The economics of civ

[Truthy]

All of the world's largest economies thrive off of their high human capital. With this as one of the three factors of production, economies with high specialization are far more developed. By this, Japan and the United Kingdom are easily more powerful than most countries in the world, regardless greater amounts of resources and population. A skilled work force is of greater value than all the resources in the world.

They could introduce more concepts around human capital in Civilization V. In this way small, resource-less countries can become wealthier. However, the major argument against this is that massive empires could just as easily employ human capital and wider range of specialists. The basic fact of the game is that the larger you are, the more research and gold you create. By any rate, the Democratic Republic of the Congo would still be far more powerful than the United Kingdom.

A good concept that should be introduced would be the the ability to export grain. This would allow developed and productive urban areas to grow much larger faster. It would also support your population better if your empire is based in a desolate region. An area like Nebraska should be able to export large amounts of food to the massive urban areas like New York.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

DISCLAIMER: I have not played civ5
I like this thread, but most of your suggestions on how to fix the post industrial economy have been terribad, to be blunt. They make the game too complex and micro-intensive to be fun. As stated earlier, the problem is a failure to model modern demand driven economies. My solution would be to simply add a +1 trade route bonus to late game industrial and economic techs, and scale the value of trade routes to greater than linear.

The ability to distribute food across an empire has also been raised. I think a good solution for that would be to make all food resources a player controls give a food bonus to all cities, with an additional bonus with the discovery of refrigeration.

Both of these solutions are simple, realistic, and easy to mod.

 

[pi-r8]

I think, the two guys of you (pi-r8 and Hail) should stop for a moment and consider, what you want to do with the curreny gameplay-wise.

Don't forget, only a fraction of players will find much fun in simulating convertible currencies (although the idea by itself not only is realistic, but interesting too).
Therefore, these things have to be done "automatically", in other words, the conversion of currency_A against currency_B has to be done by the game engine. Furthermore, take into consideration that there actually will be up to 18 different currencies (under the assumption that the standard number of Civs will not change).
So, you have to find a way in which currencies are valued automatically, are converted automatically and *DON'T* invite players to believe that the engine "cheats" the player. In other words: the conversion has to be that easy to understand that although the engine is doing it on behalf of the players, the result has to be understood.

At the moment I've got the feeling that the two of you are a bit carried away by the fascination of developing ideas.

Just my 2 (euro-)cents.

Yeah, I agree. The problem is- and this is really interesting to me- it's so difficult to find a system that works automatically, and doesn't allow the players to exploit it in silly ways. Real currency systems only work because people do a lot of work to maintain them. It's not just that I'm getting carried away (although I am), it's also that any simple system I can think of for modeling currency has glaring holes to be exploited. I can't think of any game that has a realistic currency system, can you? Most games just magically create money from nothing, and never use more than one currency. I guess this is why.

The best really simple system that I can think of right now is to make gold the only currency for everything, and just make sure that gold deposits are easily reachable for everyone.

 

[pi-r8]

All of the world's largest economies thrive off of their high human capital. With this as one of the three factors of production, economies with high specialization are far more developed. By this, Japan and the United Kingdom are easily more powerful than most countries in the world, regardless greater amounts of resources and population. A skilled work force is of greater value than all the resources in the world.

They could introduce more concepts around human capital in Civilization V. In this way small, resource-less countries can become wealthier. However, the major argument against this is that massive empires could just as easily employ human capital and wider range of specialists. The basic fact of the game is that the larger you are, the more research and gold you create. By any rate, the Democratic Republic of the Congo would still be far more powerful than the United Kingdom.

A good concept that should be introduced would be the the ability to export grain. This would allow developed and productive urban areas to grow much larger faster. It would also support your population better if your empire is based in a desolate region. An area like Nebraska should be able to export large amounts of food to the massive urban areas like New York.

The easiest to mimic human capital is with upgraded buildings. Like someone else said earlier, a building is just a place for specialists to work. However, you can also upgrade that building to make the workers there more efficient. There'd be a tradeoff between either growing larger, or becoming more developed. Both have costs.

I agree, trading food is one of the most important features that civ lacks, and that's what I thought of first when I started this thread.

