New Game Concept: Employment

[Hail]

Hi, all! as i said i like to contemplate new game concepts. so here it goes.

The basic axiom is trivial: every pop head must be doing something, otherwise they end up in the idle list and become increasingly unhappy. (on the magnitute of x^2 where x is the number of idle pop heads).

employment types:
1) working a tile
2) working in a building (i see 2 types of this "employment":
2.a) working in a building grants it a bonus added to what the building normaly modifies.
2.b) (hardcore) the absence of "workers" in the building will penalize the building bonus. so (say 3 is max workers for this building): if 0 the building gives no bonus. 1 gives 33% of normal 2 67% 3 100% of normal building bonus.

each building will define a capacity for workers and their names:
such as: marketplace -> {2, "trader" }, bank -> { 3,"banker" } , "stock exchange" ->{ 2, "brocker" }, etc.

the pros and cons i will write up later. may be someone can suggest them, so to save me the effort.

some obvious implications of this game concept:
1) creating giant undeveloped [food] cities is no longer possible.
2) if some nation manages to occupy all (or most) of workable tiles, then this city will become extremely unhappy (definitely fall into civil disorder and maybe revolt).
3) you cannot create specialists without the appropriate building built. no more free entertainers.
4) more flexibility [and more micromanagement] as most buildings will have specialists. (this however may be a minus for some people).

 

[Robo-Star]

Sounds a bit like Wimsey's economic model.
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[Hail]

Sounds a bit like Wimsey's economic model.
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no. Wimsey proposes to amount 1 pop head to 10 work "units" and those **can** be distributed between workable tiles on the basis of lowest cost. i see no resemblance.

 

[Wimsey]

Well, I also have a concept of unemployment, so there is certainly some resemblance. But you can't put unemployment into Civ4 without altering some fundamental game mechanics, namely that people in Civ4 works without getting paid. Why would there ever be unemployment? Currently there is no downside to have a working pop point, at the worst you can place him as a citizen, and he will happily produce +1. Problem solved.

If however you had to pay your citizens, say 4 per turn to work, you would have to make sure that each working pop point had an output of , , , , , , or valuing a total of at least 4, otherwise you would be running at a loss. In that case overpopulation might very well cause unemployment and all the bad stuff that comes along with it. Such a system would be somewhat like that of Tropico, where the state pays all workers, but also gets all resources, true communism. Civ4 economics seems more on the side of slavery.

I totally agree with you that unemployment should be a feature of the game, but it can't really work unless a concept of wages is introduced, because that's what people usually work for, not the work in itself.

 

[Camikaze]

And what if you're running state property? Then, wages don't really have a bearing. That would really only be applicable for the other three economic civics, with decentralization (is that the one?) not really being appropriate to house any economic models, IMO.

 

[Wimsey]

People do still get paid under state property, it's just that their wages are determined by the state rather than the demand for whatever they're producing. But in any case, if your income was totally unrelated to your efforts, I see no reason why unemployment would cause unhappiness (unless perhaps people get bored from all the idleness). And that is how it is in Civ currently: your citizens get food, luxuries and health regardless of whether their output is 6 or 0 per turn. They really have no incentive to work, so why should they be unhappy not to?

From a gameplay perspective, why will unemployment ever occur in Civ4? I'm asking this not to beat down the idea, but to develop it further and come up with a workable solution.

 

[Hail]

no there is no need for a wages concept. particularly it cannot be implemented gamewise.
however let's no discuss it here, as this is a **different** topic.

working tiles are exhaused and there is no space in any built building for the pop head to work in.

and where did i mention civ4? in civ4 all of this is inapplicable since cities cannot fall into civil disorder and/or revolt.

unless specifically stated, my reasoning applies to some "virtual" civ, which is closest to civ2.

 

[Robo-Star]

no. Wimsey proposes to amount 1 pop head to 10 work "units" and those **can** be distributed between workable tiles on the basis of lowest cost. i see no resemblance.

Dig deeper - there's unemployment in Wimsey's model, and (more importantly, to my mind) the concept of Buildings having to be assigned Population to produce results.

 

[Wimsey]

OK, it might work for a different civ. As nothing else had been said, I assumed you proposed this feature for Civ4 or something very similar. But my question still stands: Why would citizens ever become unemployed? I have never had a problem with running out of workable tiles or buildings in my games of Civ4. Some very few times have I assigned citizen specialists. At least your idea requires a new model for population growth, as population is way too easy to control currently.

 

[Hail]

Dig deeper - there's unemployment in Wimsey's model, and (more importantly, to my mind) the concept of Buildings having to be assigned Population to produce results.

Indeed there is. i apologize. i like that concept too, however tiles may need to produce more food, otherwise player will postpone building production until cities get big (>10?). i do not think that this is desireable.

OK, it might work for a different civ. As nothing else had been said, I assumed you proposed this feature for Civ4 or something very similar. But my question still stands: Why would citizens ever become unemployed? I have never had a problem with running out of workable tiles or buildings in my games of Civ4. Some very few times have I assigned citizen specialists. At least your idea requires a new model for population growth, as population is way too easy to control currently.

my idea does not require a new model for pop growth. my concept is named "employment" not "unemployment". therefore it's not about generating lot's of idle pop heads and have player deal with them. of course if you manage population growth, idle pop heads will be utterly avoided.
i was thinking along the lines of aritificially creating unemployment in cities. either by occupying their workable tiles with military units and/or destroying city improvements by bombardment/spy activity. so you do not have to conquer a city. starvation + unemployment will drive happiness below sea level.

however **main** ideas behind my concept are:
3) you cannot create specialists without the appropriate building built. no more free specialists.
4) more flexibility [and more micromanagement] as most buildings will have specialists. (flexibility however may be a minus for some people).

