Monetary/Economy feature ideas

[dagorkan]

I think Civ in general really needs to flesh out economics (a huge influence in history which is dumbed down to tax rate and owning/not owning resources in Civ). The history of money in particular is fascinating. I think FFH is the only really active mod (the one I play the most as well) that could implement something like this.


INFLATION: the amount you lose (vanishes) from your treasury income each turn. Instead of steadily increasing with time it depends on your choices of policies. Part of it will be random each turn but the probability distribution of the effect will depend on currency and the change will be multiplied/divided by other choices selected on the Monetary screen.

Economy here means the total amount of commerce/gold produced in your empire each turn. And when I mention other civs' inflation, the idea is that inflation can carry across trade routes and effect other civs.

For example if I had a large number of trade routes (worth 20% of my turn Economy) with the Calabim and their inflation was 10% per turn then my total average inflation would be 80%*(own inflation) + 20%*(10%). If I didn't have a currency of my own at all and used the Calabims' as legal tender then I would recieve all of their inflation (and be dependent on their policies - nice vassalage idea).

Finally there is no longer simply "Gold" as the universal currency, there can be as many currencies as there civs (but generally fewer), which will start out at the same value. The game will track the relative values of currencies as time goes on depending on the inflation of each.


Options on the Monetary screen:

Currency (flavor option, mostly)

Pull-down menus,

[Currency type name] [Your civ] [denomination, eg, crown/shilling/shield/talent/ecu/denarius, etc, just flavor]

Eg, the "Gold" "Kuriotate" "Dragon"

Or if I had a currency agreement with the Bannor and agreed to use Silver, the "Silver" "Kuriotate/Bannor" "Crown"

If you ever get to a ridiculous situation of having 1,000 of your currency to each you will be able to click a button here to convert 1,000-to-1 into a new currency and get "New" added before the denomination... "500 New Gold Kuriotate Dragons"... and a reputation hit perhaps.

Currency type (pull-down menu):

Gold coins
Silver coins
Bronze (copper)
Gems
Stone/wood crafting
Barter

special: Paper (after discovering high-level tech/civic)

Each type has a different effect on inflation. Some are inherently more stable than others (Gold is more stable than Silver and Silver more than Bronze)

Additionally the resources you have will have an impact on how they affect your economy. Gold is rare and having one Gold mine should be enough to properly supply a medium five city civ but past that inflation effects (inflation/deflation) will be multiplied. In comparison one silver mine will be able to supply currency for more total commerce and each resource has an optimum amount of commerce.

In other words Gold will be the best if you have enough of it, Silver for large empires without enough precious metals and Barter for those without much economy to speak of and for who trade is not important.

Finally trade of resources becomes more important. Trading Gold will become a lot more important, though it won't be just a happiness created resource which you have or don't, civs without enough precious metals and who want to be independent will be prepared to give a huge amount for it.

The amount of economy that can be covered by each resource unit should decrease. So 1 resource might cover 200 commerce, 2 resources would cover 350 and 3 covers 450 etc. So civs with just one monetary resource should still be self-sufficent in the beginning and happening to have four gold mines clustered in the same place doesn't mean you'll control half the world economy.



Legal tender (tick boxes)

Only own - if you can supply your own currency from resources this would be the best option, you won't be affected by other civs' inflation

OR

Civilization [X] (list of civs whose currencies you accept for payment of tax)

Accepting other civs will increase trade routes (by +1 for each) but increases the effect of inflation.


Minting (pull down menu + button)

Option 1 - stability (create new currency at same rate grows/shrinks - least inflation)
Option 2 - growth - produce more currency than grows, will cause inflation but your coffers will fill up in the short term
Option 3 - austerity, less currency produced for , reduces inflation but treasury grows slower

Create X amount (button) - injects an amount worth up to X% of your total turn (% dependent on tech level) into your treasury, big inflation hit and potentially unhappiness in cities (depending on government civic, Republics would get the most)

All minting options will be greyed out if you join a Single Currency (Overcouncil) in which case it will be at option 1 (stability) as default... unless perhaps if the Overcouncil can vote on increasing/decreasing it.


Interest (requires tech/civic, "national banking") (pull-down menu)

High
Medium
Low
None

A certain proportion of your current treasury (dependent on option) becomes invisible/unusable (but still there for calculation purposes) but gains you a certain amount of interest (5%) every turn.

If other civs use your money as legal tender then for calculations purposes you would get that interest on the value of trade routes they have with you.

Other civs using your currency would be a good Capitulation/Vassalage demand


Agreements

Here you see the currency agreements you have with other civs. If you selected single currency in Overcouncil resolutions for example. You can also choose fixed exchange rate with certain other civs which will increase trade (+2 routes?) and reduce the inflation effect from that civ. However if you signed a fixed exchange rate with a civ whose currency goes into hyperinflation your exchange rate with all other civs will of course be affected until you cancel the agreement.

In the case of single currencies, the resources of both Civs will be combined to calculate currency coverage (eg, for a gold currency if they have any gold it will be added)


Borrowing

Shows your debts and interest paid per turn

You can borrow from other civs and also from guilds (if they have been created) specified amounts in a given currency. For simplicity the interest rate could be fixed at say 10% (15% for guilds). Guilds would be able to lend in your own currency if you have one established in a city in your realm.

[BUTTON]: Default. Cancel your loan. Should cause war in most cases if another civ, or vanishing of that Guild (causing unhappiness in the city it was in), and deteriorated relations with all other civs. In most cases they would never lend to you again unless you had very good relations together.




What impact should existing civics have?

Foreign Trade: multiplies inflation from civs you trade with
Mercantilism: can still trade with other countries (to a limit) but other Legal Tender options than your own crossed out (so any inflation you get will be all your own fault)


Will any existing wonders have to be changed?