 

[pi-r8]

Hail, I have to say I'm getting confused by what you're saying. I'll do my best, but I'm probably misunderstanding.

yep. i see the issue.
hmm... one of the solutions i see is to limit the flexibility of money. e.g. drop fractional parts of $. so if you print only $1(strength=50) you can do only binary deals. either you spend your whole dollar to buy something or buy nothing. therefore printing $50(strength=1) is simply a more flexible decision

I don't like this solution. It seems just adding more headache, and trying to punish players with roundoff.

nope. you misunderstood me.
let's suppose there is player3. player3 has 20 gold($3/1g) and 60 silver($1/1s). he can print up to $60 + $60 = $120.

what i forgot to mention is that PM's are not converted into $. the player keeps the PM's. PM's assure(support) any players issued money(his currency)

I think this is getting way too complicated. It sounds like you're introducing multiple currencies per player which would be too hard to keep track of. I don't want to keep track of "player 5 silver dollars", "player 3 gold dollars", etc.

if i understand you proposal correctly, mining more silver(or gold, platinum, etc.) will devalue silver coins against other coin types because the world supply("total silver + total silver coins" will increase)

let's suppose there are 2 players.
player1 has silver and mints silver coins
player2 has gold and mints gold coins

the weird(counter-intuitive) thing is that in player1's best interest to mine gold, not silver, as by mining gold he will increase the world supply of gold thus devaluing gold coins against silver coins. he gets gold and increased value of a silver coin(a double plus!). while if he chooses to mine silver and mint more silver coins, he would end up with more coins that are individually worth less because the world supply of silver has increased.

example: 2 players player1 has 1gold -> 1 gold coin, player2 has 1silver -> 1 silver coin
therefore 1g = 1s
now player1 has the choice to mine 1g or 1s.
let's compare.
first suppose player1 mines 1s: now 1g = 2s, NO gain! player1 has 2s, but each silver is worth only 0.5g.
second suppose player1 mines 1g: now 2g = 1s. not only player1's silver is now worth 2g, but he also has 1g he mined. in all a 2g gain.

IMHO your hybrid (static conversion of PM into coins, while relate value of coin types is dynamic) does not seem to be a viable solution. maybe just do everything statically? e.g. static conversion of PM into coins and static coin type vs other type value ratios.
so let's suppose that the map generator ensures that there are 10x less gold on the map than silver. so 1g will the entire game be worth 10s. now

It makes more sense when there's more competing currencies. Let's say there's four: silver, gold, gems, and ivory. In that case case, whichever you produce will have only a small effect on the world money supply. Especially if you're just a niche producer of gold, you won't be able to devalue gold much. If you produce enough gold to substantially devalue it, then you're hurting yourself just as much.

However, producing more coins should always be profitable. Suppose you have 10 units of gold, while other civs have 1 unit each of silver, gems, and ivory. The gold is worth 10/13 = 77% of the world's money. Doubling that to 20 units increases its value to 20/23 = 87%. Constant profit, but diminishing returns.

i do not understand why more money should be one of the goals of the currency model

For two reasons. One is realism- a gold mine was a hugely valuable thing, and every ancient kingdom wanted to produce as many gold coins as possible. It would be very weird if players simply produced a small amount of currency at the beginning of the game, and then never needed more.

The other is to prevent the real problems of deflation. If nobody produces more money, but everyone is constantly producing more goods, the price of goods will drop. People will then save their money, because they can always get a better deal later. That will drop the price even more, creating a deflationary spiral that halts trade completely.

 

[lschnarch]

I can't think of any game that has a realistic currency system, can you? Most games just magically create money from nothing, and never use more than one currency.

They do so for a reason.

Currency is a very complicated matter, and as the past years have shown us, even the people being in charge don't understand what is going on.

Although I am a big fan of realistic features in a game, sometimes you just have to agree to abstractions.
It starts with the problem that currency actually is based on trust. As soon as the majority of people loses trust in their currency, it starts to lose its value. That's the reason why for long time currencies were based on gold, in other words, on tangible goods.
The economic environment may be as good as it ever can be, but it is trust which defines the value of a currency.
This is not possible to depict in a game. Maybe in a simulation, but not in a game.

Therefore, gameplay-wise it does make sense to have "money out of nothing". And it does make sense to have a "world currency". This may be "unrealistic" and doesn't meet real life experiences, but it allows the game (and the player) to move on.

