Types of economies
- Thread starter absimiliard
- Start date
madscientist
RPC Supergenius
Then again there is a very old quote
"Just win Baby!"
"Just win Baby!"
absimiliard
Warlord
So Ibian, does that mean you're actually leaning towards defining an economy as how you develop your lands? SE/CE basically?
That doesn't really cover Obsolete's SSE (or Wonder Economy, however you like to term it) though does it? Though I guess it might in that he does have specific strategies for land-development in his capitol, and he does generally go with "anything other than cottages" for the rest of his empire too.
Would that imply that we need to be rethinking our definitions so that we really are looking at Farm Economy and Cottage Economy again? Because boy would I prefer to avoid the acrimony that rampaged through the early SE vs. FE debates.
{edit}@Mad: Of course, just win. But exploring the most extreme "pure" econs can help when you actually implement a hybid econ in a real game. So yeah, just win is true, but the discussion is still useful.
-abs
That doesn't really cover Obsolete's SSE (or Wonder Economy, however you like to term it) though does it? Though I guess it might in that he does have specific strategies for land-development in his capitol, and he does generally go with "anything other than cottages" for the rest of his empire too.
Would that imply that we need to be rethinking our definitions so that we really are looking at Farm Economy and Cottage Economy again? Because boy would I prefer to avoid the acrimony that rampaged through the early SE vs. FE debates.
{edit}@Mad: Of course, just win. But exploring the most extreme "pure" econs can help when you actually implement a hybid econ in a real game. So yeah, just win is true, but the discussion is still useful.
-abs
There are really 2 aspects to a full economy. One part is CE vs SE, the other is hammers.
Hammers can come from both land and priests/engineers, but specialists will never rival land production so it doesnt make much sense to distinguish there, unless its a cottage city that gets all its production from specialists or something similarly extreme.
Hammers can be converted to gold, beakers, culture, and wonders which themselves produce great people and culture as well as their own specific effects.
Then there is food. Food is what drives everything else, and as such can be considered *the* source behind all other sources, or it can simply be viewed as the Master Source that gets converted into other things.
My own line of thinking here is "how can i best convert food into what i want?".
Its a matter of looking at what you have and where it comes from, and then looking at how it is converted.
Hammers can come from both land and priests/engineers, but specialists will never rival land production so it doesnt make much sense to distinguish there, unless its a cottage city that gets all its production from specialists or something similarly extreme.
Hammers can be converted to gold, beakers, culture, and wonders which themselves produce great people and culture as well as their own specific effects.
Then there is food. Food is what drives everything else, and as such can be considered *the* source behind all other sources, or it can simply be viewed as the Master Source that gets converted into other things.
My own line of thinking here is "how can i best convert food into what i want?".
Its a matter of looking at what you have and where it comes from, and then looking at how it is converted.
madscientist
RPC Supergenius
Hammers also come from buildings, resources, civics, and traits.
Buildings you get the modifiers like forges, but you also get the +2 per AP religion building. You also get hammers from dikes/levees although this does fall back to worked tiles
Resources add certain modifiers to certain buildings. Stone 100% to walls, castles, certain wonders. tec...
Civics: SP get's you +10%, caste system gets you +1 per workshop. OR get's you an additional +25% modifier to buildings while PS get's +25% to military production.
Traits get's you hammers for key buildings or wonders (If industrious).
Just to clarify that there is more to hammers than just worked tiles and specialists.
In my opinion An economy is what you do with your citizens.
If you have your citizens working comerce producing tiles, production, and food tiles you find yourself with a ,Land Economy(you derive your nessesary materials from the land. If you Optimise the land around your cities to be further specialized for food, Production (this encompases the WE, and Hammer economy) or commerce (comerce economy)
If your citizens are working food producing tiles and specialists producing Production,Wealth and reaserch you have a Specialist economy
And finally If your citizens are working Comerce, Production, and food tiles, a have cities specialized for diferent uses( wealth, Reaserch, military, GPPs, Wonders, espionage, culture ect...) and have the whole surported by situational specialists you find yourself with, in the words of Mad Scientist, a Hybrid Economy
Religious Economies and others mentioned are not 'really' economies just styles of play
If you have your citizens working comerce producing tiles, production, and food tiles you find yourself with a ,Land Economy(you derive your nessesary materials from the land. If you Optimise the land around your cities to be further specialized for food, Production (this encompases the WE, and Hammer economy) or commerce (comerce economy)
If your citizens are working food producing tiles and specialists producing Production,Wealth and reaserch you have a Specialist economy
And finally If your citizens are working Comerce, Production, and food tiles, a have cities specialized for diferent uses( wealth, Reaserch, military, GPPs, Wonders, espionage, culture ect...) and have the whole surported by situational specialists you find yourself with, in the words of Mad Scientist, a Hybrid Economy
Religious Economies and others mentioned are not 'really' economies just styles of play
InvisibleStalke
Emperor
There is definitely a religious economy, although I think its better called a Religious/Wonder Economy.
