The Medieval Economy

[Nightinggale]

Done.

I committed and merged back into AI_trader. I even deleted the center_plot branch as we have no further use for it. As it turned out, I could have skipped making a branch because nobody else committed while I was working on this. However that was impossible to know when I started.

I like the end result. The code is fairly clean and the ingame result feels complete and as an integrated part, which belongs where it is.

 

[Kailric]

Done.

I committed and merged back into AI_trader. I even deleted the center_plot branch as we have no further use for it. As it turned out, I could have skipped making a branch because nobody else committed while I was working on this. However that was impossible to know when I started.

I like the end result. The code is fairly clean and the ingame result feels complete and as an integrated part, which belongs where it is.

Did this change what I did with Natives being able to produce multiple yields from the center plot? Until we fix Natives aka Minor Civs they actually need to be able to produce more than one yield from center plot as that is the only way they will gain certain yields. Like before Spices would always be produced first ( because they are further up in the Yields list) and no Natives city would produce Grapes or Barley, thus never have any for sale.

Also, don't miss my previous post on Market Exchanges two post up.

 

[Nightinggale]

Also, stock piling say Furs is basically money in the bank as you can always at any time load them up and sell a whole bunch all at once.

Building a domestic economy is a must if you lack people to trade with. Maybe war is preventing your from sending traders. Maybe the pope figured out traders are demons. We can make up all sorts of scenarios where trading is hard/impossible.

However the code is likely not working as intended (not bugs, more gameplay/balance issues). The prices should be so high that it could be beneficial to buy something from a foreign country and sell it to your people.

We could also add the concept of happiness and make random events where the chance of them occurring depends on happiness. Other factors, such as food needed to grow a new unit could also be affected by how well you supply your people with the stuff they want.

We need the domestic marked. If people do not use it as it is now (myself included), then we need to rethink some practical issues.

 

[Nightinggale]

Did this change what I did with Natives being able to produce multiple yields from the center plot?

Arrgghhhh

I deleted it intentionally as it was part of the broken code and thought "I need to reimplement this in a better way" and then I forgot all about it

I updated CvCity::getNumCityPlotYields() to allow natives to produce an extra yield type on city plots. I planned to have this function controlled purely by XML, but this quick modification was.... quick. Let's see how the AI respond to the new code before we touch it any further. It might be good enough as it is right now.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

On the Market System, I agree we need a reimagining.

Clearly we need markets in our cities, (Just about everywhere in the world has markets through out history) but just getting a bit of gold doesn't seem all that important as we have lots of ways to get gold.

So we either need to implement heavy costs on our empires. (which we are hoping to do anyway)
So that making money every turn and making more money becomes absolutely essential.

Or as you both have suggested in different ways we change the ultimate role of markets.

Markets have never 'really' been about government income...

They are more about acquiring personal goods.

Both your ideas are very interesting.

Kail with exchanging Yield X for Y, but that again feels like the same role all our other traders are doing, either from 'natives' or trade screens.

So again how much would we use it...it could be good as a 'lazy' way to do something like trickle tools into a city, you just exchange the main good(s) of that city for the city specific buildy yield you need at that time, tools or weapons/armour.

But that kind of feels even more of a cheat than what a lot of people dislike about the trade screens, the sort of 'magical goods supply' at least with the trade screen you have to travel and build ships and transports and such.

We have talked before about the idea of 'personal demands' where people want stuff, and if they get it something good happens.

This has mostly been looked at from the perspective of the ability to sell your yields and get money for them and the ensuing discussion of 'real world economics'.

As a side question, how well do you do in your games at producing a good fealty value for your empire? Personally mine is always mostly in the toilet. I like big cities, but I never seem to have enough fealty going.

A high fealty brings wit hit lots of benefits:
Unit Strength
Production Bonus
Immigration? (is it that or the other one that gets a boost from fealty production?)
...

Ok maybe it is just a few, but the production bonus is city wide (which is a lot of things) and the unit strength pretty much affects every unit in your army, so the effect is as big as your army.

