocoa, etc. In the early game, these luxuries are the bread and butter of your civilization and economy.
Back to trade; I've talked about combining trade routes with resource trade. This is done with a new "Economic" screen. It's a panel that functions somewhat like a global market. For each resource (including many bonus resources, but I'll expand on this later) there is information on how it is being traded. A table displays the total number of resources offered for sale, the total number requested for purchase and an indicator for any discrepancies between those numbers. There is also a market value displayed, if available. The market value is either the highest price any civ is currently buying the resource for or the lowest price anyone is selling it for, whichever is lower.
If you are looking to buy a resource using this system, you scroll to the resource in the chart (or use a search box to locate it) and check how many are available. It's possible that no one is currently offering to sell the resource, but this is okay. Let's assume that someone is offering to sell the resource though. You'd check the price and then could click to expand the information for that resource. The expanded information would show you which civ was offering to sell the resource and which trade network that resource is on.
Trade Networks are similar to how they functioned in Civ 5, with a slight change. A civilization can have multiple trade networks among its cities. When two cities are connected by an unbroken (unpillaged) road, they are in the same trade network. The networks are named after the city that generates the most gold in the network, or the capital if the capital is in the network. When two cities are on different continents, they are only part of the same network if there is an active sea trade route between them. Trade networks are not international, they only contain cities you own. All cities in the same trade network can access the resources of every other city in the trade network.
Assuming you can access at least one city in the correct trade network of the foreign civ, you can select that you wish to purchase your desired resource in the trade network. By default, you offer to buy the resource at the asking price. Selecting your desire to purchase does not complete the deal however: you need to send a trade route from the city in your trade network to the foreign trade network that contains the resource you want. This automatically completes the trade and gives you access to the resource at the cost of gold.
Why would this fuel an economy? This may be a question you have, because trading resources is at best a small fraction of the gold that is generated in Civ 6. This is true; but that's why amenities function differently. Currently, demand for amenities increases with population and some other factors (like war weariness). In this system, amenities function differently. Demand for amenities increases with the wealth of your cities: the more spending money that your citizens have, the more they desire things to spend that money on. Wealth is calculated as the gross income of the city divided by the population for an average*.
[* I'm toying with ideas that may go into more depth with this, to model different levels of wealth in your cities, but the idea is currently incomplete. I'll provide a brief overview of what the expanded version would be: I want a system that is accurate but not tediously complex. To that end, I imagine having certain demographic information for your city. Each type of workable tile would have an "employment profile" which just refers to the types of jobs that it creates. Farmland for example would be mostly low-level income with a small amount of middle-level and then some high-level. This basically represents the peasant-landowner-lord system of a feudal economy. There might also be education information related to different types of facilities in your city or nearby campuses. While certain tiles may have similar employment profiles, the education requirements might be very different. Factories for example might require higher education than farms, or might benefit from more educated citizens. The different ratios of wealth in the city contribute to how the economy of the city functions: if you have a largely agrarian population, there is little excess wealth and low economic development. If you work a lot of citizens in factories or other jobs, you can increase the earning level and promote economic growth]
As I mentioned above, most luxury resources are level 1 amenities. Level 2 amenities are manufactured from other resources, or provided by some other source, for example by administration changes that ease or increase quality of life. Luxuries are manufactured in industrial districts, a function that largely alters the way that these districts are used. Initially, this is done on a relatively small scale. As your cities grow and increase in wealth, demand for level 2 amenities increases to the point that you must begin to manufacture your own amenities from existing ones.
Manufactured amenities might be something like the Jeans luxury that are currently only available from Levi Strauss. Many would appear earlier in the game however; level 2 amenities might be fur hats (made from a furs luxury), fine suits or dresses (made from a silk luxury), but could also involve multiple resource requirements such as cosmetics (which are currently a luxury only attainable via a great person, but might require both pigments and olive oil, which are two resources/luxuries that could be added). Manufacturing new luxuries requires at least a workshop, and will create 1 copy of the luxury. The more resource requirements for manufacturing a luxury, the greater the effect it has when applied to a city. This helps balance the value for multi-resource luxuries like cosmetics compared to single-resource luxuries like fur hats.
Money is not only generated from foreign trade however. Each luxury can be applied to four cities, as I've mentioned. For each of your cities that use the luxury, you earn gold. This is not free money however. The city that creates the luxury earns [or rather 1/4 of] the full current global asking price of that luxury while your city that uses the luxury pays 3/4 of that value. If the current value of the luxury was 8 gold globally and the city that manufactured the luxury did not use one of the copies, it could be distributed to your other cities in 4 parts. The city that created the luxury would earn +8 gold and your other 4 cities would pay 3/4 of 2 gold each, or 6 gold between them. This would give you a net profit of 2 gold.