The following wonders:
- University of Sankore
- Spiral Minaret
- Statue of Liberty
- Apolostic Palace
- Great Lighthouse
Are wonders that give a benefit even to a size one city. (At least once it has a few buildings). You can base an economy on REXing to the hilt and then using these wonders to fuel your science, production and cash. Combined with shrine income it works and the bulk of the income need not come from population.
It runs out of steam in the space race, but its extremely viable for military wins during renaissance. I've played a game using this approach where my cities got whipped down badly and the economy just kept running even when my number of citizens was halved - so I couldn't call it a cottage or specialist economy. I got very little income from cottages because the culture slider was very high for the war (I had the Statue of Zeus and deliberately left the wars running as they hurt my opponents even more). Technically specialists contributed a lot - from mercantilism + representation + SOL. But I ran very few population based specialists so I wouldn't really call it a SE.
The following wonders:
- University of Sankore
- Spiral Minaret
- Statue of Liberty
- Apolostic Palace
- Great Lighthouse
Are wonders that give a benefit even to a size one city. (At least once it has a few buildings). You can base an economy on REXing to the hilt and then using these wonders to fuel your science, production and cash. Combined with shrine income it works and the bulk of the income need not come from population.
It runs out of steam in the space race, but its extremely viable for military wins during renaissance. I've played a game using this approach where my cities got whipped down badly and the economy just kept running even when my number of citizens was halved - so I couldn't call it a cottage or specialist economy. I got very little income from cottages because the culture slider was very high for the war (I had the Statue of Zeus and deliberately left the wars running as they hurt my opponents even more). Technically specialists contributed a lot - from mercantilism + representation + SOL. But I ran very few population based specialists so I wouldn't really call it a SE.
Mr. Civtastic
Prince
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2006
- Messages
- 488
I differentiate beteween a specialist economy and a farm(whip) economy. A "pure" specialist economy would run as many specialists as possible while rarely whipping. A farm(whip) economy is one whose cities use the whip for production and drafting and rarely use specialists because that slows growth.
Gliese 581
Your average civ junkie
I've done some tentative tries at running an EE after reading posts about it here but I never got it to work. I tried it at emperor level and I would like to know if anyone successfully used a hardcore EE (no research at all after alphabet except on older techs) at this level or higher with success.
I'm currently doubtful about its potential, but it can clearly be defined as a unique type of economy when taken to its extreme.
I'm currently doubtful about its potential, but it can clearly be defined as a unique type of economy when taken to its extreme.
absimiliard
Warlord
Though those EPs can come from a few sources. An SE could generate them with specialists. A CE will generate EPs by cranking up the slider. You can generate them with wonders, think of a GSpy from the Great Wall. You can even get them from just owning buildings, though never enough to function as an economy that way.
Most econs can generate EPs somehow.
-abs
Most econs can generate EPs somehow.
-abs
Well, I would not take out the industrial economy (IE).
Such one would focus mostly on producing the highest amount of hammers, preferably through mines, workshops and watermills. These hammers can then at certain times be converted into gold, beakers or culture in a 1:1 ratio.
Such an economy would be most useful for warfare during the late game when factorys and State property become avaible, although its ability to build city buildings and wonders would also be valuable.
Of course such an economy wouldn´t be very efficient by its own, but none of these ones would.
Such one would focus mostly on producing the highest amount of hammers, preferably through mines, workshops and watermills. These hammers can then at certain times be converted into gold, beakers or culture in a 1:1 ratio.
Such an economy would be most useful for warfare during the late game when factorys and State property become avaible, although its ability to build city buildings and wonders would also be valuable.
Of course such an economy wouldn´t be very efficient by its own, but none of these ones would.
