IOT Developmental Thread

The IB game stuff, I mean.
 
I hope it's more straightforward than Paradox games. :p
 
Got an example stat finished for France.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AvV4Kmm-PsYUdGk5LVJ3blFCdjg3dDg0Tm1CWmZCcWc&usp=sharing

Most of the stats should be self-explanatory. I got rid of Resources, infrastructure is no longer tracked on the map (and is based on the Civil Technology), and revised country income to be

[(Manpower*Infrastructure*Manufacturing)*Tax Rate*Stability]-(Infrastructure*$100,000)+(Market Worth*Tariff)

Military maintenance isn't factored in because its, err, high. The numbers on the sheet is actually wrong because Military Tech increases the cost by MT/5. It says $700,000 in the stats, but it is actually $4 million. That isn't shabby really unless France decides it wants to launch a major military campaign and throw everything it has against someone. Then the cost rises to $20 million, but that's an extreme example.

Manufacturing replaced Resources. Infrastructure costs about a million per level to rise (not too shabby, given it increases France's revenue by nearly the same amount immediately) and is the upper limit to the manufacturing stat, which costs a full $10 million a level (which is great, given this immediately boosts revenue by $12 million in France's case).

However, merchants will take care of manufacturing if you let them.

Originally, for the trade system, I was going to bum off EU3 but decided I'll just use the Import/Export system I was going to use a few months ago. Each country has a Market Value and Market Shares. Market Value is the amount of money one could make from that market, while market shares, like the shares you're thinking of, is the cut you can get from that trade.

Market shares do not work like MPIV Influence. The amount of shares per market is a hard value and the only way to lose or gain shares is by trading shares, nationalizing shares (giving your own merchants the shares of another country's merchants), blockades which gradually loosens a country's hold in another market, and a few other ways I'm sure players will think of.

To increase your Market Value, you have to Export, which means you need to help your Merchants gain shares in foreign markets. As your shares in foreign countries increases, so do your exports, which increases your market value.

On the other hand, having foreigners in your markets increases imports, which decreases market value. If your trade balance is positive, your market value goes up and if negative, it goes down.

You could try to nationalize your entire market so only your own merchants are there, but that has its downsides. Your tariff income won't increase, because you would have no imports and exports, and you would be missing our on the potentially lucrative market share swapping market.

Selling shares is a good way to raise money. If you just put "put X shares in X market up for sale", NPC merchants will buy up the shares at market value (50% of the amount of money the share would bring in), putting money in your treasury.

But for the most part, if you're thinking long term and weighing the costs of controlling $8 million of your own market or exporting $8 million, exporting is usually the better call.

The only thing that "increases" the amount of shares on a market is piracy and privateering. Pirates are based out of countries with low stability/countries that turn a blind eye on it and privateering is when you pay money to commission privateers.

The difference is this. Pirates out of Great Britain would leech off some money from the French market, which would count as an export and therefore increases Great Britain's market value. Merchants in Great Britain, if stability is low enough, will use some of their earning to create more pirates, and the process continues.

Privateers out of Great Britain do the same thing, except they don't create more pirates. Privateers also limit their activities just to countries approved by their commission. If GB only targets France, Spain doesn't have to worry about British privateers.

Pirates aren't so easy to control, and in GB's case, the pirates won't just go after France, but Sweden, Norway, Spain, and other countries as well.

Countries can't nationalize pirate/privateer shares in their market like they can other shares, because pirate/privateer shares are phantom shares. There are two ways to deal with pirates. The first way is by ordering Naval Power to protect the sea lanes, which makes plundering said sea lanes less attractive to the pirates, who will go after something else. The second way to deal with pirates is more expensive and involved going to war with the pirate stronghold country and purging it of the pirate strongholds.

Pirates are also created from naval casualties at sea.

Privateers, unlike pirates, won't shift targets based on sea lanes being patrolled. It just means that privateers are less likely to be effective.

If stability in a country is particularly low, pirates might just target their own country, which increases the domestic trade value (neither an import or export) and lowers domestic trade value and imports. This can actually be useful sometimes because decreased imports means a better trade balance, but it makes others wary about buying trade shares in your country.
 
SouthernKing said:
lurker's comment: The average IOT economic system now is more complex than that of 95% of NESes D:
Click to expand...

To be completely fair, I did ax inflation.

Edit: I should probably finally explain how loans work.

I track loans. All of them. Who they're from, who they go to, the amount of interest due on the loan, the amount left on the loan, and when the loan is due in its entirety. The easiest place to find a loan is from your own merchants, who will loan out a chunk of change every turn if they (OOC: I) think you can pay up. Though, if you're a small country trying to scrap up the cash needed for a massive infrastructure project, you're more than likely going to look at places like France, where the merchants bring in $17 million a year.

When a loan is due, I will post that in the update and you the choice to pay the amount due or file bankruptcy. Bankruptcy isn't too awful unless you owe a lot of money. Basically everybody you owe money comes to the table and everybody negotiates how the bankers are going to get their money back. Depending on how things go, this probably just means extending existing loans at a lower interest rates, loan forgiveness, and other things. After you file bankruptcy, getting future loans will be harder and require you putting up collateral in the form of market shares.

