Wimsey's economic model

[Wimsey]

Edited: 27.4.09: I have attached a revised version of this idea in this post. The content of those documents is basically similar to that of the next eight or so posts, so there's no reason to read both.

I have more or less come up with an entirely new model for economy, which might or might not be part of Civ5. It’s rather long and sometimes boorish, so you might not want to read all of it in one go. I have tried to make it understandable, and I think the points are written in the least confusing order. As I felt the post got quite long enough already, I have not written much about implications, game-play- and strategy changes this brings, so you might try to figure some of these out for yourself. What I consider the most important implications are that your citizens now have a “will” of their own, and that cities no longer exists in the vacuum of their fat cross, but are affected by all other cities in the world. Well, judge for yourselves:

1.1 Work points
I've sto.. adapted this concept from Mxzs' idea http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=227872. Although he used different terms, the basic idea is pretty much the same. Instead of each citizen working one tile each, I propose the following:

All citizens in a city produces 10.00 "work points" strength (The number could be anything, but 10 is a nice smallish number which is easy to do calculations with) These points are pooled together for each city, so a city of size 5 would have a total of 5*10.00=50.00. These points are expended for extracting resources, transporting goods, constructing improvements, manufacturing, generating gold, research and culture, and maintenance. A city will never be able to have more than 10*pop work throughout the game, but technological advances will make the processes using these points substantially cheaper as the game progresses. Note however that a city under some circumstances (revolt, unhealthiness etc.) can have less than its maximum . In this system, I will assume that each citizen is consuming 1/turn, as 2/turn only complicates matters, and serves no purpose.

1.2 Extracting resources
Right, the first thing I want to do is scrap food, production and commerce in its current form (ouch! This idea is getting radically scary already, eh). Instead, it will work more like colonization, where you extract actual units of resources from a tile. Each tile has a maximum amount of resources available, and these resources can be extracted by expending work points in the city, using the following formula for determining how much one unit of a resource costs to extract:

= (R+a)*(1-T-S)/(n+b)

R = a number specific to each resource.
n = units of that resource in the tile.
T = % technology modifier
S = % city specialization modifier
a and b are merely constants used to balance the formula (for all I know it could be best if they are 0)

The actual numbers of this formula must be found through playtesting. This should generally give a value of between 2,0 (good) and 8,0 (bad). Actually, I don't care what the exact formula looks like, as long as it works in a balanced faction. One interesting point is that if you set R=10 and T=S=a=b=0, this formula works just like in civ4, where one citizen can always work exactly one tile.

The reason I have added the resource-specific constant R is that some goods should be inherently harder to extract than others (think rice versus sheep), but is compensated by a much higher yield per tile (higher value of n). This way pastures realistically become a decent way of utilizing "bad" tiles, while labour-intencive crops are best for fertile areas. However, if this causes a clash between realism and good gameplay, I am always willing to forfeit realism.

In contrast to civ4, a citizen doesn't have to spend all his in one tile, he could for example use 2.50 to grow a unit of corn, 3.50 to chop a unit of lumber in another tile, and the last 4.00 to hunt a rabbit for a unit of fur in the same forest. As all work points in a city are pooled together, this allows for much great flexibility of work division. Also, the amount of work needed to extract all resources in a tile does not necessarily add up to 10, it could well be less or even more, meaning the tile will require more than one citizen to be fully worked.

Why resources instead of food, hammers and commerce? Partly because of realism I admit. I've always felt that production and commerce are rather abstract values, which were genial when introduced for Civ1, but can now give way for more realistic models. (I do know realism as a sole reason for implementing something is a bad argument.) The purpose of this change is mainly to encourage trade. A trade network where all cities produce the same commodities (food, hammers and commerce) is rather silly, as there would be little or no need to exchange goods in the first place.

1.3 City’s gold pool.
In addition to its pool of work points, each city has a pool of gold gold. This pool represents the combined wealth of its citizens and local authorities. The pool initially starts up at zero, and is filled by citizens selling goods to other cities and by generating gold (see 6.2). The city spends this money to buy goods from other cities. All cities will try to keep a gold pool of, say, 5 times its budget/turn. In times of crisis the city might spend all its stored gold to stay alive. The amount of stored gold is also what will be pillaged if the city is conquered.

1.4 Population growth
Cities will not grow solely based on food consummation. Instead, you have a bar that works like the food bar in civ4, but affected by other factors. These could be:
Positive: Immigration, health, basic growth rate, etc.
Negative: Emigration, unhealthiness, starvation, plague, unhappiness, crime, etc.
When the bar is filled up, a pop point is added, and when it is depleted a pop point is lost. Food is used for feeding your population and providing health (see 4.1)

2.1 Transport between cities
Right, now I can finally get to what I consider the important bit of this system. Units of resources can be moved more or less freely between cities, but every time something is transported, a transport cost is incurred:

2.2 Transport cost
Each tile is given a "transport cost traderoute This is the amount of a city must expend in order to transport a unit of goods across this tile. The of a tile depends on its terrain, improvements and your technological level. The transport cost of some tiles in the Classical age could be:
Coast: 0.20
River: 0.20
Road: 0.50

The total cost of to transport a unit of goods between two cities is simply the of all the tiles between them added together.

Examples:
Let's say two cities are 7 coast tiles apart. To bring a unit of grain from one city to the other, one of the cities must expend
0.20*7=1.40.
Two cities are separated by 2 river tiles and 3 roaded land tiles. To bring a unit of grain from one city to the other, one of the cities must expend
0.20*2+0.50*3=1.90

Note that although the cities in the first example are further apart in a straight line than in the latter (7 tiles versus 5), trade between them is easier because they have better terrain. This becomes very important when deciding city placement. In the early game water will be far superior for trade purposes, with land routes becoming competitive with railroads.
As you can see, every time something is transported between cities, some work points are lost in the process. This means that excessive movement of goods is basically harmful, and should help prevent massive abuse of the trade feature. As not all cities can possible have access to all resources locally though, trade should still be a very important aspect of the game. It is also necessary in order to utilize city specialization.