I'd call it a SE for want of a better definition, running Mercantilsm and Representation for long periods is enough to qualify. It is certainly easier for a basic SE to adopt this as a sub-strategy to reinforce the more usual emphasis on GPP and Representation beakers, as a SE has a lot more productivity with Slavery. That would be the main restriction for the SE using this sub strateg, if it was running Caste System it would not be any easier to impliment than for a CE.
I have run this sort of economy in Warlords several times and it works well as part of a Domination strategy. I added two wonders to those in your list and of course there was no AP
-Angkor Wat
-Sistine Chapel (+2 culture per specilist in warlords)
The first building whipped in (possibly after a granary) was a temple. That immediately gave loads of beakers, gold and culture plus 2 hammers (free priest from Mercantilsm). A monastery followed (pre Sci Method) and then a courthouse to cut costs. A little city like that doesn't add much to your economy in the late game but it is good for grabbing resources on remote islands or in the arctic and it's self financing. The cities make great airbases and naval bases too. And they grab tiles for the Domination requirement.
Lord Chambers
Emperor
- Joined
- Nov 23, 2001
- Messages
- 1,004
The term "economy" was first applied to Civ4 by people who were so impressed by the fact you had to balance infrastructure with territory that they wanted to inflate the whole premise. Early on the term was coupled with slider worship, and your magical percentage was taken as some indicator of your "economy's" strength. Nowadays the term has completely outstripped its use, where people constantly speak of "running a _______ economy" like it's some really big deal. The only way I think the use of this terminology could get any more absurd is if people starting talking about how they use the plunder from capturing cities as part of of their "conquest economy." In small doses the term economy might be helpful for coralling people around the idea of a sensible tech order and helpful civics which tend to benefit one set of city improvements over another, but in practice it turns into a great monolithic phantom, where anyone reading this board has to chip through the inflated conceptual cloud to determine, really what the hell a specialist "economy" is. Nowadays hen new or less skilled players face a new challenge of "choosing" which "economy" to "run," you know there is a problem with the semantics, because they game hasn't changed that signifigantly in 2 years. Yet almost every thread in Strategy and Tips now pays homage to this concept that discrete economies exist and that all strategies should be interpreted in terms of "economy."
Well guess what? There is no economy in Civ. Pretending there is started as an intellectual pat on the back and now has a life of its own, just like race. Biologically speaking, there are few reasons to categorize people into different races, but a tradition of doing so has yielded divisions which perpetuate an idea founded on faulty science. The only reason race is being dismantled today is because certain experts have managed to convince a lot of people that more harm is caused by this categorization than good. And it's the same for "economy." We have a thread here of people arguing about what defines each economy and as you can see, some people are quite eager for ever more hyper-ultra-buzzword-separation of terms, whereas others are more inclined to ask, is this actually reasonable?
I think "economy" is no more useful than calling someone a liberal or conservative. A liberal is probably pro-choice, right? But not all liberals are. Many conservatives distrust environmental alarmism don't they? But not every conservative. The term liberal and conservative are essentially a shorthand that is so short on meaning it's useless in all but the broadest useage. So for example, casually refering to your game as "cottage economy" while asking for help might be reasonable as it quickly gives readers a place to begin their analysis, but calling a game where you 1)build as many wonders in one city as possible, 2)settle all your great people in that city, 3)keep opponents fighting each other to slow them down, 4)tech to The Internet then switch to sabuetage, 5)et cetera, calling all this "wonder economy" is about as useless of a term as calling it "space race victory strat." And of course, Obsolete was all but required to term it the wonder economy because everyone else on the board so badly needed "economy" stapled on to something else they couldn't see it as equally viable as beloved CEs and SEs.
There was an early time on this board when people did whatever was optimal for their conditions. If it meant they could build lots of cottages, then they did. If they had more food than they could reasonable make use of, they ran specialists. Later themes of development revealed the viability of bulbing great people to trade techs, and even the recent swing back toward settling great people since it nets better returns in the long run. The problem isn't that people learn about all the different options available to them, it's that when those options are surrounded by semantic barbwire people feel they must choose between them. You don't. You can steal techs when it's cheaper than doing the research yourself, you can run specialists, and cottages, and create lots of hammers, and specalize, and hybridize, and do all of it.
So make this a vote for the "hybrid economy," as the strongest, because it means actually thinking about your game and how to get the most from it. Encouraging anything else is confusing to the newbies, and suprisingly influentual to people who maybe know better. This mirage of "econs" leads people away from the real decisions: how you improve your squares, what civics you run, your longterm victory strategy. CE is good for this and SE is good for this and IE is good for this and where does it ends? As soon as you have 8 "economies" and none of them mutually exclusive you've created a quicksand trap for new players who are going to struggle, struggle, and as threads on this forum often indicate, drown.
