Tax and Investment slider( an modcomp idea)

[gfurst]

Hey there, I'm brain working and a modcomp idea that i may use to a modpack in the future.

The basic idea would be to remove the regular Research/Culture/Espionage sliders and let them be fixed values, or maybe variable values depending on the empire current status.

To make this idea plausible, most buildings instead of increasing rates, they would increase direct outputs of those, and only specific buildings, also building such as market( and much more) would also produce directly also as per bonus base. (the yield per resource features, is already fully operational on some mods, thx Afforess and davidlallen)

The main idea is to have a focus on expanding the overall empire commerce output( not depending only on tiles). Other idea is to not have always the research slider at maximum.
Tax rate directs the rate of the overall commerce output that goes to your government( such as real life), but high tax rates can cause unhappiness and others bad features( maybe affecting city growth in any number of ways).

Also it would depend on government( and/or legal) civic, meaning despotism for example allows and higher tax rates without empire going to a internal succumb, and democracy on the other hand can support a large empire with a low tax rate, and if tax were high the empire simply would be suffocated.

The investment rate would be placing all the gold surplus your kingdom harvested from those poor peasants back to service for them. They would create expenses increasing , got it?
For example, suppose the university creates bonus expense and research per investment rate, same way hospital would create bonus health and theaters bonus happiness.


So putting it on solid state?
Reminding this is supposed to be a modcomp, leaving the specific buildings and civics to modders to implement to their modpack.

I've never modded before( quite new to civ4 community), although I'm a Computer engineer student very familiar with programming languages( never used python before), so i should get the hang of it really fast, better yet if helped.

So yes this is a cry for help!!!

Help would be much appreciated, also tips, comments how features should work, and ideas how to make high tax bad, and high investment good
So please do comment.

Thanks guys

Inspired by: Civ5, Dynamic City Development, a lot of mods out there that do amazing stuff.
Always wondered why economic management of the empire was so superficial.

Edit==========

There is now a thread for technical details about developing the mod: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=388151

 

[Baldyr]

I'm liking what you're saying but I'd like to point out that you should probably use C++ for this. You might need to do some Python work on the interface portion of this though, but with any luck someone else would be able to help out with that.

Don't get me wrong - I only know Python and I believe it to be a very fun language to work with. But it does have its limitations for CivIV modding, so C++ would be the way to go. Especially if you already know that stuff. So you probably don't have to start reading up on Python just yet - unless you're interested in learning the language as such, of course.

 

[gfurst]

Thanks Baldyr, i will of course read up on python later, c++ shouldn't mean a problem since i learned programming with it. But it can make life a bit harder.

Any suggestions about features, and how should the mechanics work?

 

[Baldyr]

I actually don't have much to add, which in turn is somewhat unusual. Think you have a solid idea, as simple as that.

Just say the word if you have any Python related questions going forward... But right now you should probably look into the SDK and try to figure what's what.

 

[gfurst]

I've tinkered with it a bit and came up with this:

You start with a tax slider on 100%, and a standard fixed 25% of each :research:.
The later as techs arrives you would be able to invest in each of those sections removing it from the main gold output.
So basically it would be like a tax rate to control overall commerce output and other regular sliders, with configurable options to enable to in depth features, what you think about that?

I'm running out of time right now, late for class , be back later to better this idea.

 

[Baldyr]

I'm afraid I don't quite follow. Wouldn't 100% + 25% + 25% + 25% equal 175%?

 

[gfurst]

Hi back again from university, happily it was a small class, received my test grade, i went well .

The 25% each, is the subdivision made after the tax modfier, ie:
city has 100 -> tax modfier of 100% = 100*1.00 tax -> investment rate of 25% = 100*0.25invest -> 25 output in that city.

ps.. 25% for each may not balanced for game start, of course those will be configurable variables.

I've made a little graph trying to illustrate it( sorry if is not so clear, i made it in a hurry):

 

[Baldyr]

Yeah, this makes sense. I'd use it.

 

[gfurst]

kkkk, just my luck...
by the way, i'm still alive, it just has been some crazy days lately, but i will get back Civ4