Foreign trade also generates excess gold: when you sell luxuries or resources, you always get 20% more gold than the price at which you are selling, as an economic gain. This ensures that value is always generated through trade.
Middle-man trade: there are instances where supply and demand for resources are not met. It is possible that one civ that wants to buy a resource may either not be in contact with or not have trade access to another civ that is offering to sell a resource. Assuming you have access to both civs, you can offer to work as a go-between for the two civs. If each accepts, you take a small portion of the profits in order to complete the trade between the two civs. This makes canal cities very powerful again.
Bargaining: In certain situations, you can ask for up to 10% more or less for a resource than the current asking price, depending on whether demand or supply is significantly higher than the other. It should be noted that this is NOT affected by foreign opinion; there will be an end to stupid trade offers because of low opinion of you.
Embargoes: Civs that dislike you can issue embargoes against you. This prevents your traders from buying resources from any of their cities. This will be largely the penalty that warmongering will get you in place of ridiculously unbalanced trade offers.
It is important to note that I believe that because cities are individually purchasing and using these luxuries, the value of luxuries should be much higher than currently. Additionally, the gold that you earn from cities should be only in the form of taxes, not the actual gold output of the city. Cities will generate much, much more gold than you earn as the government [from them], but more on that later. It does mean though that if you decide to purchase resources without enough cities to buy them, you take that hit out of pocket. So if you only have three cities and you purchase a luxury, the cities will buy 1/4 of the luxury each but the last quarter would be out of the government treasury until you had a fourth city to buy it off you.
Later in the game, your cities start demanding level 3 luxuries. These are much more complicated than earlier luxuries and have more requirements to create. Level 3 luxuries can only be generated in factories. When an industrial zone upgrades from a workshop to a factory, it automatically produces at least 2 copies of its luxury, if the resources are available (so while one workshop can convert one level-1 furs into a single level-2 fur hats, a single factory can convert 2 copies of furs into 2 fur hats). By making citizens work in factories, you can increase the number of copies of luxuries that you are able to produce.
Level 3 amenities often have a number of requirements, including some interstitial requirements, which are commodities that don't provide any bonuses on their own but are required in manufacturing resources. Here are some examples of level 3 luxuries/amenities: cars/automobiles (this is a big one; you'd need iron, rubber which would be a new resource, and aluminum. Additionally, for every 2 cities that benefit from an automobile resource, you'd need to consume 1 copy of oil) this seems quite expensive, but in addition to providing a level 3 amenity, any city that has an automobile resource gets a % boost to all yields. Another level 3 amenity might be televisions (requires electronics and plastic, which is a new interstitial resource) televisions give a boost to culture if there is a broadcast tower within 6 tiles of the city. Plastics and electronics are not amenities, but would be required in a number of level-3 amenities and resources. Plastic can be manufactured from oil in a factory, and electronics from copper and silicon (a new late-game bonus resource).
There are other resources that you can make that are not amenities. Some would be simply interstitial, like plastic but others might be economically useful, such as industrial equipment, or basic commodities that improve the local economy.
Gold
No economic system is complete without money[citation needed]. In this system, each civ sort of has its own currency. At the start of the game, currencies are valued evenly at par with each other. Currencies diverge in value as each civ independently generates inflation. Inflation is a percentage devaluation of your currency that is compounded each turn. When you are in debt, you generate more inflation each turn. Later, some buildings can be used to decrease inflation over time (such as banks) and with enough gold, you can buy it down as well. Other than debt, a major source of inflation are mints. Mints are a gold mine for money (almost literally). At the beginning of the game, money will often be incredibly tight and mints, which are available with currency, are a very easy way to get a lot of money quickly. Mints consume either gold (which currently only exists in a scenario), silver or copper to generate money directly. The amount is still TBD, but for example let's say that using gold will generate +15 gold/turn and +0.3% inflation, silver will generate +10 gold/turn and +0.2% inflation and copper will generate +5 gold/turn and +0.1% inflation. Minting new coins quickly fills the government coffers but slightly devalues the currency as the market saturates.
As your currency or other currencies decrease in value, trade deals are adjusted. When viewing the economic trade screen, values of each resource are adjusted for your currency. When purchasing in cities, the values are also adjusted.