Well guess what? There is no economy in Civ. Pretending there is started as an intellectual pat on the back and now has a life of its own, just like race. Biologically speaking, there are few reasons to categorize people into different races, but a tradition of doing so has yielded divisions which perpetuate an idea founded on faulty science. The only reason race is being dismantled today is because certain experts have managed to convince a lot of people that more harm is caused by this categorization than good. And it's the same for "economy." We have a thread here of people arguing about what defines each economy and as you can see, some people are quite eager for ever more hyper-ultra-buzzword-separation of terms, whereas others are more inclined to ask, is this actually reasonable?
I think "economy" is no more useful than calling someone a liberal or conservative. A liberal is probably pro-choice, right? But not all liberals are. Many conservatives distrust environmental alarmism don't they? But not every conservative. The term liberal and conservative are essentially a shorthand that is so short on meaning it's useless in all but the broadest useage. So for example, casually refering to your game as "cottage economy" while asking for help might be reasonable as it quickly gives readers a place to begin their analysis, but calling a game where you 1)build as many wonders in one city as possible, 2)settle all your great people in that city, 3)keep opponents fighting each other to slow them down, 4)tech to The Internet then switch to sabuetage, 5)et cetera, calling all this "wonder economy" is about as useless of a term as calling it "space race victory strat." And of course, Obsolete was all but required to term it the wonder economy because everyone else on the board so badly needed "economy" stapled on to something else they couldn't see it as equally viable as beloved CEs and SEs.
There was an early time on this board when people did whatever was optimal for their conditions. If it meant they could build lots of cottages, then they did. If they had more food than they could reasonable make use of, they ran specialists. Later themes of development revealed the viability of bulbing great people to trade techs, and even the recent swing back toward settling great people since it nets better returns in the long run. The problem isn't that people learn about all the different options available to them, it's that when those options are surrounded by semantic barbwire people feel they must choose between them. You don't. You can steal techs when it's cheaper than doing the research yourself, you can run specialists, and cottages, and create lots of hammers, and specalize, and hybridize, and do all of it.
So make this a vote for the "hybrid economy," as the strongest, because it means actually thinking about your game and how to get the most from it. Encouraging anything else is confusing to the newbies, and suprisingly influentual to people who maybe know better. This mirage of "econs" leads people away from the real decisions: how you improve your squares, what civics you run, your longterm victory strategy. CE is good for this and SE is good for this and IE is good for this and where does it ends? As soon as you have 8 "economies" and none of them mutually exclusive you've created a quicksand trap for new players who are going to struggle, struggle, and as threads on this forum often indicate, drown.
Ald Sadrith
Chieftain
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2008
- Messages
- 8
I like the layout you did, and even though, as has been commented, most people run hybrids it might be intresting to try to run some of these as purely as possible.
I usually play rather peacuful civ's so I go for a RE+SE with maxed out priests when playing mainly as Hath with Egypt. I recently tried out the EE with a bit of CE back up to leech off of my neighbour for the duration of the whole game while playing Sumeria and here's what happend:
Because of the fact that I had closed the guy in (Darius I, Persia playing on Warlord, since I didn't want a greater challange) during classical era, I thought he was going to break out by war, but instead he went on teching like crazy. So, I decided to put up ziggurats on every one of my border cities and max out the EP's against him, which paid off since I beat him to optics and managed to sell off all his tech's to the civ's on the two remaining continents. I guess the AI was trying to out-tech me in order to breach my "blockade", but since I kept stealing his technologies he didn't get to the point of tech-supremacy required to declare war.
Now, while I didn't run a 100 % pure EE, I had to have some CE back-up, not for research of course, but military support costs, I still made a good hacket and by mid-game I could start creating 100 % culture as soon as I hit (or rather stole
) the tech needed for the culture slider, and while I didn't reach a culture victory I managed to run an economy that managed surprisingly well.
Conclusion: if the AI foogles or if you manage to block your opponent in, EE is a very valid economy almost on its own.