Could the market be another way to make fealty (seems a bit boring though) something like a % increase to fealty production in line with a percentage of needs met, and how many merchants there are. Perhaps with a hover box that shows the total 'max' consumption of each yield in your cities based on its population amount and types.

This doesn't seem like all that exciting an idea though...especially if everyone else can make a 'fine' amount of fealty.

Fealty is quite powerful though and I always struggle to make it when I go for big city empire...

It might give a good motivation for diverse production, or acquiring every kind of yield, because a well dispersed, diverse, yield quantity across all cities, makes for a happier more unified empire, which allows you to have a more powerful army and a larger 'foreign income' (by boosting your overall production for trade ventures) that then pays your costs and such.

Domestic Income is sort of represented less by selling goods at home, and more about building goods and selling them in foreign markets. You don't pay for any of the goods your people make, except in the time/food cost that Kailric has often mentioned, so this free acqusition of goods kind of represents GDP and the domestic economy.

It is then up to you as a leader to capitalise this by finding and exploiting foreign markets. (If you want Gold).

As well as dealing with the various risks associated with foreign venture like getting killed.

 

[Kailric]

Building a domestic economy is a must if you lack people to trade with. Maybe war is preventing your from sending traders. Maybe the pope figured out traders are demons. We can make up all sorts of scenarios where trading is hard/impossible.

However the code is likely not working as intended (not bugs, more gameplay/balance issues). The prices should be so high that it could be beneficial to buy something from a foreign country and sell it to your people.

We could also add the concept of happiness and make random events where the chance of them occurring depends on happiness. Other factors, such as food needed to grow a new unit could also be affected by how well you supply your people with the stuff they want.

We need the domestic marked. If people do not use it as it is now (myself included), then we need to rethink some practical issues.

Yes, you are correct from an M:C stand point. In my current situation I have no problem making deals, but that wouldn't always be so. What about the Market Exchange idea, or did you choose to ignore it The Market Exchange would be separate from the Plotgroup Markets actually, so that would not interfere with each other.

 

[Kailric]

Kail with exchanging Yield X for Y, but that again feels like the same role all our other traders are doing, either from 'natives' or trade screens.

So again how much would we use it...it could be good as a 'lazy' way to do something like trickle tools into a city, you just exchange the main good(s) of that city for the city specific buildy yield you need at that time, tools or weapons/armour.

But that kind of feels even more of a cheat than what a lot of people dislike about the trade screens, the sort of 'magical goods supply' at least with the trade screen you have to travel and build ships and transports and such.

Good points to ponder there. The Market exchange wouldn't be focused on money generation but more like a means to balance out some of your current Production. Say you needed 3 more Tools per turn to max out your WeaponSmiths production and the Barley you have isn't being used for anything, so you Exchange Barley for Tools. Anyway, this idea is evolving as I type and listen to your replies

This doesn't seem like all that exciting an idea though...especially if everyone else can make a 'fine' amount of fealty.

Fealty is quite powerful though and I always struggle to make it when I go for big city empire...

Good ideas here too and we have discussed such things before, just never settled on an implementation. Anyway, in my current game I haven't even touched Fealty except by the AI when I tell a Unit to join a city and he starts producing Fealty before I ever get around to moving him elsewhere with the immediate goal of making more money or producing Weapons/Armor. That's the thing with me I focus more on those kinds of production than on Fealty early in the game, and I am sure many players do the same thing. Fealty has its benefits of course but it takes way too long to build it up to make it worth while early on.

It would be nice to have a means to do this however, that doesn't take away from your early goals of Money and Arms production. So, placing thinking cap on to ponder these ideas...

Edit: Yes, Fealty helps with Immigration, but not main factor, Religion still is and Education some too.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Yes, that is my exact same situation when it comes to fealty.

It takes so long so why bother early on, but then I find later on I still don't produce enough to make a dent in my total fealty.

In more recent games, I have tried to employ my first noble (the one that you start with from the soldier) to produce fealty, mainly to get the FFs. (particularly the -travel time guy in the start of the list as I am trade screen mad).