Gold is King. I said this earlier and I meant it. In this system, production is downplayed quite significantly. Cities are not toys which the ruler can do with as they please, they are a complex entity which the ruler is in charge of. Production is definitely an important quantity, but really only represents the maximum possible productivity of the city, not the amount available at any given moment. Production scales largely with population size, but there are heavy modifiers depending on what the city is producing. In order to make a city produce something for the government, the government has to buy it from the city. This does not result in instant production of the unit or building; but production times will be vastly reduced, down to usually 1-5 turns at most. The difference is that cities will usually not be producing anything unless the government can afford it. When you commission a city to begin work on a project, the money you spend actually goes to the city. While the city is commencing production, the gold is divided up as income for the city, stimulating the economy and promoting growth.
Different production costs. Different types of units or buildings have drastically different production costs and build times. You can get bonuses to production of different buildings and units which not only decrease the number of turns it takes to build but decreases the cost to commission them as well (consider that building a skyscraper without a crane would be much more expensive than with one). When certain improvements are worked, cities receive a production bonus. Stone quarries provide large bonuses to building production but none to unit production. Lumbermills provide bonuses to pre-industrial buildings and pre-industrial naval units. Iron mines provide bonuses to industrial and later buildings, etc. For unit production, the population of the city and any military structures greatly facilitate production (more population = more available citizens to recruit).
You may have noticed that it seems that industrial zones are used for making luxuries and providing amenities rather than production. This can be true at times, but they can also be re-purposed for production if needed (this stops them manufacturing any luxuries or resources however). Some types of units may actually require this to be done for the unit to be produced in any reasonable time.
With greater trade, many units will also require more resources to produce.
Note on resource consumption: In Civ 5, each unit consumed a resource for the duration of its existence. In Civ 6, access to one or two resources provide unlimited ability to manufacture units. I propose a compromise between these systems: resources are consumed while units are being created and released afterwords. This means you are limited by how many units you can create concurrently by the number of resources you have.
Units like battleships, ironclads and destroyers will all require iron for production. Many planes might require plastics, aluminum and electronics in their manufacture. Re-purposing a factory for production of these units may be almost required.
Tile Yield changes. Due to changes in how resources are consumed and where citizens need to work, tile yields are in need of improvements. One major change which I think is useful is that irrigation should give farms adjacent to freshwater +1 food (except on flood plains, which are naturally irrigated). This will not only make farms much stronger in the early game, it will give some cities a needed growth boost.
Industrialization: The industrial revolution brought many major economic and social changes to the world, and I believe Civ 6 understates this. Industrialization should have many more requirements than it currently does and should have many very powerful bonuses. Farms, pastures, plantations and fishing boats all get +1 food. Camps and plantations get +1 gold. Mines get +1 production. Improved bonus and strategic resources provide an extra copy of their resources. This helps fuel the growth needed in the industrial era: as many more cities get richer, demand for resources grows ever higher and more and more luxuries and commodities will need to be manufactured.
The industrial era also triggers a number of events however. When improvements are industrialized and improve their yields, they put a larger strain on the environment. After the industrial era is reached, the game begins counting the number of certain tiles with industrial improvements on them. If the percentage of fish tiles that are improved industrially reaches or exceeds 75% (of the total number of fish tiles on the map), an event triggers relating to overfishing. At this point, a timer begins counting down a number of turns (for example 30 on standard speed). Civs that are advanced enough will be notified of this event and in their governments, will have the option to criminalize industrial fishing. This reverts all fishing improvements to their pre-industrial yields (-1 food compared to industrial fishing boats). This does not solve the problem however; non-industrial fishing boats subtract 1 from the count of industrialized fishing, but also subtract -0.5 from the total number of fish tiles counted. For example if the map has 40 fish tiles and 30 are industrialized, de-industrializing 6 fish tiles would result in 24/37 industrialized fish tiles, or around 65% rather than 24/40, which would be 60%. If more than 50% of the fish tiles are industrialized when the timer runs out, a random improved fish tile is removed from the map every couple turns until the % drops below 50. There is no difference between industrialized and non-industrialized fish tiles for this purpose, so if a de-industrialized fish tile is removed, the total might go from 24/37 to 24/37.5. If you actually remove the fishing improvement completely, it will count as a full removal. Removing 6 fish improvements would change the total from 30/40 to 24/40.
Similar events trigger for ivory and whales, however for each the option to criminalize their use removes their status as luxuries. Instead, whales and ivory would become bonus resources improved for whale watching and safaris, which provide a small amount of gold and tourism but no food or amenities.
