What do you want from an Economic Victory?

[killmeplease]

To throw another idea or three out here, one way to 'model' Labor would be to re-emphasize the Specialists and Specialist Slots in the game.
Every Building would have Specialist Slots. IF they are not filled, you don't get the maximum benefit from the Building. You would get a Specialist with every population point in the city, in addition to the ability to 'work' one tile out in the country. Since you could have several slots per building (sample: 1 Tier Buildings = 1 Specialist, 2 Tier = 2, 3 Tier = up to 3: 4 fu0ll Districts then, could require up to 24 Specialists, so you'd always have to 'pick and choose')
Number of empty Slots (Jobs to be filled) might even contribute to Immigration - population increase in the city representing people migrating from the countryside or from other cities/Civs.
Better trained population would give you more Specialists, so, say, every Library or University adds an 'extra' Specialist to the city.
Total War-type mobilization allows you to put more of your population to work, so that might give, say 1 more Specialist per population point, BUT your population does not increase during that mobilization, because most of the women and some of the children are now working in factories.
Every military unit built in the city removes one Specialist - trained workers going to war. That would give you a real balancing set of decisions to make, to avoid gutting your production (not enough Specialists in your Workshops, Shipyards and Factories) with too many units, or more units than you Population can really support.

Just a bunch of ideas. I haven't really sat down to work out numbers, I just think this might be a way to represent 'Labor; in a game context. . .

actually GDR population was growing faster than FRG, despite of the higher percent of working women. The working population of the industrializing Britain (late 18th to early 19th century) also procreated like mad (and it was mostly due to increase in fertility, not declining mortality). I think working women and children should be balanced with decreased human capital accumulation because of the lack of [home] schooling and care. more educated workforce could have higher productivity and it could be a requirement of education level for specific jobs.

and why worker slots should be limited at all? in civ4 it was done so because specialists generated great people points. in civ6 'district workers' don't do that and their yields are worse than that of the 'country workers'. i think the player should be able to set as many people to workshops as he wish, given theres enough supply of raw materials, tools and food. and their yields wont be worse, they would just produce a different kind of resource.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

actually GDR population was growing faster than FRG, despite of the higher percent of working women. The working population of the industrializing Britain (late 18th to early 19th century) also procreated like mad (and it was mostly due to increase in fertility, not declining mortality). I think working women and children should be balanced with decreased human capital accumulation because of the lack of [home] schooling and care. more educated workforce could have higher productivity and it could be a requirement of education level for specific jobs.

So far, in virtually all cultures and societies, there has been a direct correlation between people getting more affluent/higher standard of living and birth rates going down. Having lived in FRG for over 10 years and visited some of the surviving worker's apartments in Berlin that date back to the late 19th century, I can tell you that correlation definitely applied between FRG/GDR. On the other hand, the idea of an educated/technically trained workforce should definitely apply: that's why I suggested that Libraries/Universities would add Specialists to the 'pool', representing 'extra' productivity.

and why worker slots should be limited at all? in civ4 it was done so because specialists generated great people points. in civ6 'district workers' don't do that and their yields are worse than that of the 'country workers'. i think the player should be able to set as many people to workshops as he wish, given theres enough supply of raw materials, tools and food. and their yields wont be worse, they would just produce a different kind of resource.

There are limitations I don't want to have to keep track of, like numbers of tools per worker, workspace, supply of raw materials of the right type, etc. The easier 'in game' solution is to simply put an artificial limit on One Metric: number of Specialists/city workers and Specialists Slots.

Of course, that 'artificial limit' can be manipulated a lot of ways: better training/education raising the number of Specialists, as above, is one. development of better tools, like Production Line Machine Tools, or better methods, like the Moving Production Line or even (Future Tech?) Nano Replicators could also 'artificially' raise the number of Specialists and/or Specialist Slots/Bulding.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

Would you see the number of possible citizen slots generally outpacing the actually available pops? Dwarfing them? Lagging behind?

Let me see if I have this right, by putting it in context. So we have cities, which "grow", to have a number which is loosely like the quantity of people ... living/working/parking there ... and the people pool their efforts in working the land, and also are necessary to "work" the urban areas. And a city's output comes from some kind of mix (that starts out half-and-half) of "working the land", and working these 'development-slots' for additional yields. So tech and social development enables the opportunity for cities to also "dev", growing not in a pop number but in infrastructure, and the player is... choosing what to dev, and also along the way, choosing a kind of supplementary output whose range is defined by those devs.