But then much like you, as I put a few guys into the city, my fealty growth seems to be non-existant, I still keep ast it because of it's effect on one of those combo yields (culture or immigration) but the longer that little fealty bar doesn't move, the more I feel it is just a waste of effort...

Also did you see my edit in the other post, after the quoted line.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

With Fealty, I always feel like I should make it, but it doesn't REALLY matter if I don't succeed, because it is not that essential, the production and strength boost is 'nice' but.....meh the effort never really seems to pay off.

Which is a bit ridiculous when we are actually talking about the representation of how loyal your people are to you and your empire!!

If a King knew that less that 10% of his citizens felt 'loyal' to him, I don't think he would go to sleep feeling all that safe, happy or secure!

 

[orlanth]

How about letting the proportion of local Demand that is satisfied affect fealty in that city (with an upward effect for >50% of total demand fulfilled and a downward effect at small proportion of demand fullfilled); this would give more importance to keeping your citizens demands fulfilled and make it more achievable to get high rates if you govern well. It already has a lot more bonuses attached to it than vanilla, so still should be hard to get though with more of a focus on the late game.

 

[Nightinggale]

How about letting the proportion of local Demand that is satisfied affect fealty in that city (with an upward effect for >50% of total demand fulfilled and a downward effect at small proportion of demand fullfilled);

Great idea, though actual numbers and limits should be in XML.

Fealty is city based meaning it would likely be better to change the domestic marked to be city based as well. It will not drown in micromanagement if we add a checkbox "automatic import goods to supply local marked demands" and then let feeder service takes care of the actual distribution.

Likewise we could consider adding some "export surplus" button without having to individually set that up for each yield.

 

[Kailric]

Also did you see my edit in the other post, after the quoted line.

Yep, went back and read the full post again just to be sure.

With Fealty, I always feel like I should make it, but it doesn't REALLY matter if I don't succeed, because it is not that essential, the production and strength boost is 'nice' but.....meh the effort never really seems to pay off.

Which is a bit ridiculous when we are actually talking about the representation of how loyal your people are to you and your empire!!

If a King knew that less that 10% of his citizens felt 'loyal' to him, I don't think he would go to sleep feeling all that safe, happy or secure!

That reminds of the of King Julien(from the Madagascar cartoon) show on netflix, there was one person in his entire Kingdom that did not like him and he was bound and determined (he was depressed, couldn't sleep, etc) to figure out who it was and make them love him.

Yeah, we should rethink how Fealty should work in M:C and scratch the vanilla formula. As you clearly pointed out it just doesn't make sense to keep using that old code. Perhaps, starting with the ideas in the Fealty thread that you posted recently Lib.

How about letting the proportion of local Demand that is satisfied affect fealty in that city (with an upward effect for >50% of total demand fulfilled and a downward effect at small proportion of demand fulfilled); this would give more importance to keeping your citizens demands fulfilled and make it more achievable to get high rates if you govern well. It already has a lot more bonuses attached to it than vanilla, so still should be hard to get though with more of a focus on the late game.

We sound like a cat chasing his tail on some of these issues, we keep going round and round, but maybe we will eventually come to a unanimous solution. By demands being fulfilled are we selling the Yields to the locals for profit? There we have the trickle problem again where it is better profit wise to sell your Goods all at once to have that cash on hand to buy the things you need for your Empire to grow faster.

It also takes quite a while to produce all the Yields in order to fulfill on the demands, and to buy the expensive Yields like final products in the current state would be gimping your Kingdom as you need that Gold for Specialist, building materials, Weapons, and Armor.

My vision for the Economy is one based on how it was it actual history. In vanilla Col Players are pretty much self-sufficient, they produce all their own raw goods and the final products and take home all the gold minus the Kings share of course. This was not how it was in Medieval times. Trading with your neighbors was huge. You would trade for what they did best for what you could do best. The wool in England was traded to Flanders, turned into Cloth, then traded back to England. Certain goods could only be obtained from specific areas. There where plenty of Monopolies then and I would love to see that introduced to M:C, where the player strives to corner the market in a certain good so he can reap great fortune.