 

[CivMyWay]

I too, have a similar idea around working in buildings and specialist types... One important this is that it doesn't have to be tied into wages. Yes, that would make it more realistic, but that crosses my line in the sand. It's about strategic resources (of your people).

By having population belong to a task (be it field work or factory) then you have to make a choice when you start a city - do I put them in building A or building B?

(However to make it easy I'd say you can't build a building until you have a full complement to staff it --- this brings in issues like why you might want to encourage migration etc).

Under my concept, any citizen can work in (any/most) places - after a while they become a specialist at it, (and do the work slightly better). If you try and change a specialist (e.g. bulldoze a farm to build a fortress instead - then you can expect that farmer specialist to be unhappy for x turns while they adjust.

Also it would add an interesting range of diplomatic and military options. If I conquer civ A, I might decree that they cannot build "nuclear specialists" (specialists who work in nuclear armoury buildings). There would be a tree i.e. Citizen => Scientist => Nuclear Scientist. (So it takes a while to get a Nuclear Scientist e.g. 20 turns). Or I can go through and kill them all with assassins/military purging. This effectively stops them from having a nuke weapons facility (though it would be cool if Civ A can pay a premium price to do things "covertly"; risking discovery.

So in summary, it's not necessarily about wages. Its about rewarding continued behaviour (e.g. the peasant becomes farmer), and choosing how you are going to use your most precious resources (people). Add in a recruitment component, and all of a sudden big battle loses really start to become a problem (~ less people to be an army, less people to feed them).

 

[Camikaze]

People do still get paid under state property, it's just that their wages are determined by the state rather than the demand for whatever they're producing.

But with all wages being equal (idealistically), there isn't any difference between wages. As in, wages here would have just the same effect as adding some extra small maintenance cost, and wouldn't be all that variable. Which would seemingly make them a defunct game aspect.

 

[Wimsey]

True, but no matter what kind of government you run, people tend to work harder if they get some kind of reward out of it. As the old Russian joke goes: "The state pretends to pay us, and we pretend to work.". If you had some kind of wage system where you pay upkeep for working citizens and not for idle ones, we might see much more unemployment when pop grows out of control or your finances goes to heck.

@Hail:
Ah sorry, I somehow misread your topic as "concept: unemployment". But still, except for the bit about idleness causing unhappiness (and I totally agree with that), I don't see much difference from Civ4; you need tiles and buildings for your citizens to work in there too (unless you're running caste system). I'm all for incentives to go out and meet advancing enemy armies on the battlefield, rather than hide behind city walls though.

 

[Hail]

I too, have a similar idea around working in buildings and specialist types... One important this is that it doesn't have to be tied into wages. Yes, that would make it more realistic, but that crosses my line in the sand. It's about strategic resources (of your people).

By having population belong to a task (be it field work or factory) then you have to make a choice when you start a city - do I put them in building A or building B?

(However to make it easy I'd say you can't build a building until you have a full complement to staff it --- this brings in issues like why you might want to encourage migration etc).

Under my concept, any citizen can work in (any/most) places - after a while they become a specialist at it, (and do the work slightly better). If you try and change a specialist (e.g. bulldoze a farm to build a fortress instead - then you can expect that farmer specialist to be unhappy for x turns while they adjust.

Also it would add an interesting range of diplomatic and military options. If I conquer civ A, I might decree that they cannot build "nuclear specialists" (specialists who work in nuclear armoury buildings). There would be a tree i.e. Citizen => Scientist => Nuclear Scientist. (So it takes a while to get a Nuclear Scientist e.g. 20 turns). Or I can go through and kill them all with assassins/military purging. This effectively stops them from having a nuke weapons facility (though it would be cool if Civ A can pay a premium price to do things "covertly"; risking discovery.

So in summary, it's not necessarily about wages. Its about rewarding continued behaviour (e.g. the peasant becomes farmer), and choosing how you are going to use your most precious resources (people). Add in a recruitment component, and all of a sudden big battle loses really start to become a problem (~ less people to be an army, less people to feed them).

the idea about citizens becoming specialist if they work long enough in one place is great.

True, but no matter what kind of government you run, people tend to work harder if they get some kind of reward out of it. As the old Russian joke goes: "The state pretends to pay us, and we pretend to work.". If you had some kind of wage system where you pay upkeep for working citizens and not for idle ones, we might see much more unemployment when pop grows out of control or your finances goes to heck.

@Hail:
Ah sorry, I somehow misread your topic as "concept: unemployment". But still, except for the bit about idleness causing unhappiness (and I totally agree with that), I don't see much difference from Civ4; you need tiles and buildings for your citizens to work in there too (unless you're running caste system). I'm all for incentives to go out and meet advancing enemy armies on the battlefield, rather than hide behind city walls though.

yes my concept realization is similar to analogous cvi4 concept realization, however i see it a plus. having a steep learning curve will drive away people, who do not have time to learn all the new concepts introduced and their different realization. in short if one played civ 2/3/4 he should jump to the game and understand (more or less) on what's going on. of course if he/she wants to perfect their gaming skills, he/she will have to read the manual on concrete concepts and their implementation.
i'am against all and every revolutionary concept that changes the face of civ.

[offtop]
that's why i dislike civ3 and civ4 as they do not build on the previous version, but rather introduce a lot of different concepts or they are reworked so much as to not resemble the same concept in the previous version. this is so because Micropose/Firaxis/Take Two are making money and just releasing more and more addons is not a viable option. however civ2 does build on civ1.
[/offtop]

 

[cardgame]

I'm sorry, but it all just seems like too much city micromanagement to me.

Where is the benefit at all of having this game concept?

 

[Hail]

I'm sorry, but it all just seems like too much city micromanagement to me.

Where is the benefit at all of having this game concept?

hardcore & realism.