 

[Sekerah]

I like your ideas but I can't ever see the team implementing this in the main mod. If you(or anyone) were to make this as a modmod I would definitely try it as I think it would add a lot of fun and strategic depth to the game.

The oversimplified economic system in Civ is something that has always bugged me(even though it is a great game). That and the fairly simple diplomacy. I would be really happy if someone did make a mod to enhance both of these areas but I don't see it happening anytime soon.

 

[dagorkan]

Inflation calculation example in brief... (my first attempt, probably has a lot of problems)

Say you are lucky and have 3 gold mines... you can cover 450 commerce on your own. Everything is fine until your economy hits 450 per turn then inflation begins increasing. Your policies give you a inflation modifier of 5.

At 900 trade how much is inflation?

If commerce > coverage,
50% * (commerce / coverage) = inflation so 5 * 900/450 = 10% chance inflation increases by 1% (of initial value) next turn.

To simulate hyper inflation add that if your inflation increases by 1% you check again to see if it increases an additional 1%.

So for that same situation there'd be 10% chance of inflation increasing by 1 pt or more and 1% chance of increasing by 2 or more.

With an inflation modifier of 20 (high, more typical of a trading nation like Lanun) it would be:
60% = +0
40% = +1
16% = +2
6.4% = +3
2.5% = +4
etc

I like your ideas but I can't ever see the team implementing this in the main mod. If you(or anyone) were to make this as a modmod I would definitely try it as I think it would add a lot of fun and strategic depth to the game.

I'm not going to make it. I'm good at coming up with ideas (good or bad?), useless at implementation especially where programming is involved.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

very nice ideas. I suggest you check out Mailbox's modmod http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=288728 cuz it's all about making economy more important in FFH2

 

[loffenx]

I don't understand your idea about the relation between goldmines and cities, having a "lack" of goldmines relative the overall size of the economy (and assuming it uses gold as currency) should lead to deflation, not inflation.

I don't udnerstand the reasoning behind interest either, higher interest rates should lead to less inflation but also less money, atleast circulating in the "economy", which sorta equals the "player economy" here doesn't it?

Interesting read but the overall implications for the game and the sort of "economics reasonability" of it all sorta overwhelms me at the moment

 

[dagorkan]

I don't understand your idea about the relation between goldmines and cities, having a "lack" of goldmines relative the overall size of the economy (and assuming it uses gold as currency) should lead to deflation, not inflation.

Oops, you're right of course. Swap it round, if you wanted to pay off debts then you'd want more gold mines/currency resources. But then anybody who doesn't have debts would have no reason to want to control more gold/silver production since inflation could only be a bad thing... what are the positive effects of inflation apart from debt repayment? How about giving a small bonus in city income ("gold" commerce) proportionate to the level of inflation to reflect your citizens investing rather than hoarding their money. Every % of inflation gets a % commerce boost up to a particular point were it starts having the opposite effect. Deflation would lead to proportionally less income.

So more currency -> more gold/silver mines would be good for your economy but would hurt your treasury... Insufficient currency would help your treasury in the short term but hurt your economy?

I don't udnerstand the reasoning behind interest either, higher interest rates should lead to less inflation but also less money, atleast circulating in the "economy", which sorta equals the "player economy" here doesn't it?

Yes it would cause deflation but it would also result in more income into your treasury since you'd be collecting a higher interest (you own the banks). There's a trade-off between treasury income and city commerce production. Separating the "economy" and your "treasury" (from which you pay for upkeep, troops, etc) is the important thing, which vanilla civ doesn't do but I'm not sure how to implement it, these are just my initial ideas.

Interesting read but the overall implications for the game and the sort of "economics reasonability" of it all sorta overwhelms me at the moment

Yes it needs more work, I'm sort of thinking out loud.

Another idea I just had would be to have science and culture (when you can set it) and the happiness resulting from culture coming from the city economies and not from your treasury. Otherwise filling the coffers of your treasury will always be the priority and there's no reason for the player not to aim for a combination of inflation and high interest rates which would be absurd in the real world.

Economy vs treasury, the greater the commerce in your economy is penalized the less science, culture and happiness they produce but you have more money to spend on troops, rushing buildings, bribing civs into giving you things etc.

Probably needs more subtlety than that, otherwise it won't be much different in practice to having the simplistic gold vs science vs culture settings of vanilla civ.

Or, have an 'economy rating for each city similar to the crime ratings which determine events. With consistently bad (though good for your treasury) economic policies you'll get events like "tax evasion", "corruption", "hyperinflation", "unemployment" for that particular city (which is actually more realistic than national effects), which give permanent penalties in happiness, commerce, production, revolt risk, etc as well as feeding back into the main events chain (worse events become more probable, unemployment causes crime to rise).

So there'd be an element of risk too, you'd sort of be gambling, if you're lucky your economy can withstand your greedy policies for some time, and equally attempts to improve the economy (at the cost of military spending, etc) might be in vain.

That would probably fit in more with FFH design wise than the more calculated system I started with.

 

[loffenx]

As I said, an Interesting topic. Perhaps not implementable untill Civ V and FFH 3 but what the heck

I agree that seperating the economy from the treasury would be a good thing, and for Civ-like games in general. Playing late game vanilla you often feel like an autarkic 19th-century economy dressed up in a modern state garb. Though I never really got the hang of corporations.

Regarding the interest rates though, If the banks are state[player] owned, higher interestrate would actually lead to an influx of money, since saving on the bank just became more profitable, at the same time you [player/state] would get expenses from paying the interest on these and previous savings, wouldn't you? At the same time, higher interest rates slows the economy down.