All of this is doable, it can be done, we just have to put the peaces together to make it work in a fun and balanced way.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

With the 'local market/fulfill demands/make happy/get more fealty'.....system. (Trying saying that three times fast).

It isn't about making money. Your money making 'economy' is your foreign markets, taking what you have and selling it some place else (trade screen, foreign city, etc.)

Your Domestic Market is all about 'Population Satisfaction'.
(Think Rome and the Grain shipments from Egypt, without it Rome was so big it would starve)

For the total percentage of 'personal demand' met,
(which would be the individual yield demands for each unit type (which I am sure we have already we jsut don't use it right?), added together and shown as total yield amounts in the market hover. 5 food, 6 barley, 2 grape, etc.)
that is the percentage boost to fealty you get.
This could just be 0-100% or 0-200% (percentage demand met x2) or whatever feels like a worthwhile amount.
There could even be milestones that add a base quantity of featly, 10%= +1 Fealty, 20% = +2 Fealty, whatever.
Number and quality of working merchants could also effect the total fealty boost. 1 merchant makes it percentage x1, 2 merchants x2, pro. merchant is x2, etc.

If The AI of feeder service (or the applicable bit of ai code as suggested by night) took this into account for transportation also, there would be very little micromanagement issues involved.
You just have to make sure you have the needed quantities in your kingdom.
We could even perhaps have an Empire wide demand screen somewhere that shows the total demand of all the yields across the empire, (and perhaps how much of it is currently met so you can see your shortfalls) so all you need to do is make sure your cities are connected, and you have that much stuff coming into your empire, then feeder and transports distribute it where it is needed.

So Domestic Markets produce happiness and unity, leading to a more powerful army(morale) and a more productive society(loyalty to the empire), which gives you more goods for 'free' (as in not for gold).

Foreign Markets are where you get the gold for your empire, so in order to be a truly 'prosperous' Empire and have 'Global Influence' which is the ability to use gold to acquire the various stuffs that require gold.
You have to take your Domestic Market goods to foreign locations.

Also like the British Empire did (and many others besides) you can get raw resources from foreigners, add manufacturing, and flog back the result for a profit.

Just incase it isn't apparent, basic pop. types like serfs would require very little to be satisfied, where as pros and lux/nobles would require all manner of high end goods, thus making a 'more skilled' empire, more expensive/difficult to maintain, than a subservient cattle like population.

BACK TO THE FIELDS YOU DOGS!!

 

[Nightinggale]

You just have to make sure you have the needed quantities in your kingdom.
We could even perhaps have an Empire wide demand screen somewhere that shows the total demand of all the yields across the empire, (and perhaps how much of it is currently met so you can see your shortfalls) so all you need to do is make sure your cities are connected, and you have that much stuff coming into your empire, then feeder and transports distribute it where it is needed.

We have this thing called "Domestic Advisor". It loops all cities and displays stuff like number of stored yields and similar info. How about.... just expanding that to display yield demands?
If we get really fancy, the city can tell how many turns the warehouse is able to supply the demand before requiring more imports.

So Domestic Markets produce happiness and unity, leading to a more powerful army(morale) and a more productive society(loyalty to the empire), which gives you more goods for 'free' (as in not for gold).

The problem with that approach is that it will require the ability to rule a "moneyless" empire. Foreign trading can be beneficial, but at the same time it should not be a must because it isn't always possible.

Also imagine the scenario where you sell barley to some other civ. If it just donates the barley to the citizens, then it will run out of money and be unable to buy more from you. Ideally if we sum up the money owned by all players combined, it should steadily grow each turn. If we just trade with other civs, we will move money between civs and the combined amount of money will not increase. In fact it will drop because we spend money on taxes, workers and stuff like that and eventually the world can run out of money.

Currently the world do gain new money all the time because the stupid AI is still using the old Europe screen where it sells all the surplus yields. If the AI gets smart enough to handle domestic trading instead, we will be ruined.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Well, at the moment, you already rule a moneyless society (more or less) as you don't actually NEED gold for anything.

