The Medieval Economy

[Kailric]

Ok, men, I am hatching an idea here, so going to write it to better realize it myself. We are currently limited to how much we can trade gold wise with other players because all the rulers have limited bank accounts, which handicaps the player to player deals. So, I am thinking that perhaps we could separate the revenues into two separate accounts, one for the King and one for the Cities themselves.

The Players would have their money to spend as usual, this does not change, but the cities would also have an amount to spend as well as their own desires. This would be represented as the City's Market. So, when you go to make deals with the city you don't actually have to talk to the "King" as you do now, but you simply go to a trade screen for commerce deals. And, just like now, natives cities "Desire" one certain yield, this could be expanded to included more than one yield.

Civ4 Col plays more like a Kingdom simulation rather than a King simulation. You control your subjects movements and actions, as well as your gold, but this doesn't represent the whole city, only a portion of it. There isn't only 1 serf, 1 Peasant, 1 Lumberjack, and a Carpenter living in the city, there are hundreds if not thousands of people there. What we get to manipulate is a small portion, this the Players get to control for their own enjoyment.

So, cities could be given more independent aspects so that the Player can interact with them. This could work for the Players trade deals with Foreign cities and perhaps his own cities.

This is my initial ideas, more on this later...

 

[Nightinggale]

Ok, men, I am hatching an idea here

natives cities "Desire" one certain yield, this could be expanded to included more than one yield.

I think I already mentioned an intention to expand that, but nothing ever happened due to lack of a proper design for it.

Civ4 Col plays more like a Kingdom simulation rather than a King simulation. You control your subjects movements and actions, as well as your gold, but this doesn't represent the whole city, only a portion of it. There isn't only 1 serf, 1 Peasant, 1 Lumberjack, and a Carpenter living in the city, there are hundreds if not thousands of people there. What we get to manipulate is a small portion, this the Players get to control for their own enjoyment.

There were a debate at one time in the RaR forum regarding how many people each unit represent. I think statistics sets it to 100, but it was proposed making it 10.000, which is a bit too high for early game. Either way it's way more than just a single person.

You make me think of Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim with that description of ruling a kingdom. You control what units to build and what buildings to build, but the units have a will of their own. I remember trying it online years ago and after losing my last unit, I was done for... if the enemy could get his troops to attack me. I invested all my money as a reward for destroying his castle. Driven by profits beyond their wildest dreams, half his units started attacking his castle and he lost before the rest of his units could stop them. It's too bad I don't have a recording of it. His comments were golden when he realized what was going on

So, cities could be given more independent aspects so that the Player can interact with them. This could work for the Players trade deals with Foreign cities and perhaps his own cities.

So you are saying that we should be able to bypass the foreign king and trade directly with his domestic marked? Sounds interesting, but he would presumably want import taxes. It sounds interesting, partly because it will at the same time create a proper domestic marked.

 

[Kailric]

:
So you are saying that we should be able to bypass the foreign king and trade directly with his domestic marked? Sounds interesting, but he would presumably want import taxes. It sounds interesting, partly because it will at the same time create a proper domestic marked.

Did I say that, I'm sorry, but you totally understood me correctly Yeah, I think we may be on to something here. The Import Tax idea sounds pretty cool too. When you hit the command to "Trade with city", you are actually trading with the city. Each city could have its own mini economy, which we can use the CvTradeScreen types to generate this. Their economy could be in part based on buildings, and terrain yields. The city's Resource Bar yields that says how many yields are in the city, this could actually belong to the King player. Currently, when we do trade deals we get to see this, but this could be changed so that we are doing trade with the City and not the King's Share of it. Perhaps, the capital City is where we could make trade deals with the King himself.

Even the Player's city could have this "underground economy", or background economy that they can interact with but not control in any way.

Anyway, I believe with this we could really easy set up an actual supply and demand system, that goes on under the hood. The Player can then partake of it and influence it indirectly. I would like to hear some of the other guy's thoughts on this as well.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

I am still trying to think this out in my head..

trying to think of the how, and the positive/negative of the system...

So in essence this would (in some ways) be an invisible Trade Screen.

With a set of +/- rules for total city treasury, price of goods, demand and supply.

So for example:
City produces yield X. -price, +supply, -demand, +income(total income is 'global average price' x 'quantity of production')
City doesn't produce yield Y. +price, -supply, +demand, -income. (because it has to buy goods)

What does this do that the current 'kings only' system doesn't do?

Would it be that there is more gold around (because there are now two gold producers, kingdom and city) or is it just that gold would be more 'spread about' because you have 1000 here, 1000 there and 1000 way up there. Rather than a single pot of gold for an entire empire.

So then we need to figure out what the goal is for this system, have more gold, or spread gold more 'widely' meaning you have to go further and more places to get the gold, rather than just the town on the edge of the kingdom.

If the goal is more gold, then surely what we need to do is make the AI better at getting gold.

If it is goal number two, to make you have to go further to get gold, then that could be interesting, what would the implications be for AI trading and automated trading?

Currently the system of diplo trade is local goods, global money right? So each town you start a diplo trade in has a different set of goods, but the same amount of gold, right?

The other implication is waht does 'town money' mean to the player?

For example, if we introduce the idea of 'city needs' that you have to supply in order to keep people in some way 'better', will a big city that produces lots of goods (or more expensive goods) take care of itself more? Because it has it's own supply of money to buy what it needs.