You could also say, "Nope, not going to pay the loan", which leads to stupid and bad things for you (including not getting any loans from anybody that is a NPC).

Merchants can be your best friend and fund your military campaigns and infrastructure projects. They can also be your worst enemy and fund your enemy's military campaigns and infrastructure projects.

You also will automatically take out a loan in an emergency unless I'm specifically told not to. For instance, if you mess up in calculating how much a military campaign for a year is going to cost and your short a million, you will take out an emergency loan to pay your soldiers (unless that million is made up with with pillaging). As you can imagine, the terms of the loan, namely the interest, will be....mean.

Or you could deal with mutiny troops, pirates, and roaming bands of bandits and all the stability and economic problems that entails.
 
Oh, this talk of an IOT game makes me wish I'd gone into game design rather than History. Oh well...
 
You have like, 60-70+ years left so you got this


@son: physical excitement rising
 
Tyo said:
You have like, 60-70+ years left so you got this


@son: physical excitement rising
Click to expand...

Bad things are happening with the Ottomans. Most of their territory is occupied, and the cost of their military is currently higher than revenue, which would have been in the red if not for the money from the tariff. French merchant income is twenty times higher than Turkish merchant income and French government revenue is over a hundred times higher than Turkish income.

Mind you, the Turks don't have an army. All that million+ gold is propping up the navy, which is only a third the size of the French Navy, yet the Ottoman Navy is costing a fourth as much a year as the entire French armed forces. Might be because the Ottomans have an AWFUL ruler.


Edit: I was completely wrong. I overvalued the Ottoman market....big time. The Ottomans are hemorrhaging nearly a million a year without even taking into account military wages yet to be paid. It might be because the Ottos have low stability as well. The merchants, even if they were willing to give out all the money they make the first year, don't have enough money to bail out the Ottoman government.

The only thing that helped was reducing Ottoman infrastructure from 20 to 2. Raising infrastructure above 20 actually makes it worse. Even when setting Infrastructure to a 1000, they ran a deficient. It may have to do with the Ottomans very low initial manpower (92,000). I'm going to give the Ottos a 2/2 Infra/Manufacturing rate, meaning their manufacturing level is on par with the French (but not nearly as beneficial). This brings Ottoman tax revenue up to $59,000. If the player can raise stability to the French level of 70%, revenue would increase to $105k.

The numbers will probably get better as I start adding more and more countries and start factoring in trade for more countries, but on its own, the Ottomans aren't looking so hot.

Edit: It would seem that the Ottomans are running a rather large trade deficient, thanks to Austria no less.
 
Yo, anybody mind telling me where the new IOTChat is?
 
Putting my name down as a possibly 'decent' player who could play as USA or Great Britain depending on stats.
 
I've decided Mosher is right and posting The Great Abyss development updates can be posted here just as fine.

Here's what I have so far.

Spoiler :
Dead_Space_by_keepwalking07.jpg

(c)keepwalking07
“Not all those who wander are lost.”
Setting and General Game Info
Greetings and salutations! Welcome to the Universe of The Great Abyss. TGA is set on a grand setting-The Milky Way Galaxy. In Earth years, the game takes place in AD 2550. Expect imbalanced starts and technological diversity. There is no real galactic stage yet, but lets see if you can change that.

In this game, you'll be leading your species to create an empire or republic (or whatever you call yourself) that spans the stars; colonizing celestial bodies, interchangeably dealing with or exploiting anomalies, inferior races, and other things of that nature on the way there. So let's get started.

The Galaxy
It goes without saying the galaxy is big, and you can start anywhere on it. There will be two maps, and they are as follows:
The quick-reference map: This will show you just how big all your fellow space-faring empires are quickly, but won't detail systems and the like.
The Grid: A ton more detailed than the above, this map will show you who controls what systems, where other fleets are, and where both static and dynamic anomalies are.

Starting Out
I am giving everyone full creative freedom on the applications to join this game, however, there are a few base rules.
Spoiler :
  • No powergaming your application. You know what I mean.
  • I reserve the right to decline your application if I believe you're not taking it seriously enough. No "BYZANTINE EMPIRE IN SPAAAAAAACE" stuff, please.
  • If you wish to be human, you must comply to the following:
    • Only one human player is allowed.
    • You start in the region in which earth is estimated to be.
    • You cannot start with more than your own home system colonized. In other words, deep space exploration is new to humans. Degree of colonization of Sol however, is free game.
    • Recognize that others may want this spot. The application I like the best will win it, so it's best to have a back-up alien application in case you don't. Also, no butthurt if you don't get the spot, or else you can leave this thread.
    • Recognize you are probably going to be in the most difficult spot in the game at the start.
    • As a human, you must be extra careful with ridiculousness in your application.

Everything else is assumed to be free game. However, take the time to realize that I am human too, and thus make mistakes in terms of the above statement. Recognize that I can rescind it if I spy something I don't like in an application.

Now that that's done, actually starting out is quite simple. Here's a standard application.