So, this would be my starting point: money comes from whereever, and I don't care about this inaccuracy.
Now, that we have money in the game, we can look at how it is spread. And in this area I see quite some potential for improvement.
Let's say, each working citizen contributes 1$/turn to the coffer. Furthermore, let's assume that there are 10 working citizens. So, you accumulate 10$ per turn.
Now you (1) are offered three different kind of goods by a different nation: 3A, 2B and 5 C. That's easy: you have 10$ and you are offered a total of 10 goods => 1$ each

It becomes much different when there is another bidder (2) with let's say $15, but there still is only the initial offer of 3A, 2B and 5C.
That's the point, where the bargaining starts.
Let us furthermore assume that the demand (or the urge for a certain good) is as the letters indicate: good A is the most desired one, B is second and well, C is the least important one.

(2) could offer all the $15 to get the 3A. That would establish a price of $5 for 1A.
But then he doesn't get any of the other two goods. So, he would most probably try to bid only $8 for the 3A, because at the moment the price for B and C still is $1/each.
This leaves him with $7 to bid for 2B and 5C, but you still have your $10. So, you could bid $1.4 for each, and would get them. This means, he can only bid $5 for the 3A (~ $1.6) to still have at least the same amount as you for the rest.
But even being on par with you may be disadvantegous, since the seller might try to compensate for the fact that you haven't got the most desired good A and then would give you B and C, as (2) already has got A.
So, maybe he only bids $4 for the 3A, so that he could still outbid you for the rest.

But then, you could concentrate on the 2B, which would make him bid more, so that you could concentrate on the 5C, finally. But that he doesn't want either, so he once again would have to adjust his bids.

Long story short: there are algorithms for such things leading to optimal results in terms of getting the most of different "goods" while only having limited "capacities"). Point is, by such demand-driven bargaining you (the game) can establish "market prices". This market prices are based on offer and demand, and of course would be renegotiated in certain intervals. Point is, everybody would have to pay the same price.
So, it would be easy and understandable, and you would have an incentive to be productive (to be able to offer goods) as well as wealthy (to be able to bid for goods).

(This of course is only a very brief and rough description, there would be much more mechanics like only players who have met each other are able to negotiate and whatnotmore. But I think you're getting the picture).

 

[pi-r8]

So, this would be my starting point: money comes from whereever, and I don't care about this inaccuracy.

Sorry, but you can't skip over this detail. Without an inflationary mechanism, wherever money comes from will become the most important part of the game. In civ 4 it was cottages, so people covered the map in cottages. Same thing with the trade posts of civ 5. If you want to say that every citizen produces 1$, then everyone will just try and grow their population as fast as possible.

What I'd really like is a system where the amount of money that you get from a citizen is somehow tied to their production, but I can't think of a fair way to do that. Selling their production on an open market seems like a reasonable facsimile.

Now, that we have money in the game, we can look at how it is spread. And in this area I see quite some potential for improvement.

It seems like what you describe there is just a basic market auction system. That would work, although I'm worried it might get very tedious if you have to constantly negotiate with 5 or more players for 20 different goods. I'd like to have an automatic system that would bypass the negotiation, like having a price that rises automatically when all offered goods are bought, and drops when they're not.

 

[lschnarch]

Sorry, but you can't skip over this detail. Without an inflationary mechanism, wherever money comes from will become the most important part of the game. In civ 4 it was cottages, so people covered the map in cottages. Same thing with the trade posts of civ 5. If you want to say that every citizen produces 1$, then everyone will just try and grow their population as fast as possible.

The point is, more population won't do you good when there aren't more goods on the market. The inflationary system is built-in.
See my bargaining examples: if you and the other bidder have double the population, then prices will be doubled as well (under the assumption that still only that 10 different goods are available).

It seems like what you describe there is just a basic market auction system. That would work, although I'm worried it might get very tedious if you have to constantly negotiate with 5 or more players for 20 different goods. I'd like to have an automatic system that would bypass the negotiation, like having a price that rises automatically when all offered goods are bought, and drops when they're not.

I admit that my description may not have been the very best.
My idea is that the bargaining is done by the engine. Every 5 or 10 or 17 (whatever playtesting would identify as the best interval) turns, nations meet "on the marketplace".
You see what is available (type and quantity) and determine, how much of your treasury you want to spend. In the background the AI's are doing the same.
Then the system calculates the resulting marketprices based on iterative bargaining (let's say have a loop of 5 iterations until a price is determined).
All what the player has to do is to determine how many items of a certain type he wants and how much of his money he wants to spend. You could even implement an advisor who is telling you with how much of your treasury you will have the best chances.