That last part looks like a problem. What kind of choice exists for working different slots with these urban-...'specialists'? (I want to call them something else for concepting purposes) If there is an engaging choice over spans of turns, i.e. if the assignment of your urbanites is not braindead - then the prior construction of those slots is for breadth of choice and not an enhancement of magnitude. Which means slots are, often times, being created to go vacant, but also, have to meet up with a bigger picture fact of the whole game in the following way: the availability of this variety can enhance your strategy. That's a tall order, because in the present condition of Civ, diversifying is exactly not optimizing. Filling up more buckets that become costlier in a progression is one thing, but these urban slots will be designed to go empty.
Perhaps the interplay with the growth of cities is a virtue here. Specialists are increasing in supply. So making additional slots available does become an increase to raw output, eventually (when you are growing, growing being correct). Your choice is thus a different one. As follows: You can increment and increment upon one flavor of slot, to raise the maximum of output of one type (minmaxing). And as you are selecting your dev builds, your build order of the sets of slot-enablers of their various types, will result in different short-run boosts to those outputs - finite amounts gained of each type, over the span of turns between finishing one dev and its peers. Afterward, they are all present and aren't being tradeoff-ed.

In this latter case, it seems to have the strategy-structure we well recognize, from Civ as far back as I remember. You're choosing to unlock these slots based on what you think has the better payoff, either the Library or the Market or the Mill. Except there's management of little people tokens to say are staffing the Library, or Market, but not the Mill. As your urban-slots are enhanced by various modifiers throughout the game, you enjoy an enhanced output up to the quantity of your city devs, .... kind of like triggering yield bonuses from technology, or unlocking an upgrade building as in Civ4. But yes, the people tokens allow for these bonuses to be dispensed through yet more tradeoff decisions, by the player. If the eventual specialist multipliers are met still with a much faster multiplication of slots, then the player is, along this timespan too, dispensing their bonus "yields" (specialists) to the slots they value. That is only if the design is sure to keep slots outpacing the specialists, even with specialist multipliers, and even with the correlation of city growth and development.

When I get +17% science from Universities after Civ5 Free Thought, I'm really enhancing science from pop, its principal source, and modifiers are each irrelevant to each other. These urban slots do give a bit more granularity to potential buffing systems in the design at hand, but I think what it lacks is crunch. (So this idea is like fried rice?) There's not a new kind of choice being created, here, unless I missed something about what working these slots will do. Indeed, work would be cut out for even the prototype to not have the player on rails in making use of these slots.

Take this as me picking your brain. I have a great passion for empire-builder, but I lack dreadfully basically any trace of knowledge of history, anthropology, or the history of economics, (I try merely to be educated on economics contemporarily) so it is posts from those with strong and particular opinions about what belongs in the game that I absolutely feed on.

--
One thought fluttering above this all... maybe what system you're really getting at, with the tiles/urban slots parity, is attempting to measure the diverse economic activity of a citizen? As though, there were a division, starting at 50/50, and becoming something else, which we can take to be split down each pop's head, but could stand for the balance of the polity as a whole, in which tile working is enthroned as basic and immovable, but, with this model, no longer a singular, eclipsing task of the whole of that citizen's life? Sorry, this may have been just me stating -exactly- what you meant, but, a meeting of minds is always enjoyable, isn't it?

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

This is going to be lengthy, because I want to try to give you some decent feedback on your post.

Would you see the number of possible citizen slots generally outpacing the actually available pops? Dwarfing them? Lagging behind?

I would see an interaction here, where at various times they could be above, below, or equal to the number of Specialists (Urban Workers?) available. For optimum overall population growth in the city, though, you'd want to have slots empty to provide 'Job Opportunities' for people to move to the city (population Growth not directly related to Food Surpluses). In fact, historically Migration either within or from outside the Civ was more important than Urban Birthrate to city growth.

Let me see if I have this right, by putting it in context. So we have cities, which "grow", to have a number which is loosely like the quantity of people ... living/working/parking there ... and the people pool their efforts in working the land, and also are necessary to "work" the urban areas. And a city's output comes from some kind of mix (that starts out half-and-half) of "working the land", and working these 'development-slots' for additional yields. So tech and social development enables the opportunity for cities to also "dev", growing not in a pop number but in infrastructure, and the player is... choosing what to dev, and also along the way, choosing a kind of supplementary output whose range is defined by those devs.