Edit 1: This topic might be controversial (still unsure about this, I'll play it by ear. If you have an opinion on this one, please share it), but it existed in Civ 4: slavery. I want to make it clear that I do NOT support slavery or the subjugation of any race or culture, but from a historical perspective it happened and it was economically very important from the time of Ancient Greece or Rome to the industrial revolution. My proposal is this: when trading with a civ (through the diplomacy screen) or when negotiating peace, you can trade slaves. Slaves may either be taken directly from a city or held temporarily as a resource (ie you could demand slaves in a war deal but then sell them to someone else rather than using them yourself). When slaves are taken from a city, the city's population immediately drops by 1. Slaves can be added to any city you own to instantly increase the population by 1. However, slaves are not counted towards the population total when calculating wealth per citizen, so any gold generated by them would increase the wealth of the city. However, slaves automatically generate unrest that cannot be fixed with amenities and which slowly grows over time. Towards the modern era, emancipation becomes the only viable option (as opposed to simply freeing slaves, which can be done in any era on a per-city basis). After emancipation, all slave citizens become full citizens that behave normally, and you may not trade in slaves any more. Unrest will burn away after a number of turns, but not immediately. The more slaves you have relative to regular population, the more unrest you have. It may be useful to get some cities running quickly, but if you abuse it, you may have riots or revolts that damage your cities. Also, please don't make this about racism. I just want to explore the topic from an economic and historical perspective.
Edit 2: Renewable resources. This is another idea I've thought about for a long time, and with increased demand for trade in resources, I think it may be viable. Basically, you can replant any organic resources you have access to. At the start of the game, every civ is given one type of farmable resource they can plant. At this point, every farm they make will grow that crop. This might be wheat or rice which exist currently, but may also be corn (maize), or potatoes. While wheat, rice and corn are relatively similar, potatoes are different. Unlike other crops, they can be planted in hills from the ancient era, but don't get adjacency bonuses from freshwater after irrigation. Tiles throughout the world that would currently be a wheat resource or a rice resource instead may become a "fertile soil" tile. This is an immovable attribute that improves the food yield of the tile by 1. Naturally, fertile soil tiles will have a random farmable resource growing on them when you find them. Any unit can "discover" this resource when it enters the tile. This immediately gives a small amount of food to the nearest city and permanently gives you access to that farmable resource. For example, you might start the game with wheat but discover rice soon after. Once you harvest it, you'll have the option to plant either wheat or rice from that point forward. The difference between them might be negligible, but I like the idea of food diversity giving a growth bonus to cities, so having a farm of each type of resource is better than four farms of the same type.
Plantation resources operate differently however. Unlike farmable resources, you have to have them in your territory and improve them before you gain access to them, but after that you can plant as many of them as you want. I also want plantations to require the removal of rain forest.
A similar rule applies to horses; you can make as many horse pastures as you want, as well as sheep and cattle. You can't create more copies of deer, furs, ivory or truffles however, or any sea resource.
Through the diplomatic screen, you can sell another civ a "seed" (not literally a single seed) for whichever renewable resources they don't have access to. For grain resources, this should be pretty common, but luxury resources would usually be jealously guarded. As a result, early spies can be used to steal these from other civs (the way that early European agents stole silk from china ~1200 AD).
When transplanting resources, there are certain requirements for where you can grow them. Tropical or sub-tropical resources like sugar, cotton, tea, spices, citrus, tobacco and cocoa would check the map for tundra, snow, and ice tiles if present. Based on how far north or south they intrude (and excluding any outliers), it would estimate how far from the equator they can be planted. This may mean you have to settle colony cities (a la the Caribbean) to grow certain luxuries like sugar or cotton. Some resources may check for nearby desert tiles as well, in instances where very wet conditions are necessary.
I think I've covered the majority of the items I was planning to talk about. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, I'd appreciate them. I also hope you took the time to read this post, though I know it is very long. Thanks
This Overhaul aims to tackle a number of aspects of the game: economy, tile yield, amenities, and more. Because of the scope, I may not have all my ideas organized and so I might edit this post to consolidate and reorganize my thoughts to better present them.
We'll start with Economy. In Civ 6, (and previous Civilization games) economy is loosely modeled. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it's not the only way that it could be done and I'm interested in exploring how a deeper economic system would function in a game like Civ. Civ 6 changed a number of things about trade, specifically how gold is generated for each party (namely that usually no gold is generated for the receiving city), that roads are formed by land trade routes and that land and sea trade routes are done with the same unit.
However, Civ 6 has an entirely independent form of economy in diplomatic trading: you may offer to exchange gold or gold per turn for resources and other items. My economic plan largely works to combine these features, and to provide a reasonable incentive for trade beyond just getting more gold. Gold actually becomes incredibly more important throughout this mod. It's already said that Gold is King in Civ 6, but this mod will make this fact even more apparent.