Or will it be entirely disconnected from the players game experience, beyond the fact that the AI can make more money off the larger cities in your empire?

 

[Kailric]

I am still trying to think this out in my head..

Wow, I have to do the same to your post, you asked a lot of questions

So in essence this would (in some ways) be an invisible Trade Screen.

No, it would be somewhat visible every time you traded with a city.

What does this do that the current 'kings only' system doesn't do?

It could simulate an actual medieval economy. Right now, all we have is a small portion of what the economy represents. It's not really the "kings" portion, its the portion Players are allowed to play with. Like Night and I mentioned, there are hundreds and thousands of other civilians living in the realm, these people are not represented at all other than statistics. They make up the ghost economy.

Would it be that there is more gold around (because there are now two gold producers, kingdom and city) or is it just that gold would be more 'spread about' because you have 1000 here, 1000 there and 1000 way up there. Rather than a single pot of gold for an entire empire.

There would be a better and perhaps more realistic chance for trade. The Players will get to participate in this with their small portion, building up their power and influence as usual, except with a more opportune trading simulation.

So then we need to figure out what the goal is for this system, have more gold, or spread gold more 'widely' meaning you have to go further and more places to get the gold, rather than just the town on the edge of the kingdom.

If the goal is more gold, then surely what we need to do is make the AI better at getting gold.

If it is goal number two, to make you have to go further to get gold, then that could be interesting, what would the implications be for AI trading and automated trading?

Again, the goal is to simulate an actual economy rather than having would be Kings making deals with would be Kings while the rest of the world carries on without them. You would not only play the role of a King, but also a trading empire mogul, very much not kingly.

Currently the system of diplo trade is local goods, global money right? So each town you start a diplo trade in has a different set of goods, but the same amount of gold, right?

No, not the same amount of gold. We would need to come up with a system of how much of yields would be present and how much of a market would there be for the Player's goods. There is currently an invisible market happening in the Native's cities. The player trades them goods and the city will destroy a bunch of it, producing gold from pc memory alone that is given to that native player. I am saying that we should expand this, make it more realistic and creative and allow the player to take a bigger part in it.

 

[Kailric]

I am really starting to think that splitting city economies away from King's revenue is the way to go for M:C. In vanilla it makes sense as you play the role of an entrepreneur and colonial leader, in subjection to his king, and your cities pretty much belong to the king. But in M:C you are an independent King, who also gets to play the role of an entrepreneur.

Natives in vanilla already act like their own little market places, so I am thinking we can expand on that and included all the player cities in this expansion as well. Natives are just part of the playing field and their Chiefs don't do anything with their yields. But in M:C the native cities play a more central role.

Thus, Player's would then trade with cities for yields and not the Kings themselves. Players would have their own small part of a city's total business. Cities would be considered to have their own invisible economy taking place (just like Natives do now), however influenced by all Player's workers, buildings, traders, etc.

Cities wouldn't have a Gold limit but rather a supply and demand limit. If they are full of Grapes and no one wants to buy them for any price then you'll have to go somewhere else to sell your grapes. Supply and Demand would be partly based on city size. Sometime soon I'll work up more of a plan for this. What's the pros and cons, likes dislikes?

 

[Nightinggale]

I am really starting to think that splitting city economies away from King's revenue is the way to go for M:C. In vanilla it makes sense as you play the role of an entrepreneur and colonial leader, in subjection to his king, and your cities pretty much belong to the king. But in M:C you are an independent King, who also gets to play the role of an entrepreneur.

Sounds like a good idea, though I would like "your own kingdom" to be something you enable in XML, not replace the current DLL behaviour. Remember the goal is that the DLL should support everything and make the mods using it as diverse as possible. It shouldn't just be reskinned versions of each other.

Cities wouldn't have a Gold limit but rather a supply and demand limit. If they are full of Grapes and no one wants to buy them for any price then you'll have to go somewhere else to sell your grapes. Supply and Demand would be partly based on city size. Sometime soon I'll work up more of a plan for this. What's the pros and cons, likes dislikes?

I looked into iMercantileFactor today (which I renamed to iMercantileModifier to stay consistent with changes/modifier naming). It is in fact quite simple, but we might want to change this anyway.

It works like this:
When trading in Europe, there is a counter for how much you have sold or bought, which affect prices. MercantileModifier is added to the traded amount, meaning if you trade 10 and you have -25% MercantileModifier (like the vanilla traits), then only 75 will count in the counter. This makes the price changing code view this as you trade less and it will compensate less with price drops/rises.

There is only huge problem though. If I read this correctly, if player A and B both trade in the same trade screen and A has -25%, B gain this ability while trading because it is the combined value of all players using the trade screen. Even worse, if they both have -25%, they will stack up and end up reducing traded amount by 43.75%.

Since players now share trade screens rather than having one for each player, we should consider a redesign of this feature (or just dump it).

 

[Kailric]

Yeah, I was going to mention that this should be xml moddable. I would still like to retain the vanilla Independence theme as there are plenty of Historical mods that could use it.

Since players now share trade screens rather than having one for each player, we should consider a redesign of this feature (or just dump it).

Yes, this should be redesigned. I'm not sure how this is handled in M:C now, or if it was incorporated into the new CvTradeScreens code at all. Not even sure how we should use it even now.