The number-crunching is for the machine. That's, what computers are made for.
But the player will have the guarantee that all other players bying from the same source will have to pay the same price for a certain good.

 

[pi-r8]

The point is, more population won't do you good when there aren't more goods on the market. The inflationary system is built-in.
See my bargaining examples: if you and the other bidder have double the population, then prices will be doubled as well (under the assumption that still only that 10 different goods are available).

Right but if you double your population and the other bidder doesn't, now you have twice as much money even without producing anything extra.

I admit that my description may not have been the very best.
My idea is that the bargaining is done by the engine. Every 5 or 10 or 17 (whatever playtesting would identify as the best interval) turns, nations meet "on the marketplace".
You see what is available (type and quantity) and determine, how much of your treasury you want to spend. In the background the AI's are doing the same.
Then the system calculates the resulting marketprices based on iterative bargaining (let's say have a loop of 5 iterations until a price is determined).
All what the player has to do is to determine how many items of a certain type he wants and how much of his money he wants to spend. You could even implement an advisor who is telling you with how much of your treasury you will have the best chances.

The number-crunching is for the machine. That's, what computers are made for.
But the player will have the guarantee that all other players bying from the same source will have to pay the same price for a certain good.

I think this system would be too invisible and frustrating for players, because you'd never know how much you're actually going to get until it's over. Whatever bargaining system is used could have a huge effect on who gets what. And I think you'd have to do this every turn, as long as things are being produced every turn.

 

[pi-r8]

So after discussing this with a friend who has an economics degree, I've come up with a better idea. Forget about trying to come up with any sort of fixed exchange rate between currencies, because that's impossible. And you don't need to force players to use a particular currency, either. Instead, just make certain things preferable as a currency.

How do you do that? A currency should have low intrinsic value, high scarcity, and high durability. We represent the first by what can be done with it in game: wood and marble can make buildings, but gold and gems are fairly useless. The second can be represented by making some resources difficult to produce, and a transport cost. Transporting 1 unit of gold is much easier than transporting 100 units of wood, for example. For durability, introduce two types of commodities: durable goods can be stored, but consumable goods will disappear each turn. That would include things like food and spices.

So players would be able to use whatever they want as a currency, with no fixed exchange rate. However, only a few things like gems and precious metals would be really practical for large scale trade. Players would still have to choose what their national currency is, to prevent selling at two different currencies in the same city.

 

[lschnarch]

Right but if you double your population and the other bidder doesn't, now you have twice as much money even without producing anything extra.

Therefore, I said in the beginning that "working citizens" would get this "magical money".
You have 5 farmers, 3 woodcutters, 2 miners and 3 carpenters. That makes for 13 productive people.
In addition you have 2 scientists. These are "not productive" as far as the money allocation is concerned. Their "salary" is defined by the costs of opportunity.

In my system, you have to make decisions: do I want my population work in classical productive jobs (= making money) or will I allocate them to scientific, artistic, religious, whatever jobs (implied the assumption that there is a benefit from such "specialists").

I think this system would be too invisible and frustrating for players, because you'd never know how much you're actually going to get until it's over. Whatever bargaining system is used could have a huge effect on who gets what. And I think you'd have to do this every turn, as long as things are being produced every turn.

The last argument first: of course production takes place all the time. But trade agreements could be made for 10 turns each. So, the bargaining would only have to take place every tenth turn (or whatever other interval you'd prefer).
Because I want it to be automated, it *could* even take place each and every turn, but that would indeed be confusing, as I assume.

First argument: I agree, with my system it is not guaranteed to get all the foreign resources/goods/whatever which I want.
But as long as I am not completely outbidded (can only happen when I'm completely lost in terms of economy) I will always get *some* of the desired goods. As do my opponents. And all for the same price.
No longer any "Japan trades Incense with me for 10 gold, but for 2 gold with another AI".