I'll note however that diplomatic trade will still exist; especially for negotiating peace or for trading in non-commodity goods like great works. For the most part though, trade will operate with trade units. This makes trade supreme above all else: a strong economy is the difference between success and failure.
I'll quickly review: as Civ 6 stands, trade routes are built in cities and sent to your own cities or foreign cities to generate gold, food, production, science, culture, or faith in many different combinations. Rather than this, I aim to focus on specifically WHAT is being traded and for how much.
Resources of all kinds become much more important with these changes for keeping your city running efficiently. Of note is that I intend that luxuries should not be limited to only 4 cities. In fact, your luxuries may apply to as many of your cities as possible, however you will need an extra copy for every additional 4 cities.
There are different kinds of amenities. Amenities come in levels, with the most basic version being level 1. As your city grows and amenity demands increase, they will require more and more amenities and higher level amenities. Level 1 amenities are most basic luxuries: jade, sugar, salt, cocoa, etc. In the early game, these luxuries are the bread and butter of your civilization and economy.
Back to trade; I've talked about combining trade routes with resource trade. This is done with a new "Economic" screen. It's a panel that functions somewhat like a global market. For each resource (including many bonus resources, but I'll expand on this later) there is information on how it is being traded. A table displays the total number of resources offered for sale, the total number requested for purchase and an indicator for any discrepancies between those numbers. There is also a market value displayed, if available. The market value is either the highest price any civ is currently buying the resource for or the lowest price anyone is selling it for, whichever is lower.
If you are looking to buy a resource using this system, you scroll to the resource in the chart (or use a search box to locate it) and check how many are available. It's possible that no one is currently offering to sell the resource, but this is okay. Let's assume that someone is offering to sell the resource though. You'd check the price and then could click to expand the information for that resource. The expanded information would show you which civ was offering to sell the resource and which trade network that resource is on.
Trade Networks are similar to how they functioned in Civ 5, with a slight change. A civilization can have multiple trade networks among its cities. When two cities are connected by an unbroken (unpillaged) road, they are in the same trade network. The networks are named after the city that generates the most gold in the network, or the capital if the capital is in the network. When two cities are on different continents, they are only part of the same network if there is an active sea trade route between them. Trade networks are not international, they only contain cities you own. All cities in the same trade network can access the resources of every other city in the trade network.
Assuming you can access at least one city in the correct trade network of the foreign civ, you can select that you wish to purchase your desired resource in the trade network. By default, you offer to buy the resource at the asking price. Selecting your desire to purchase does not complete the deal however: you need to send a trade route from the city in your trade network to the foreign trade network that contains the resource you want. This automatically completes the trade and gives you access to the resource at the cost of gold.
Why would this fuel an economy? This may be a question you have, because trading resources is at best a small fraction of the gold that is generated in Civ 6. This is true; but that's why amenities function differently. Currently, demand for amenities increases with population and some other factors (like war weariness). In this system, amenities function differently. Demand for amenities increases with the wealth of your cities: the more spending money that your citizens have, the more they desire things to spend that money on. Wealth is calculated as the gross income of the city divided by the population for an average*.
[* I'm toying with ideas that may go into more depth with this, to model different levels of wealth in your cities, but the idea is currently incomplete. I'll provide a brief overview of what the expanded version would be: I want a system that is accurate but not tediously complex. To that end, I imagine having certain demographic information for your city. Each type of workable tile would have an "employment profile" which just refers to the types of jobs that it creates. Farmland for example would be mostly low-level income with a small amount of middle-level and then some high-level. This basically represents the peasant-landowner-lord system of a feudal economy. There might also be education information related to different types of facilities in your city or nearby campuses. While certain tiles may have similar employment profiles, the education requirements might be very different. Factories for example might require higher education than farms, or might benefit from more educated citizens. The different ratios of wealth in the city contribute to how the economy of the city functions: if you have a largely agrarian population, there is little excess wealth and low economic development. If you work a lot of citizens in factories or other jobs, you can increase the earning level and promote economic growth]
As I mentioned above, most luxury resources are level 1 amenities. Level 2 amenities are manufactured from other resources, or provided by some other source, for example by administration changes that ease or increase quality of life. Luxuries are manufactured in industrial districts, a function that largely alters the way that these districts are used. Initially, this is done on a relatively small scale. As your cities grow and increase in wealth, demand for level 2 amenities increases to the point that you must begin to manufacture your own amenities from existing ones.