It lets you do some cool stuff like change civics, by supplies and pop., rush buildings etc. but you don't NEED to do any of that.

So essentially right now, the 'money' in a domestic economy is all 'under the hood' people go out to work (you never actually pay them) they give you the grapes from their farm (you never actually pay them) you give the grapes to your wine makers, (they never actually pay you) they give you their wine (you never actually pay them) you sell the wine to the trade screen(or foriegn civ) and you get money.

If we seriously want to argue for a 'realistic' domestic economy and having money from it, then you can't really ignore all these transactions... (My personal preference is to call the whole thing 'even' and move on)

The only Yield that I would say would domestically generate 'money' is silver (or other coinage materials) via some kind of mint building.

So if silver costs 20, it should generate 20+X when coined through a mint.

The X could also be boosted by the fealty level (like other production) so a 'loyal' empire also represents a 'strong' currency.

And yes, domestic advisor would be a fine place to store yield demands for cities, and the fancy sounds good too.

What might be nice is an extra Empire Screen (a bit like the ref one that shows your total Army, verses Pope total Army, as well as total fealty) as a slightly easier read, that would have every yield displayed (In a similar way to each type of unit) that shows the total amount of each yield needed across the Empire, and how much of it you currently succeed in providing.

So:
Barley: 30/12

As well as a bar that shows your empire wide demand supply average. (Maybe..not sure if this would be of any use..)
But it would show you at a glance that you need to produce/purchase 18 more Barley, in order to get the satisfaction to 100%, then transport ai (if you have sufficient transports) will make sure it gets from wherever it is, to where ever it needs to be.

Then if you are sure you are making 'that much barley' but for some reason the satisfaction isn't changing, you can go to the domestic advisor to see what cities are not recieving their goods, and then you know where you need to look to figure out why.

 

[Nightinggale]

Well, at the moment, you already rule a moneyless society (more or less) as you don't actually NEED gold for anything.

Improvement building? There are actually some domestic features, which needs money and we plan to add more.


I suddenly remembered that the centre plot never gained a proper string. I decided to add one and I think that's it for that feature. Now I can't think of anything else, which is missing. Naturally the number of yields is a mostly unused feature, but it will stay that way for now. (it's always 3 for natives and 2 for everybody else).

 

[Kailric]

Well, at the moment, you already rule a moneyless society (more or less) as you don't actually NEED gold for anything.

I NEED gold to buy Specialists. For me Unit acquisition is the main reason for Gold, as it is the Specialist that really start to make your empire churn.

If we seriously want to argue for a 'realistic' domestic economy and having money from it, then you can't really ignore all these transactions... (My personal preference is to call the whole thing 'even' and move on)

Right, so I'm calling it even also. Col is unique in that we actually control exactly what our citizens do and take all their profit also. We are not really Kings or Rulers but rather Administrators/Tax Collectors, pointing fingers at each citizen, you do this, you do that, and then give me what you get.

What might be nice is an extra Empire Screen (a bit like the ref one that shows your total Army, verses Pope total Army, as well as total fealty) as a slightly easier read, that would have every yield displayed (In a similar way to each type of unit) that shows the total amount of each yield needed across the Empire, and how much of it you currently succeed in providing.

So:
Barley: 30/12

As well as a bar that shows your empire wide demand supply average. (Maybe..not sure if this would be of any use..)
But it would show you at a glance that you need to produce/purchase 18 more Barley, in order to get the satisfaction to 100%, then transport ai (if you have sufficient transports) will make sure it gets from wherever it is, to where ever it needs to be.

Then if you are sure you are making 'that much barley' but for some reason the satisfaction isn't changing, you can go to the domestic advisor to see what cities are not recieving their goods, and then you know where you need to look to figure out why.