I am trying to explain my system in a different way:
Say, you are offering 10 goods. Nation A has 5 $, nation B has 10 $, nation C has 15 $.
If you would sell all the 10 goods to nation C, you would get $ 15. But due to the bargaining taking place in a loop, the effective price would be somewhere around $ 3/each.
You would get $ 27, nation A would get 1 each (keeping 2$), nation B would get 3 each (keeping $1) and nation C would get 5 each. At the end, you still have one good (not sold), but you've got more than purchasing the whole lot to just one bidder (in this example I assumed only integer values).
The monopolist (you) has got more than selling to only one "customer", and each customer has got at least something. And all will have payed the same price.

For me, this looks pretty simple and convincing.

So players would be able to use whatever they want as a currency, with no fixed exchange rate. However, only a few things like gems and precious metals would be really practical for large scale trade. Players would still have to choose what their national currency is, to prevent selling at two different currencies in the same city.

Now you've lost me.
In which way would this be easier to understand as principle, or easier to understand during the gameplay?
You (the player) chose "lumber" as your currency, nation A choses "wine", nation B choses "horses" and nation C choses "gems".
Now, if 30 lumber equal 7 wine, but 5 wine equal 4 horses, which in turn equal 0.3 gems.... How would this be easy to understand or at least estimate for the player?

Maybe I haven't got you right, but at the moment I don't see the benefit of such a system.

 

[Nicol.Bolas]

All of the world's largest economies thrive off of their high human capital. With this as one of the three factors of production, economies with high specialization are far more developed. By this, Japan and the United Kingdom are easily more powerful than most countries in the world, regardless greater amounts of resources and population. A skilled work force is of greater value than all the resources in the world.

They could introduce more concepts around human capital in Civilization V. In this way small, resource-less countries can become wealthier. However, the major argument against this is that massive empires could just as easily employ human capital and wider range of specialists. The basic fact of the game is that the larger you are, the more research and gold you create. By any rate, the Democratic Republic of the Congo would still be far more powerful than the United Kingdom.

A good concept that should be introduced would be the the ability to export grain. This would allow developed and productive urban areas to grow much larger faster. It would also support your population better if your empire is based in a desolate region. An area like Nebraska should be able to export large amounts of food to the massive urban areas like New York.

Japan and GB are not among the most powerful states in the world. their technological advantage is minimal to non existent compared to china and china would easily crush them both

 

[pi-r8]

Therefore, I said in the beginning that "working citizens" would get this "magical money".
You have 5 farmers, 3 woodcutters, 2 miners and 3 carpenters. That makes for 13 productive people.
In addition you have 2 scientists. These are "not productive" as far as the money allocation is concerned. Their "salary" is defined by the costs of opportunity.

In my system, you have to make decisions: do I want my population work in classical productive jobs (= making money) or will I allocate them to scientific, artistic, religious, whatever jobs (implied the assumption that there is a benefit from such "specialists").
.

First of all it's sort of weird to not have scientists or artists make money. They should have to pay income tax and contribute to GNP just like anyone else. I guess your thinking is that since they're funded by the government, they wouldn't a net financial gain for the government. That's true in the real world, but I'm assuming that in this world you're controlling everything about the country, running all the businesses and so forth, so there's no real distinction between public and private sectors.

Also, if you just leave it fixed at 1$/person, it will ignore the differences in productivity between people. Say one nation invests and upgrades their factories, which greatly boosts worker productivity. Another nation just keeps making more farms, and creates a much larger nation but with a much lower productivity. In your system, the second nation would have much more money, which doesn't seem fair.

The last argument first: of course production takes place all the time. But trade agreements could be made for 10 turns each. So, the bargaining would only have to take place every tenth turn (or whatever other interval you'd prefer).
Because I want it to be automated, it *could* even take place each and every turn, but that would indeed be confusing, as I assume.

First argument: I agree, with my system it is not guaranteed to get all the foreign resources/goods/whatever which I want.
But as long as I am not completely outbidded (can only happen when I'm completely lost in terms of economy) I will always get *some* of the desired goods. As do my opponents. And all for the same price.
No longer any "Japan trades Incense with me for 10 gold, but for 2 gold with another AI".

I am trying to explain my system in a different way:
Say, you are offering 10 goods. Nation A has 5 $, nation B has 10 $, nation C has 15 $.
If you would sell all the 10 goods to nation C, you would get $ 15. But due to the bargaining taking place in a loop, the effective price would be somewhere around $ 3/each.
You would get $ 27, nation A would get 1 each (keeping 2$), nation B would get 3 each (keeping $1) and nation C would get 5 each. At the end, you still have one good (not sold), but you've got more than purchasing the whole lot to just one bidder (in this example I assumed only integer values).
The monopolist (you) has got more than selling to only one "customer", and each customer has got at least something. And all will have payed the same price.