Manufactured amenities might be something like the Jeans luxury that are currently only available from Levi Strauss. Many would appear earlier in the game however; level 2 amenities might be fur hats (made from a furs luxury), fine suits or dresses (made from a silk luxury), but could also involve multiple resource requirements such as cosmetics (which are currently a luxury only attainable via a great person, but might require both pigments and olive oil, which are two resources/luxuries that could be added). Manufacturing new luxuries requires at least a workshop, and will create 1 copy of the luxury. The more resource requirements for manufacturing a luxury, the greater the effect it has when applied to a city. This helps balance the value for multi-resource luxuries like cosmetics compared to single-resource luxuries like fur hats.
Money is not only generated from foreign trade however. Each luxury can be applied to four cities, as I've mentioned. For each of your cities that use the luxury, you earn gold. This is not free money however. The city that creates the luxury earns [or rather 1/4 of] the full current global asking price of that luxury while your city that uses the luxury pays 3/4 of that value. If the current value of the luxury was 8 gold globally and the city that manufactured the luxury did not use one of the copies, it could be distributed to your other cities in 4 parts. The city that created the luxury would earn +8 gold and your other 4 cities would pay 3/4 of 2 gold each, or 6 gold between them. This would give you a net profit of 2 gold.
Foreign trade also generates excess gold: when you sell luxuries or resources, you always get 20% more gold than the price at which you are selling, as an economic gain. This ensures that value is always generated through trade.
Middle-man trade: there are instances where supply and demand for resources are not met. It is possible that one civ that wants to buy a resource may either not be in contact with or not have trade access to another civ that is offering to sell a resource. Assuming you have access to both civs, you can offer to work as a go-between for the two civs. If each accepts, you take a small portion of the profits in order to complete the trade between the two civs. This makes canal cities very powerful again.
Bargaining: In certain situations, you can ask for up to 10% more or less for a resource than the current asking price, depending on whether demand or supply is significantly higher than the other. It should be noted that this is NOT affected by foreign opinion; there will be an end to stupid trade offers because of low opinion of you.
Embargoes: Civs that dislike you can issue embargoes against you. This prevents your traders from buying resources from any of their cities. This will be largely the penalty that warmongering will get you in place of ridiculously unbalanced trade offers.
It is important to note that I believe that because cities are individually purchasing and using these luxuries, the value of luxuries should be much higher than currently. Additionally, the gold that you earn from cities should be only in the form of taxes, not the actual gold output of the city. Cities will generate much, much more gold than you earn as the government [from them], but more on that later. It does mean though that if you decide to purchase resources without enough cities to buy them, you take that hit out of pocket. So if you only have three cities and you purchase a luxury, the cities will buy 1/4 of the luxury each but the last quarter would be out of the government treasury until you had a fourth city to buy it off you.
Later in the game, your cities start demanding level 3 luxuries. These are much more complicated than earlier luxuries and have more requirements to create. Level 3 luxuries can only be generated in factories. When an industrial zone upgrades from a workshop to a factory, it automatically produces at least 2 copies of its luxury, if the resources are available (so while one workshop can convert one level-1 furs into a single level-2 fur hats, a single factory can convert 2 copies of furs into 2 fur hats). By making citizens work in factories, you can increase the number of copies of luxuries that you are able to produce.
Level 3 amenities often have a number of requirements, including some interstitial requirements, which are commodities that don't provide any bonuses on their own but are required in manufacturing resources. Here are some examples of level 3 luxuries/amenities: cars/automobiles (this is a big one; you'd need iron, rubber which would be a new resource, and aluminum. Additionally, for every 2 cities that benefit from an automobile resource, you'd need to consume 1 copy of oil) this seems quite expensive, but in addition to providing a level 3 amenity, any city that has an automobile resource gets a % boost to all yields. Another level 3 amenity might be televisions (requires electronics and plastic, which is a new interstitial resource) televisions give a boost to culture if there is a broadcast tower within 6 tiles of the city. Plastics and electronics are not amenities, but would be required in a number of level-3 amenities and resources. Plastic can be manufactured from oil in a factory, and electronics from copper and silicon (a new late-game bonus resource).
There are other resources that you can make that are not amenities. Some would be simply interstitial, like plastic but others might be economically useful, such as industrial equipment, or basic commodities that improve the local economy.
