[Feature] Income and Expenditures

[M07]

For the next version of DoaNE, you will discover a major feature that I have called "Income and Expenditures".

Every turn, you will gain or loose money.
A screen will help you to determine from where you will have income or expenditures.

Income decreases with an higher handicap and you will be able to see the sum up by clicking on the gold icon (bottom left of the screen)

See the screenshot below to see how it looks like. (By the way, if you see some spelling mistakes on the screenshot, feel free to tell me)

 

[Kvinkunx]

Please, comment on what you wish to stress out in the income/expenditure balance if you want an opinion on your math. As in eg. "I really want to limit the number of armed men walking outside of cities".

 

[M07]

Hello Kvinkunx,
Our point was mainly to limit the military troops for every player inside and outside the colonies (for the moment). It will be more logical to the separate the cost between the both cases but for a first step, it will be fine.

We have defined that every colonist inside a colony would increase the Income. This increase depends of the handicap chose by a player.

For the expenditures, we have include cost of other kind of units like agronomists, scouts (We have increase the scout cost from 50 gold/turn to 75 gold/turn), and pioneers.
Before this system, more we have those kind of units, better it was for our nation. We wished to break with this thought and force the player to take only what he needs.

To finish, the unemployed cost was important to force the player to use all of his units and not let them without job.
I hope our vision is clear enough for this topic

 

[M07]

Well done, Dazio and you have convinced me to separate the cost for military land troops inside and outside colonies.

See below the sceenshot :

 

[Kvinkunx]

Looks like a cool feature to me, mate.

I would even go as far as to tax simply any special profession just if it is outside of cities. Why tax a pioneer inside a city, working as a blacksmith? It only makes sense when he is out there building that road or farm.

It is up to consideration if it is still necessary to pay for individual construction elements like eg. 20 gp for a road tile if a pioneer would be paid per turn.

 

[M07]

Looks like a cool feature to me, mate.

Thx
`

Why tax a pioneer inside a city, working as a blacksmith?

It fact, the tax is only for the pioneer profession and not the unit pioneer. So a pioneer inside a colony will be count on the income of your nation.

It is up to consideration if it is still necessary to pay for individual construction elements like eg. 20 gp for a road tile if a pioneer would be paid per turn

We pay the salary of the pioneer with this tax. So we have to pay also for each construction.

 

[Kvinkunx]

I think it is not intuitive to tax the pioneer profession. You pay for his recruitment - makes sense. You pay for the work he does outdoors - makes sense. What exactly do you pay for when he is inside a city and works as eg. a blacksmith? What kind of maintenance or salary does the tax cover?
Are we to assume that the pioneer profession requires special maintenance/salary compared to other comparable professions like eg. lumberjack or miner?

 

[M07]

I consider in this economic model that every unit inside a colony (lumberjack, miner, statesman, pioneer, soldier...) will be only an income for the nation.
Once one this unit goes outside the colony, the unit become an expenditure for the nation. I agree it is a simple system and maybe not 100% realistic but we have done this choice.
So if you take a pioneer or a lumberjack inside a colony and give them the pioneer profession. You will have two units more for the "pioneer expenditure".

What kind of maintenance or salary does the tax cover?

I assume that a colonist inside a colony produce more income than expenditures (the salary). For the case of the pioneer, it only his salary but it does not produce any income for the colony because is not working inside.

 

[Kvinkunx]

Makes sense to me. A unit of any profession, when assigned the pioneer role, isn't inside a city, technically speaking. Unlike soldiers it cannot fortify and therefore has no means to contribute to the city despite it stands on the city tile. Cool.

Once one this unit goes outside the colony, the unit become an expenditure for the nation.

I like the side effect that this raises the importance of Military Wagons and Ships. You would really want to quickly transport that Free Colonist to a native village rather than let him walk on his own.

 

[Nexus1980]

Hi M07,

it certainly is very interesting. The level of creativity of you still amazes me.
to be honest.. The idea is really new and can't tell now the pros and cons. If i think of something i'll know where to find you. btw...

it's a very communist approach of the game. don't you think? I like that.

ps : what happens when you debt is too high? can you go below zero? (most countries in Europe don't have problems with that, today

maybe you could work out loans ;-)

 

[M07]

it certainly is very interesting. The level of creativity of you still amazes me.

Thank you

it's a very communist approach of the game. don't you think? I like that.

I am not sure. The communist system is more in the sharing of all the nation wealth.
In the game, viceroy and the king get almost everything.

ps : what happens when you debt is too high? can you go below zero? (most countries in Europe don't have problems with that, today

maybe you could work out loans ;-)

I forgot to mention this part, in case we don't have enough money to pay the amount, our debt contracted with Europe will increase.
When we have this kind of debt, our a tax in Europe is automatically added in Europe for each sell of resources you will do. With time, your debt will be refunded.