For me, this looks pretty simple and convincing.

I think you'd run into a lot of little problems along the way. Like, let's say that Nation A agrees to sell 10 iron to nation B for the next 10 turns. But then Nation A closes borders with nation B, or switch production to something else, or Nation C comes along and bombs Nation A to destroy their production of iron.

Now nation B won't be getting the iron they were expecting, and they can't renogiate for another 9 turns. So they can't produce steel, which they were planning on selling to Nation D, so now D is screwed. Meanwhile B and A are going bankrupt because they still have obligations to buy other stuff they no longer want. Any sort of problem would disrupt the whole world economy, which is why I think you need to have production take place at the same rate as buying/selling.

Even if nothing happened to disrupt the trade, you wouldn't be able to do any sort of planning. You wouldn't know until the auction is complete how much iron you'd actually be getting, which means that you wouldn't know how much steel you can sell to someone else.

Now you've lost me.
In which way would this be easier to understand as principle, or easier to understand during the gameplay?
You (the player) chose "lumber" as your currency, nation A choses "wine", nation B choses "horses" and nation C choses "gems".
Now, if 30 lumber equal 7 wine, but 5 wine equal 4 horses, which in turn equal 0.3 gems.... How would this be easy to understand or at least estimate for the player?

Maybe I haven't got you right, but at the moment I don't see the benefit of such a system.

There wouldn't be any official exchange rate. If lumber is your currency, and nation A wants to sell wine in one of your cities, then they sell wine for whatever price of lumber they can get there. If you want to sell lumber to them, you take it to one of their cities, and sell lumber for whatever price in wine you can get there.

However, since lumber is plentiful, you'd need a lot of lumber to be worth one gems or gold. Hauling it around would become too expensive, so you'd be better off choosing something else for your currency as soon as you can. Stuff like lumber would only work for small, local trade routes early in the game, or in areas where lumber is very scarce and not used in construction.

What I like about this system is that it achieves a maximum of realism and depth with a minimum of game rules. You can understand the rules very quickly, but understanding the strategy and implications of those rules is quite difficult. You can't expect players to wade through pages and pages of complex rules to try and understand what the heck is going on- that's one of the weaknesses of some aspects of civ, in my opinion.

 

[Hail]

The best really simple system that I can think of right now is to make gold the only currency for everything, and just make sure that gold deposits are easily reachable for everyone.

agree. gold standard all the way!
players can mint gold coins from gold(1:1 ratio). those without gold cannot mint gold coins, but can acquire gold coins by selling stuff

I think this is getting way too complicated. It sounds like you're introducing multiple currencies per player which would be too hard to keep track of. I don't want to keep track of "player 5 silver dollars", "player 3 gold dollars", etc.

the sum of all quantities of every precious metal type in player's possession back up the player's one currency

However, producing more coins should always be profitable. Suppose you have 10 units of gold, while other civs have 1 unit each of silver, gems, and ivory. The gold is worth 10/13 = 77% of the world's money. Doubling that to 20 units increases its value to 20/23 = 87%. Constant profit, but diminishing returns.

i was under the impressions that the more of some precious metal type, the less individual precious metal of said type is worth.
in your example 1g = 0.1s = 0.1gm = 0.1i. after the player doubles his gold quantity 1g = 0.05s = 0.05gm = 0.05i. e.g one gold now is two times cheaper.

i don't get the percentage of world supply thing. you mean that every gold unit gained in value because the share of gold in world supply jumped from 77% to 87%?

The other is to prevent the real problems of deflation. If nobody produces more money, but everyone is constantly producing more goods, the price of goods will drop. People will then save their money, because they can always get a better deal later. That will drop the price even more, creating a deflationary spiral that halts trade completely.

yes deflation is definitely a problem


side-note:
i read your discussion about "money from nothing" and "work rates" and i thought that we all need to turn to history for inspiration -> Wimsey's economic model


while at it i had yet other idea:
why not have money as a resource as any other?
for the sake of discussion let's suppose that 1 money = 1 paper + 1 dye
1 paper = 3 wood or 2 cotton (or whatever. it does not matter for now)

SO! after the discovery of "Currency" civs can make this new resource 'money' and 'buy with'/'sell for' money as any other resource.