I usually play rather peacuful civ's so I go for a RE+SE with maxed out priests when playing mainly as Hath with Egypt. I recently tried out the EE with a bit of CE back up to leech off of my neighbour for the duration of the whole game while playing Sumeria and here's what happend:
Because of the fact that I had closed the guy in (Darius I, Persia playing on Warlord, since I didn't want a greater challange) during classical era, I thought he was going to break out by war, but instead he went on teching like crazy. So, I decided to put up ziggurats on every one of my border cities and max out the EP's against him, which paid off since I beat him to optics and managed to sell off all his tech's to the civ's on the two remaining continents. I guess the AI was trying to out-tech me in order to breach my "blockade", but since I kept stealing his technologies he didn't get to the point of tech-supremacy required to declare war.
Now, while I didn't run a 100 % pure EE, I had to have some CE back-up, not for research of course, but military support costs, I still made a good hacket and by mid-game I could start creating 100 % culture as soon as I hit (or rather stole
) the tech needed for the culture slider, and while I didn't reach a culture victory I managed to run an economy that managed surprisingly well.Conclusion: if the AI foogles or if you manage to block your opponent in, EE is a very valid economy almost on its own.
absimiliard
Warlord
I'm just not sure that I agree that the source determines the economy Ibian. An EE running off cottages is fairly different from a typical CE for example.
Lord Chambers: We were applying economic analysis to the conversion rates of energy and the opportunity costs of other builds to SMAC when it first came out. We didn't do so because we were "so impressed by the fact you had to balance infrastructure with territory that we wanted to inflate the whole premise", we did so because it allowed us to apply a set of analytic tools developed by real world economists to help us improve our games.
Although the term economy has stuck, the reason we use it remains the same. We use the term because it's useful when asking for advice to be able to describe the basic flavor of your game, as in your example. We also use it because it allows us to differentiate the different play-styles a bit, and differentiation allows analysis that you can't do when looking at a monolithic black box.
If you don't like economics terms, well, welcome to the club. I've always thought economics was a remarkably soft "science" and generally look down on those who practice it in the real world. But in the Civ world it's useful to analyze games and play-styles, and the terminology that has developed over time is that of economies.
Also, since we're simulating civilizations and how they use gold and commerce I think most people would agree that economy is the right term.
I do regret that the whole thing has gotten quite so acrimonious as to divide people into camps and provoke personal attacks, but the analysis remains sound and continues to help me think about the games I'm playing in ways that let me improve my performance.
Which is why I asked folks to take a look at my list and tell me what I was missing, or if they thought some types should be viewed as sub-types of other types.
Sorry an attempt at a little categorization cheesed you off.
-abs
Lord Chambers: We were applying economic analysis to the conversion rates of energy and the opportunity costs of other builds to SMAC when it first came out. We didn't do so because we were "so impressed by the fact you had to balance infrastructure with territory that we wanted to inflate the whole premise", we did so because it allowed us to apply a set of analytic tools developed by real world economists to help us improve our games.
Although the term economy has stuck, the reason we use it remains the same. We use the term because it's useful when asking for advice to be able to describe the basic flavor of your game, as in your example. We also use it because it allows us to differentiate the different play-styles a bit, and differentiation allows analysis that you can't do when looking at a monolithic black box.
If you don't like economics terms, well, welcome to the club. I've always thought economics was a remarkably soft "science" and generally look down on those who practice it in the real world. But in the Civ world it's useful to analyze games and play-styles, and the terminology that has developed over time is that of economies.
Also, since we're simulating civilizations and how they use gold and commerce I think most people would agree that economy is the right term.
I do regret that the whole thing has gotten quite so acrimonious as to divide people into camps and provoke personal attacks, but the analysis remains sound and continues to help me think about the games I'm playing in ways that let me improve my performance.
Which is why I asked folks to take a look at my list and tell me what I was missing, or if they thought some types should be viewed as sub-types of other types.
Sorry an attempt at a little categorization cheesed you off.
-abs
Amen! I totally agree.
I agree to the ultimate role of the Hybrid economy but even then some subset will generally be apparent as being the primary driver. As for running "pure" economies, while they are arguably sub-par the important component of a pure economy is that when measuring the actual results you know what is driving those results. IRL this is called experimentation; and experimenters need to control their variables to make accurate conclusions. Defining your dependent and independent variables in this way allows you to classify "economies" by these sets. However, while I enjoy my time playing Civ4, I would much rather spend the mental power on revenue generating activities and just use Civ4 and the wisdom of the persons on this forum to expand my abilities at this game and to get away from heavy analytics.