The problem with this is coding it all, balancing it, and then making it fun to manage. When there is already so much to do. There is actual "demands" happening in my kingdom now. My lone Baker is demanding Spice, so I need to automate a Trader to get that for him, which my Trader is currently out diverging a load of Furs to another town that needs it. I have three towns demanding goods so they can finish building their projects, so I need to distribute some stuff to them. My Armorsmith in Canterbury is demanding more Tools so he can make "us" some Chain Mail, the list goes on. Yes, I am working to get it all automated with Import/Export and Feeder but it takes time and the right man power to get it all set up so you can just press one button.

In other words, it is already taxing to keep up with the Actual real game demands. And I am afraid that adding in Market demands for Citizens will just become a major pain, especially if it is required for End Game victory. Right now the local market is just a side show and you can do it if you want.

I suddenly remembered that the centre plot never gained a proper string. I decided to add one and I think that's it for that feature. Now I can't think of anything else, which is missing. Naturally the number of yields is a mostly unused feature, but it will stay that way for now. (it's always 3 for natives and 2 for everybody else).

Ok, cool, this is save game compatible right, I don't want to lose my current saved game if I merge it all?

I am going to finish out the functionality of the AI Traders now, as I need that done so I can better manage my current empire. I want to add a better visual way to see what options you have for each Yield in the City. As game turns pass you select different settings for different situations and if the situations change you need to be reminded to change your yield settings as well. And if all the settings are hidden in a popup menu you have no idea what is doing what. We have a visual for Import/Export so I need to add this for AI Traders also.

 

[Nightinggale]

Ok, cool, this is save game compatible right, I don't want to lose my current saved game if I merge it all?

It should be. If not, you can always use the git log to hard reset back to any revision you want (note uncommitted and unpushed modifications will be deleted)

I am going to finish out the functionality of the AI Traders now, as I need that done so I can better manage my current empire. I want to add a better visual way to see what options you have for each Yield in the City. As game turns pass you select different settings for different situations and if the situations change you need to be reminded to change your yield settings as well. And if all the settings are hidden in a popup menu you have no idea what is doing what. We have a visual for Import/Export so I need to add this for AI Traders also.

I said something about making a python screen just for managing yields in a city. I still don't know how to handle that though.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Improvement Building:
You don't NEED to build improvements, it just makes your economy better if you do.
All base yields can be produced straight off the land.

Even Prospecting for Ore isn't a NEED if you find and control an iron bonus.

Spice is the 1 thing that you cannot get yourself, but you can use your nations goods to get that as well.

Specialists:
As I said (with buying pop.), you don't NEED a specialist to make any yield. It just makes it better.

The point I am trying to make is that you don't NEED a domestic gold economy for your empire to function, as all the domestic activities can be done for free with enough time and city locations which is a representation of the domestic income or GDP.
Everything just gets done behind the scenes so the domestic comings and goings are evened out by the creation of goods.

Which for me is a fine system of domestic economy simulation.

An isolated economy will stagnate, because to have gold to do all these increased production things, improvements, etc. you need to be working with or engaged with foreign markets and influences.

You don't NEED gold, but we all WANT gold because that is part of the game.

If you want gold, you need to put in the effort of attaining foreign market shares.

If we do add in a costs system, like wages for soldiers, buildings, etc. We do already have plenty of ways to make plenty of money, and we could even have some basic militia type units that don't require a wage or gold cost of any kind, but if you go up against an enemy that has paid for soldiers....you be dead son! As well as 'House' level industries could have no upkeep cost.

You would need gold to thrive as an empire, but not survive as a community/nation. (plenty of cultures survive without money, they just aren't much of anything in terms of empire or power on the world stage.)

 

[Kailric]

If we do add in a costs system, like wages for soldiers, buildings, etc.

Yes, we will add this in at some point, maybe once I get all the kinks out of the current build.

You would need gold to thrive as an empire, but not survive as a community/nation. (plenty of cultures survive without money, they just aren't much of anything in terms of empire or power on the world stage.)

But, you do Need gold in order to Win the game, if nothing else. If you simply stocked piled your gold, never improving your Empire you will not win the game. You Need a full functioning economy that produces lots of Military goods and the man power to weld them to win your Conquest. If not for that, yeah, it wouldn't really matter other than for simulation.