consequences:
1) hmm... the supply/demand thingy should balance itself
2) deflation is resolved. any time goods "cost" little is an insensitive to manufacture more money and buy cheap goods with them

 

[pi-r8]

agree. gold standard all the way!
players can mint gold coins from gold(1:1 ratio). those without gold cannot mint gold coins, but can acquire gold coins by selling stuff

I do think that would be a pretty good simple system to start with. I'm a little worried that it might make gold mining too powerful. But anyway, since this is just for fun let's talk about the more complex systems.

i was under the impressions that the more of some precious metal type, the less individual precious metal of said type is worth.
in your example 1g = 0.1s = 0.1gm = 0.1i. after the player doubles his gold quantity 1g = 0.05s = 0.05gm = 0.05i. e.g one gold now is two times cheaper.

i don't get the percentage of world supply thing. you mean that every gold unit gained in value because the share of gold in world supply jumped from 77% to 87%?

I was suggesting that the value of one gold would be based on the the ratio between world gold and all precious metals. So you start with 10 gold and one silver, each gold is worth 1/11. Double the gold to 20, and now each gold is worth 1/21. That's a lot less, but not half, so you always profit by making more.

side-note:
i read your discussion about "money from nothing" and "work rates" and i thought that we all need to turn to history for inspiration -> Wimsey's economic model

That's interesting, it looks like he had a lot of the same ideas that I did. Unfortunately his model is based on having the game calculate trade routes for each city every turn, which would take way too much time to compute.

while at it i had yet other idea:
why not have money as a resource as any other?
for the sake of discussion let's suppose that 1 money = 1 paper + 1 dye
1 paper = 3 wood or 2 cotton (or whatever. it does not matter for now)

SO! after the discovery of "Currency" civs can make this new resource 'money' and 'buy with'/'sell for' money as any other resource.

consequences:
1) hmm... the supply/demand thingy should balance itself
2) deflation is resolved. any time goods "cost" little is an insensitive to manufacture more money and buy cheap goods with them

I'm toying with the idea of what would happen if every player could print their own money after discovering paper. I wouldn't even make it cost resources, just make it free to produce. It's advantage over any other currency would be that doesn't cost anything to transport it. But players might go crazy printing infinite money...

 

[Hail]

The last argument first: of course production takes place all the time. But trade agreements could be made for 10 turns each. So, the bargaining would only have to take place every tenth turn (or whatever other interval you'd prefer).
Because I want it to be automated, it *could* even take place each and every turn, but that would indeed be confusing, as I assume.

all trade deals last until explicitly canceled by any side.

renegotiating every some turns every deal would be a major PITA
have pity for the people playing your econ. system

(*) maybe have a notification pop up if a better deal is available on the market?

a low-MM solution is to have in the trade screen(F5) some widgets that allow the player to select which resource type and quantity he desires. the game itself finds any selling deals of the desired resource and prints the total sum of money for the resource.

e.g.
a player indicates that he needs 20 iron. let's suppose there is for sale 10 iron for $3 per unit and 20 iron $4 per unit.
the game selects all(10) iron for $3 (sum $30) and 10 iron for $4 with a total of $70. since there are no better deals the player does agree to $70. the game remembers the deal (e.g. 20 iron for $70) and if a better deal pops up, the player will get (*)

First argument: I agree, with my system it is not guaranteed to get all the foreign resources/goods/whatever which I want.
But as long as I am not completely outbid (can only happen when I'm completely lost in terms of economy) I will always get *some* of the desired goods. As do my opponents. And all for the same price.
No longer any "Japan trades Incense with me for 10 gold, but for 2 gold with another AI".

imho there is a "poor get poorer and rich get richer" feel to your econ. system in the light of magical money that are generated by population. there is already a land-grabbing snowball effect in the game. imho your trade system will add another money-generating snowball effect.

I am trying to explain my system in a different way:
Say, you are offering 10 goods. Nation A has 5 $, nation B has 10 $, nation C has 15 $.
If you would sell all the 10 goods to nation C, you would get $ 15. But due to the bargaining taking place in a loop, the effective price would be somewhere around $ 3/each.
You would get $ 27, nation A would get 1 each (keeping 2$), nation B would get 3 each (keeping $1) and nation C would get 5 each. At the end, you still have one good (not sold), but you've got more than purchasing the whole lot to just one bidder (in this example I assumed only integer values).
The monopolist (you) has got more than selling to only one "customer", and each customer has got at least something. And all will have payed the same price.

do goods actually change hands(transfer possession) or the player grants another player the right to use(rent) his goods for a set number of turns?