Gold
No economic system is complete without money[citation needed]. In this system, each civ sort of has its own currency. At the start of the game, currencies are valued evenly at par with each other. Currencies diverge in value as each civ independently generates inflation. Inflation is a percentage devaluation of your currency that is compounded each turn. When you are in debt, you generate more inflation each turn. Later, some buildings can be used to decrease inflation over time (such as banks) and with enough gold, you can buy it down as well. Other than debt, a major source of inflation are mints. Mints are a gold mine for money (almost literally). At the beginning of the game, money will often be incredibly tight and mints, which are available with currency, are a very easy way to get a lot of money quickly. Mints consume either gold (which currently only exists in a scenario), silver or copper to generate money directly. The amount is still TBD, but for example let's say that using gold will generate +15 gold/turn and +0.3% inflation, silver will generate +10 gold/turn and +0.2% inflation and copper will generate +5 gold/turn and +0.1% inflation. Minting new coins quickly fills the government coffers but slightly devalues the currency as the market saturates.
As your currency or other currencies decrease in value, trade deals are adjusted. When viewing the economic trade screen, values of each resource are adjusted for your currency. When purchasing in cities, the values are also adjusted.
Gold is King. I said this earlier and I meant it. In this system, production is downplayed quite significantly. Cities are not toys which the ruler can do with as they please, they are a complex entity which the ruler is in charge of. Production is definitely an important quantity, but really only represents the maximum possible productivity of the city, not the amount available at any given moment. Production scales largely with population size, but there are heavy modifiers depending on what the city is producing. In order to make a city produce something for the government, the government has to buy it from the city. This does not result in instant production of the unit or building; but production times will be vastly reduced, down to usually 1-5 turns at most. The difference is that cities will usually not be producing anything unless the government can afford it. When you commission a city to begin work on a project, the money you spend actually goes to the city. While the city is commencing production, the gold is divided up as income for the city, stimulating the economy and promoting growth.
Different production costs. Different types of units or buildings have drastically different production costs and build times. You can get bonuses to production of different buildings and units which not only decrease the number of turns it takes to build but decreases the cost to commission them as well (consider that building a skyscraper without a crane would be much more expensive than with one). When certain improvements are worked, cities receive a production bonus. Stone quarries provide large bonuses to building production but none to unit production. Lumbermills provide bonuses to pre-industrial buildings and pre-industrial naval units. Iron mines provide bonuses to industrial and later buildings, etc. For unit production, the population of the city and any military structures greatly facilitate production (more population = more available citizens to recruit).
You may have noticed that it seems that industrial zones are used for making luxuries and providing amenities rather than production. This can be true at times, but they can also be re-purposed for production if needed (this stops them manufacturing any luxuries or resources however). Some types of units may actually require this to be done for the unit to be produced in any reasonable time.
With greater trade, many units will also require more resources to produce.
Note on resource consumption: In Civ 5, each unit consumed a resource for the duration of its existence. In Civ 6, access to one or two resources provide unlimited ability to manufacture units. I propose a compromise between these systems: resources are consumed while units are being created and released afterwords. This means you are limited by how many units you can create concurrently by the number of resources you have.
Units like battleships, ironclads and destroyers will all require iron for production. Many planes might require plastics, aluminum and electronics in their manufacture. Re-purposing a factory for production of these units may be almost required.
Tile Yield changes. Due to changes in how resources are consumed and where citizens need to work, tile yields are in need of improvements. One major change which I think is useful is that irrigation should give farms adjacent to freshwater +1 food (except on flood plains, which are naturally irrigated). This will not only make farms much stronger in the early game, it will give some cities a needed growth boost.
Industrialization: The industrial revolution brought many major economic and social changes to the world, and I believe Civ 6 understates this. Industrialization should have many more requirements than it currently does and should have many very powerful bonuses. Farms, pastures, plantations and fishing boats all get +1 food. Camps and plantations get +1 gold. Mines get +1 production. Improved bonus and strategic resources provide an extra copy of their resources. This helps fuel the growth needed in the industrial era: as many more cities get richer, demand for resources grows ever higher and more and more luxuries and commodities will need to be manufactured.
The industrial era also triggers a number of events however. When improvements are industrialized and improve their yields, they put a larger strain on the environment. After the industrial era is reached, the game begins counting the number of certain tiles with industrial improvements on them. If the percentage of fish tiles that are improved industrially reaches or exceeds 75% (of the total number of fish tiles on the map), an event triggers relating to overfishing. At this point, a timer begins counting down a number of turns (for example 30 on standard speed). Civs that are advanced enough will be notified of this event and in their governments, will have the option to criminalize industrial fishing. This reverts all fishing improvements to their pre-industrial yields (-1 food compared to industrial fishing boats). This does not solve the problem however; non-industrial fishing boats subtract 1 from the count of industrialized fishing, but also subtract -0.5 from the total number of fish tiles counted. For example if the map has 40 fish tiles and 30 are industrialized, de-industrializing 6 fish tiles would result in 24/37 industrialized fish tiles, or around 65% rather than 24/40, which would be 60%. If more than 50% of the fish tiles are industrialized when the timer runs out, a random improved fish tile is removed from the map every couple turns until the % drops below 50. There is no difference between industrialized and non-industrialized fish tiles for this purpose, so if a de-industrialized fish tile is removed, the total might go from 24/37 to 24/37.5. If you actually remove the fishing improvement completely, it will count as a full removal. Removing 6 fish improvements would change the total from 30/40 to 24/40.