Given that the early relationship among populations was around 10:1 rural to urban, I see each 'Population Point' on the Civ map as equalling a whole bunch of people working the land around the city, as now, AND also representing a smaller (but as the game progresses, increasing) percentage of people living and working within the city. So, each PP provides a Worked Tile in the city radius, and an Urban Worker/Specialist to work the infrastructure within the city. Initially, there will be a 1:1 ratio of Worked Tiles to Specialists, but that ratio would change later.

That last part looks like a problem. What kind of choice exists for working different slots with these urban-...'specialists'? (I want to call them something else for concepting purposes) If there is an engaging choice over spans of turns, i.e. if the assignment of your urbanites is not braindead - then the prior construction of those slots is for breadth of choice and not an enhancement of magnitude. Which means slots are, often times, being created to go vacant, but also, have to meet up with a bigger picture fact of the whole game in the following way: the availability of this variety can enhance your strategy. That's a tall order, because in the present condition of Civ, diversifying is exactly not optimizing. Filling up more buckets that become costlier in a progression is one thing, but these urban slots will be designed to go empty.

Perhaps the interplay with the growth of cities is a virtue here. Specialists are increasing in supply. So making additional slots available does become an increase to raw output, eventually (when you are growing, growing being correct). Your choice is thus a different one. As follows: You can increment and increment upon one flavor of slot, to raise the maximum of output of one type (minmaxing). And as you are selecting your dev builds, your build order of the sets of slot-enablers of their various types, will result in different short-run boosts to those outputs - finite amounts gained of each type, over the span of turns between finishing one dev and its peers. Afterward, they are all present and aren't being tradeoff-ed.[/QUOTE]

The advantage I see to Urban Workers and the Slots is the ability to Specialize the city output, and to change that specialization, to some extent, without building completely new Infrastructure. Initially your choices are limited (as they are, overall, in the game itself): you have a Slot (or, based on Civ UA, possibly more) in the Palace, and then (probably) one in the Monument. After that, it depends on what you build, with the proviso that after a certain point (like with Maintenance Costs) each military unit will cost a Specialist, as you 'draft' workers into the military (this also gives us a chance, for almost the first time, to give a reason besides Poverty for disbanding military units - it 'releases' an Urban Worker back into the city)
Because the Urban Workers, like the Tile Workers, can be 'shifted' as often as you like, the potential Flexibility increases, but also the Civs/City's ability to respond to changes in the situation: Barbarian Invasion (Yes, Walls should have a Slot too, to provide archers for the city Ranged Factor), Colonization push, repair from Natural Disasters, whatever.

In this latter case, it seems to have the strategy-structure we well recognize, from Civ as far back as I remember. You're choosing to unlock these slots based on what you think has the better payoff, either the Library or the Market or the Mill. Except there's management of little people tokens to say are staffing the Library, or Market, but not the Mill. As your urban-slots are enhanced by various modifiers throughout the game, you enjoy an enhanced output up to the quantity of your city devs, .... kind of like triggering yield bonuses from technology, or unlocking an upgrade building as in Civ4. But yes, the people tokens allow for these bonuses to be dispensed through yet more tradeoff decisions, by the player. If the eventual specialist multipliers are met still with a much faster multiplication of slots, then the player is, along this timespan too, dispensing their bonus "yields" (specialists) to the slots they value. That is only if the design is sure to keep slots outpacing the specialists, even with specialist multipliers, and even with the correlation of city growth and development.

Which is why, so far, I'm thinking of increasing the Slots per Structure/Building as a Base Number before any other Technology/Civic modifiers apply: Library with 1 Slot, University with 2 slots, Research Lab with 3 Slots, and so on. The Palace is another 'special' Building where the number of slots might increase dramatically as the size of the Civ and complexity of required government increases - but so far, I haven't thought out any more details on that, just the realization that there is a dramatic increase in 'invisible' workers (not tied directly to any specific type of 'output') as Civilization increases in size and complexity. Like it or not, Bureaucracy should be represented in the game, since it was one of the earliest and, dare I say, most consequential results of the invention of Writing.