 

[Ariete]

i disagree about how much cool is this point, but this is simply due to my tastes, i mean, i'm much military oriented rather than throw me in another management activity; then if this activity limited the amount of troops and risks to limit the military actions (patrols, guards of the titles around the colony, because all have a price) i would prefer not, but more mods are cool because differents beetween them, so what i dislike, it will surely like to somebody else.
still waiting a huge mod with focus on military point! but privaters piratees and bucaneers could be a short example

 

[M07]

The main point for this feature is to not allow attackers to come in foreign countries and stay forever just to annoy his opponent. The attacker has to feel that a long war is very bad for his economy.
In another hand, we earn enough money by selling resources to afford a huge army.
The best way is to test it now, to know if you like or not.

Our targets are to do improve the AI (also in a military point of view) for the 5.20 version.
The 6.00 will improve the economic aspect of the game.
and the 7.00 will add military missions from our king.
So you have to wait a bit but the focus on military point is coming.

 

[Ariete]

so also the natives would have to understand a peace is better than own extinction!

 

[Kvinkunx]

Let's not stray away from the main focus right now. The topic is the taxation of colonists in general based on what role they are assigned to.

Ariete, I can hear your concern. While you are concerned about the impact on military expansion, I don't think the idea doesn't improve the concept in general. You are worried about possible limit to your army's widespread effect. This may be altered by turn cost tweaks while keeping M07's concept intact.

 

[M07]

I have tested it in pilgrim level, and you can easily earn money even with an huge army.
For sure, in revolutionary level, it will not be the same, but it is really doable too.
As I said previously we earn enough money by selling resources.

 

[Oberon4278]

(We have increase the scout cost from 50 gold/turn to 75 gold/turn)

Could you have scout promotions also reduce their cost per turn? Maybe 5g less for the first promotion, 3g less for the second, 2g less for the third, so in the end you have a 65g/turn scout instead of 75? I assume that part of the "salary" we pay the unit is to feed them, and a more experienced scout will be able to catch his own food =) (Also I just love scouts and like to use a ton of them so of course I want this to be cheaper.)

I also like this because it provides an even bigger incentive to use "professional" units -- if you're paying a pioneer for every turn that he's working you for sure want to use the "Hardy Pioneer" to get the job done faster, and therefore cheaper!

Also, as for the language, with soldiers you probably want to use the terms "in garrison" and "deployed" instead of inside cities / outside cities.

 

[M07]

Could you have scout promotions also reduce their cost per turn? Maybe 5g less for the first promotion, 3g less for the second, 2g less for the third, so in the end you have a 65g/turn scout instead of 75? I assume that part of the "salary" we pay the unit is to feed them, and a more experienced scout will be able to catch his own food =) (Also I just love scouts and like to use a ton of them so of course I want this to be cheaper.)

I also like this because it provides an even bigger incentive to use "professional" units -- if you're paying a pioneer for every turn that he's working you for sure want to use the "Hardy Pioneer" to get the job done faster, and therefore cheaper!

I like this idea, even if I would see more 5g less for the first promotion, 10g less for the second, 10g less for the third. Like that, the final cost would be 50g/turn.
However, my main issue is to show the statistic.
If a player has only 2 scouts and see this line :
2 scouts (75 gold /turn) : 125 gold / turn ( 2 * 75 = 125 ???)
It would be strange be cause in fact it was 50 + 75

While I was writing, I though to a potential solution. To show an average
2 scouts (62.5 gold /turn) : 125 gold / turn
and when the user will do a mouse over on the row, we will display a text explaining the mechanism.
What do you think?

Also, as for the language, with soldiers you probably want to use the terms "in garrison" and "deployed" instead of inside cities / outside cities.

That's fine for me It looks good. You can update it by yourself in fact. It would be a good exercise.

 

[Kvinkunx]

more experienced scout will be able to catch his own food =)

Arguably a scout of the colonial era wouldn't even set out on a journey to unknown lands without learning hunting, trapping and cooking first. Not even a greenhorn scout.
So if there should be any change in costs based on his level, I'd say the opposite makes sense - the higher his level, the more useful he is and should receive higher salary per turn, I think.
Though I would make things simpler and just fix his salary regardless of his level. Otherwise I would have to do the same for soldiers because they level up too. And those already have two different salaries; "in garrison" and "deployed". Should they have "lvl 1 in garrison", "lvl 2 in garrison", etc.?

This article might be interesting:
http://woodsrunnersdiary.blogspot.cz/2011/08/early-to-mid-18th-century-woodsman.html

 

[Oberon4278]

Hmm, that's a good point about more useful scouts being more expensive. Maybe we should just scrap the idea? Like I said I only suggested it because I want to use my favorite unit without so much expense

I don't see any reason to change the cost of military units based on level.