Similar events trigger for ivory and whales, however for each the option to criminalize their use removes their status as luxuries. Instead, whales and ivory would become bonus resources improved for whale watching and safaris, which provide a small amount of gold and tourism but no food or amenities.
Edit 1: This topic might be controversial (still unsure about this, I'll play it by ear. If you have an opinion on this one, please share it), but it existed in Civ 4: slavery. I want to make it clear that I do NOT support slavery or the subjugation of any race or culture, but from a historical perspective it happened and it was economically very important from the time of Ancient Greece or Rome to the industrial revolution. My proposal is this: when trading with a civ (through the diplomacy screen) or when negotiating peace, you can trade slaves. Slaves may either be taken directly from a city or held temporarily as a resource (ie you could demand slaves in a war deal but then sell them to someone else rather than using them yourself). When slaves are taken from a city, the city's population immediately drops by 1. Slaves can be added to any city you own to instantly increase the population by 1. However, slaves are not counted towards the population total when calculating wealth per citizen, so any gold generated by them would increase the wealth of the city. However, slaves automatically generate unrest that cannot be fixed with amenities and which slowly grows over time. Towards the modern era, emancipation becomes the only viable option (as opposed to simply freeing slaves, which can be done in any era on a per-city basis). After emancipation, all slave citizens become full citizens that behave normally, and you may not trade in slaves any more. Unrest will burn away after a number of turns, but not immediately. The more slaves you have relative to regular population, the more unrest you have. It may be useful to get some cities running quickly, but if you abuse it, you may have riots or revolts that damage your cities. Also, please don't make this about racism. I just want to explore the topic from an economic and historical perspective.
Edit 2: Renewable resources. This is another idea I've thought about for a long time, and with increased demand for trade in resources, I think it may be viable. Basically, you can replant any organic resources you have access to. At the start of the game, every civ is given one type of farmable resource they can plant. At this point, every farm they make will grow that crop. This might be wheat or rice which exist currently, but may also be corn (maize), or potatoes. While wheat, rice and corn are relatively similar, potatoes are different. Unlike other crops, they can be planted in hills from the ancient era, but don't get adjacency bonuses from freshwater after irrigation. Tiles throughout the world that would currently be a wheat resource or a rice resource instead may become a "fertile soil" tile. This is an immovable attribute that improves the food yield of the tile by 1. Naturally, fertile soil tiles will have a random farmable resource growing on them when you find them. Any unit can "discover" this resource when it enters the tile. This immediately gives a small amount of food to the nearest city and permanently gives you access to that farmable resource. For example, you might start the game with wheat but discover rice soon after. Once you harvest it, you'll have the option to plant either wheat or rice from that point forward. The difference between them might be negligible, but I like the idea of food diversity giving a growth bonus to cities, so having a farm of each type of resource is better than four farms of the same type.
Plantation resources operate differently however. Unlike farmable resources, you have to have them in your territory and improve them before you gain access to them, but after that you can plant as many of them as you want. I also want plantations to require the removal of rain forest.
A similar rule applies to horses; you can make as many horse pastures as you want, as well as sheep and cattle. You can't create more copies of deer, furs, ivory or truffles however, or any sea resource.
Through the diplomatic screen, you can sell another civ a "seed" (not literally a single seed) for whichever renewable resources they don't have access to. For grain resources, this should be pretty common, but luxury resources would usually be jealously guarded. As a result, early spies can be used to steal these from other civs (the way that early European agents stole silk from china ~1200 AD).
When transplanting resources, there are certain requirements for where you can grow them. Tropical or sub-tropical resources like sugar, cotton, tea, spices, citrus, tobacco and cocoa would check the map for tundra, snow, and ice tiles if present. Based on how far north or south they intrude (and excluding any outliers), it would estimate how far from the equator they can be planted. This may mean you have to settle colony cities (a la the Caribbean) to grow certain luxuries like sugar or cotton. Some resources may check for nearby desert tiles as well, in instances where very wet conditions are necessary.
I think I've covered the majority of the items I was planning to talk about. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, I'd appreciate them. I also hope you took the time to read this post, though I know it is very long. Thanks
Last edited:
]