When I get +17% science from Universities after Civ5 Free Thought, I'm really enhancing science from pop, its principal source, and modifiers are each irrelevant to each other. These urban slots do give a bit more granularity to potential buffing systems in the design at hand, but I think what it lacks is crunch. (So this idea is like fried rice?) There's not a new kind of choice being created, here, unless I missed something about what working these slots will do. Indeed, work would be cut out for even the prototype to not have the player on rails in making use of these slots.

Exactly. Which is why I'm not throwing out numbers for points or percentages of increase in Output from each filled Slot or Urban Worker: I don't know, and I am certain nobody will know until the system is rigorously play tested. I do feel that multiple slots in a single Building should not be a linear increase. That is, a Research Lab with 3 Slots filled is not 'merely' 3 times better than a Library with 1 Slot filled. Certainly the productive difference between a Factory with all Slots filled and Moving Assembly Lines and Specialized Machine Tools and an Educated Workforce is, historically, Hundred of Times more productive than a Workshop no matter how 'improved', but precise numbers will take a lot of thought, a lot of 'tweaking' and a lot of testing.

Take this as me picking your brain. I have a great passion for empire-builder, but I lack dreadfully basically any trace of knowledge of history, anthropology, or the history of economics, (I try merely to be educated on economics contemporarily) so it is posts from those with strong and particular opinions about what belongs in the game that I absolutely feed on.

I am convinced from listening to Economists that thinking too much about economics causes Brain Damage in Adults. Still, economic history is fascinating (read John Gordon's Empire of Wealth for an entirely different history of the USA based on economics: intriguing and enlightening) and has Impact on Civilizations every bit as important as the Diplomacy and Battle, Religion and Culture that Civ tries to model explicitly now. It seems a shame to only reflect Economics as Gold Producing Trade and leave out Labor completely. Especially since, as the history of the last 200 years shows, ignoring Labor and its needs, wants, and potential results in serious consequences politically, socially, and militarily as well as economically.
--

One thought fluttering above this all... maybe what system you're really getting at, with the tiles/urban slots parity, is attempting to measure the diverse economic activity of a citizen? As though, there were a division, starting at 50/50, and becoming something else, which we can take to be split down each pop's head, but could stand for the balance of the polity as a whole, in which tile working is enthroned as basic and immovable, but, with this model, no longer a singular, eclipsing task of the whole of that citizen's life? Sorry, this may have been just me stating -exactly- what you meant, but, a meeting of minds is always enjoyable, isn't it?

Again, you nailed it. Trying to put some specifics into the current very Abstract Civ model of Intracity Economics, without creating a Game Of Economics for People Whose Lives Weren't Dull Enough Already.

And, of course, as a classic ink-stained Historian (which, as I keep reminding people, is from the Greek istoriya = "to learn by study"), I want to see if it is possible to at least approach in a playable game the historically important economic decisions that should be available to the player if he represents the Collective Will of the population.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

I really didn't want to leave this convo to die. The post gave me a lot of thoughts... but it was all a jumble, and still is.

Just, for now I can say at least, I kind of like the way that "staffing" requirements of buildings could keep in check, a change to the population growth formula whose suggestion is recurrent, where growth should get faster, not slower (and just be capped by severe health limitations from pre-industrial medicine).

Your thinking deserves more fellowship.

 

[NukingGandhi]

I think that your thoughts could be brought to another thread that could use your input: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/civ-vi-industrialization-and-economic-overhaul.641447/ It could always use more ideas.

 

[man_in_finance]

I really didn't want to leave this convo to die. The post gave me a lot of thoughts... but it was all a jumble, and still is.

Just, for now I can say at least, I kind of like the way that "staffing" requirements of buildings could keep in check, a change to the population growth formula whose suggestion is recurrent, where growth should get faster, not slower (and just be capped by severe health limitations from pre-industrial medicine).

Your thinking deserves more fellowship.

I also really found this thread useful. It shifted my thinking considerably, in part due to some simple observations by yourself. I want to re formulate a new thread with what I believe to be best takeways from the poll and the view here, but need some time to go through it.

 

[NukingGandhi]

I also really found this thread useful. It shifted my thinking considerably, in part due to some simple observations by yourself. I want to re formulate a new thread with what I believe to be best takeways from the poll and the view here, but need some time to go through it.

If you could also share your thoughts with the people on industrialization and economic overhaul, that would be awesome.

 

[Victoria]

I am not a mod person but woukd play a good working mod like this so have cast my vote and will watch.