Spoiler Application :
Species Name: Self explanatory.
Species Description: Biological details of your species; strengths, weaknesses, etc. Does not apply if playing as some sort of cybernetic species. The more descriptive, the more you benefit.
Homeworld Details: Description of the biosphere, environment, and climate of your species' homeworld. Like above, the more descriptive you are, the more you benefit.
Species History: A history of your species from beginning of sentience to present. Like above, being as detailed as possible can only help you.
Technology: Briefly describe what sort of technology your species utilizes to do things such as colonize, fight, etc. I'll give you leeway on the descriptiveness here. Note, you can't be too advanced. See below.
Location and Color: Save the grid map and put a dot on where on the grid you want to be. Post coordinates along with it, plus a color.


Technological Advancement
There are 7 Tiers of civilization.
Spoiler :
  • Tier 7: Pre-Industrial: One of the most common and stable states, with limited weaponry and environmental threats. Societies tend to be small and scattered, driven by subsistence farming, foraging, or hunter-gathering needs. Technology is limited to simple hand made tools, weapons, or agrarian implements and methods, but a very broad understanding of planetary and solar mechanics is not uncommon.
  • Tier 6: Industrial Age: Often the pinnacle for a civilization. Agrarian societies can remain stable in the pre-industrial stage, but Tier 6 population strain and mechanized food production invariably create political and economic pressures very few can balance. Moving past this usually promises advancement. Some societies improve environmental and medical understanding concurrently with mechanical and transport advancement. Those that do not are frequently doomed.
  • Tier 5: Atomic Age: Usually begin focusing on clean energy production. The occasional belligerent species will use atomic energy for weapons, often resulting in mass extinctions. In-atmosphere craft are a hallmark, often leading to manned space flight, albeit in a short-scale.
  • Tier 4: Space Age: Tier 4 is often the final resting place for species intelligent enough to break free from their cradle's surface only to fill the gulf surrounding it with war. Their comfort-focused technology can include medical advances.
  • Tier 3: Space-Faring: Species has efficient space navigation, mass drivers, asynchronous linear-induction weapons, nanotechnological storage and semi-sentient AIs.
  • Tier 2: Interstellar: The species has the ability to perform exceedingly accurate space navigation, near-instantaneous communication and man-portable application of energy manipulation.
  • Tier 1: World Builders: The species has the ability to manipulate gravitational forces, create AI with full sentience, fabricate super-dense materials, perform super-accurate space navigation, the ability to create life, and the ability to create worlds.
  • Tier 0: Transsentient: Unknown
Props to you if you know where I got it from.

Most of you will be in either Tier 4 or Tier 3, with a few exceptions if I like your post enough and even a few that cannot be gauged by this system(For example, Ravus_Sol's application for Great Journeys would be so amazingly awesome I'd consider his species an anomaly that plays by its own set of rules unbeknownst to other players because it was that awesome.) Note, if you want to be one of these exceptions I'll be making difficulties to accommodate your advantage, so don't be too eager to start with a hyper-advanced race.

However, in general, this is how large-scale technological strength will be gauged for most of you.

Small-scale progression is also tracked and is much more personal and unique to your species. I won't assume that all of the species in the galaxy will be playing by the same technological rulebook; I intend to see many different kinds of technology trees based on different energy sources and the like later in the game. These small-scale movements in technology will give small bonuses that stack up well as time goes on, and will almost always come about from your actions as you explore and write roleplay. Once I figure you have enough small-scale technological progression, I'll announce to you in private that you are eligible to propose a research effort to increase large-scale progression, and thus get closer to ranking higher in civilization tiers. As you increase in tier, you will need more research efforts to further advance.
 
So I have an aggressive and straightforward play style. That does not make me incompetent.

For the record I have actually played in a great many IOTs, and been rather successful in quite a few. Fairly sure 'decent' doesn't mean the best IOTer of anyone.
 
Here are the stats of the eight highest scoring countries in the game, plus stats. Needless to say, I need to rethink what qualifies as part of the G8.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AvV4Kmm-PsYUdC03ZW85ejh6MmdjamNWdjRpekd6ckE&usp=sharing

Spoiler :
Vom6wjD.png


There are provinces with O's in them, and others with lines, meaning those territories are occupied. The largest market in the game, bar none, is the French market. None other really comes close.

Edit: I'm pretty sure there are problems with countries with less than a 100,000 manpower.

Take the Ottomans for example. Everything else being equal, 97k people with 1 Infra produces....-$3,000. Why? The infra maintenance is 100,000. Certain government types and leaders help out with this problem of course, with the best bonus currently bringing infrastructure costs down to 70,000 per level.

There are not a lot of pretty solutions other than being prepared to make up for shortcomings through trade and work with your merchants to boost manufacturing.
 
Tyo said:
Props to you if you know where I got it from.
Click to expand...

It very much reminds me of the Kardashev scale. Though its obviously not the same.

Robert wants Tyo to reveal his scale.
 
Just give an across the board manpower boost to put everyone above 100K. Justify by saying in the past few decades cities have gotten cleaner allowing for a higher growth rate safely, as well as increasing urbanization if on a smaller scale.
 
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