Combined Civ Finatics Economic Model

[Meleager]

To see where this tread origionated from go here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=120809

I've seen a lot of ideas for economic models and I think that if we work together we can come up with a really good one.

We sould start by discussing the requirements of any economic model:

IMHO: The Civ Finatics Economic Model (once we figure out what it is) must:
Accurately reflect the supply and demand for rescources
Allow people to use this to their advantage
Allow small civilizations to be economic powers (i.e. territory should NOT = power, or at least not to the extent it used to)
It must be dynamic
It must be fun

Additonally the model should be simple enough to be usable.

I'm sure you have more requests for what the model must do, so put them here. After a while I will put a new post asking people for ideas on a model which does all the things we what it to do.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Well, as I said in the other thread, the problem with the current system is that the gold a tile produces has no basis in WHAT that tile produces!!! A tile which produces 4 hammers should generate more gold for its home city than one which only produces 2-UNLESS there is a specific resource on the latter tile which makes the hammers it produces more valuable.
In addition, we need an economic model which adequately simulates the historical population shift from rural to urban areas. In this regard, the citizen specialisation system of Civ2 and 3 worked reasonably well, except that there was no real incentive to make regular use of it (as every city effectively produced all it needed anyway). Thats why I suggested the idea of demography. A city with a high population can probably start converting some of that population to specialists like entertainers and civil servants-knowing that doing so will increase the 'earning power' of a city and-to an extent-the city's wealth. This will make the produce of each square still being worked more valuable, but will also heighten the cost of any goods which the need to import.
What both of my ideas are about, though, is making QUALITY a much more substantive factor than mere QUANTITY when it comes to economic strength.
Of course, culture (especially as it pertains to trade) and strategic location are 2 other key ways of breaking the 'bigger=better' trap when it comes to economics!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Meleager]

Aussie_Lurker, the idea here is to figure out the requirements of the economic system before creating the system. The requirements I got out of that were:
1) What a tile produced must have an effect on how much gold it produces
2) You would like a system which relflects the move from rural to urban living

I might add that there is no reason we should fell restricted to shields(hammers), food and gold as the rescources in the economic system. We can completely break from the current model if we want to.

 

[Belcarius]

The requirements should also take into account the fact that economies change in structure over time. Currency is a big leap up from bartering, and banking has a major effect as well.