I'm toying with the idea of what would happen if every player could print their own money after discovering paper. I wouldn't even make it cost resources, just make it free to produce. It's advantage over any other currency would be that doesn't cost anything to transport it. But players might go crazy printing infinite money...

you would just get hyperinflation. there must be some upper limit on how much money any player can print.
however i am afraid that tying this limit to GNP or resource production might get yet another snowball effect going

I'm toying with the idea of what would happen if every player could print their own money after discovering paper. I wouldn't even make it cost resources, just make it free to produce. It's advantage over any other currency would be that doesn't cost anything to transport it. But players might go crazy printing infinite money...

you would just get hyperinflation. there must be some upper limit on how much money any player can print.
however i am afraid that tying this limit to GNP or resource production might get the snowball effect going

 

[kossmikman]

It seems to me you should really try the Victoria series from paradox interactive. It's mostly an socio-economical simulation with warfares and neo-colonalism.

 

[Elliot]

I don't see how currency would be that fun to play around with. Unless you're controlling monetary policy that is. Maybe if the game was a despot simulator? You could inflate to push down the short run unemployment rate(in a non agrarian society) but then it causes long run inflation(all else equal) which would anger your populace. Thats an interesting trade off. You could also raise money by inflating and decrease the value of your government's debt. You could inflate to make exports more attractive and imports more costly, helping out special interests in the export industry that support your government. If your people are too unhappy you'll get overthrown and lose. This sounds like the Victoria series too.

I like the idea of human capital that Derrik CB posted about in post 61. What about adding a lot of extra multiplier buildings(banks, libraries)? Cities with lots of those buildings have high human capital and cities with no buildings have low human capital. A city with a science multiplier of 5 instead of .5 will get far 10x more science out of its citizens.

 

[pi-r8]

It seems to me you should really try the Victoria series from paradox interactive. It's mostly an socio-economical simulation with warfares and neo-colonalism.

I tried out the demo for Europa Universalis 3. My initial reaction was... what the hell is this? I couldn't figure out how to do anything, meanwhile the timer kept ticking and people kept attacking me. Is Victoria any better?

@hail if players hyperinflate their own currency, no one else would use it, so it would become worthless.

 

[ohioastronomy]

I tried out the demo for Europa Universalis 3. My initial reaction was... what the hell is this? I couldn't figure out how to do anything, meanwhile the timer kept ticking and people kept attacking me. Is Victoria any better?

@hail if players hyperinflate their own currency, no one else would use it, so it would become worthless.

The game you're talking about sounds very close in spirit to Victoria II. It's a simulation of the 19th century merchantile epoch.

EU3 is what Civ would be if it was completely sandbox. There are no VCs except the ones you set for yourself (e.g. unify Italy starting as Milan, or bring back the Byzantine Empire, or conquer Europe with the Ottomans, or colonize North America as the Austrians.) It has

a very deep diplomatic simulator (alliances and royal marriages; you need to have causus belli to declare war, and can only get things related to the reason the war started; if someone gets obnoxious enough the rest of the world gangs up to cut them down to size)

a clever tech system (in a nutshell, things that other people know are easier to research; if you get too far ahead of historical benchmarks things get hard to research; small nations research tech faster than large ones do, all other things being equal)

a combat system that works surprisingly well (three flavors of troops; units larger than supply of the province suffer attrition; troop losses cause war weariness and revolts; larger empires can raise more troops and maintenance of armies and navies is a major, major cost; it costs much more to put armies on a war footing than a peacetime one; tech, terrain, and generals have a lot to do with success)

an exploratory aspect (colonize the world)

To learn it I'd take a sample nation and just try to do one thing - for example, take Portugal, play nice with Spain, and just focus on colonizing the New World and getting rich. Or England (ditch your possessions on the continent, take Scotland and Ireland, and just ignore Eurppe and colonize away). Or a small merchant republic in Germany (get rich, form Germany.) One key is that you can control the flow of time - have the clock run fast in dead spots, set it to slow when a lot is happening, pause when you need to give a lot of orders.