 

[Wimsey]

3.1 Supply and demand
I have now described a system that makes it possible to move one resource from a city to another by paying work points for the transportation. In effect, a resource extracted in one city can be picked up and consumed by any friendly city within reasonable distance. How then, do we decide where and what goods will be transported? The simplest answer seems to be clickable trade routes, where a dictatorial player has full control over the flow of goods within his empire. This could work well with a classical 4-city state, but with a modern empire of 30+ cities and hundreds of resources, this would simply be a micro-management hell. I doubt most players would like that. Therefore I propose a mostly automated system of price and demand:
Let's first define the terms in my system, which I will try to use consistently:

Demand: The maximum amount of gold gold a city is willing to pay for a given commodity. If no instance of a resource is available at a lower price than the city's demand, the city will simply not purchase any resource of this type.

Price: The minimum amount of a commodity is available for in a city.
If the price of wine in Rome is 5.10, it means that the cheapest unit available in Rome can be bought for 5.10

3.2 Price
So how do we calculate price and demand for any given city and resource? I'll begin with supply as that is the more straightforward:

A citizen will never work for less than 1/. This is the basic wage rate, and is constant throughout the game. This means if a peasant has a grain field available and can extract a unit of grain for 3.00, he will not do this unless there is someone in the world who is willing to pay him at least 3.00 for the grain. The same rule applies to merchants transporting goods. Price is simply the total work required to deliver a product, plus eventual tolls.

Example: Rome can only get wine from the Greek city of Athens. In Athens the unit of wine can be produce for 3.00work. Rome is 8 coast tiles away from Athens. However, the ruler of Athens has decided to export toll his wine at 0.50gold/unit. The price of wine in Rome is:
3.00+0.20*8+0.50=5.10
Rome’s demand for wine must be at least 5.10gold if a trade is to take place.

3.3 Demand
When it comes to calculating demand, this is the current biggest hole in my system, as I do not know yet exactly how this will work. I’ll give it an outline though: Each city needs to calculate how many work points they are willing to expend on each happy, food and health, as food and luxury resources gives a combination of these (see decreasing utility).This should probably not be to hard to solve, but cities also need to calculate their demand for industrial goods and buildings (see 11.2), and that is what uglyfies demand calculations severely. I assume smarter persons than me can do it, though. Once a city has decided how large a portion of its work (these portions can and probably will add up to more than the city’s total work), it multiplies all demand by its average wage rate (see 6.1). Basically, people should first feed themselves, then ensure they are reasonably happy, then do their leaders bidding, and last anything else.

3.4 The grand economy algorithm
Okay, although I don't know exactly how it is calculated, each city now has a demand for each and every type of goods in the world. Then how do we determine which city gets what, and from who? I am now moving in shaky territory, as I'm a bit unsure how this could be programmed, but I'll give it a go anyway:

At the beginning of each turn, the computer makes a list of all the possible trade routes in the world. A trade route could also be a resource produced and consumed in the same city. It then arranges this list with the trade route with the highest profit on top and then in order of declining profit. It then starts at the top by assigning the best trade route, and works it way down. It will skip any trade route which has become impossible because of any trade route already assigned, or because a city not has enough gold to pay. When it reaches the point where demand equals price, no more trade routes are assigned, and all remaining work in the world is transformed into gold (see 6.2). All work performed in the world (except by military units and others under direct player control) is determined by this algorithm.

Game-play wise I see no problem with this algorithm, but it would probably require too much computing power to be viable in a game where waiting time between turns gets annoying. If someone with programming knowledge could clarify this point for me, or if anyone has a simpler idea for an economy algorithm that yields roughly the same result, I would greatly appreciate it.

So, what does this mean in game terms? The player has no direct control over what his people are doing; this algorithm solely determines their actions. Is this a bad thing? I'd say no. First, this is not the same as leaving your empire to an inferior governor. You leave your citizens to a governing matrix that all civs are subject to. Secondly, that you can't directly order your citizens doesn't mean you can't control them at all. In fact, manipulating this matrix will become the most important player skill under my system. Your citizens are egoistic, and will always do the work that gives them the highest profit. Use your manipulative power to make sure that is also the work you want them to do. Also, it is possible to make the rival's citizens do what you want if you provide them with the right economic incentive.

The algorithm starts with assigning high-profit trade routes, which are ones with high demand and low price. This effectively means that a seller will always sell to the highest bidder, and vice versa a buyer will always buy from the lowest bidder. Cities with high demand (large rich cities) will enjoy the cheapest goods. An important point to note is that as the cheapest cities sell their goods first, they will get better demand multipliers in their markets than subsequent sellers. Selling the first instance of a resource in a city is hugely better than selling the second. This is a big incentive for cities to push their demand high, and their prices low. A good portion of the first routes will go be internal (resources gathered and consumed in the same city), as there is no endearing transport element. So a food-producing city will feed itself before starting to export food (Exceptions may occur!)

 

[Wimsey]

4.1 Decreasing marginal utility of luxuries and food
So, if a player has the ability to grow as many unit of a luxury resource as he wants, how do we encourage him to trade or colonize for other resource types? By letting each instance of a resource become less valuable than the former. Let's look at the "wine utility" graph of two different-sized cities:
Size 4


Size 12




The graphs for all luxury resources are identical. I just picked wine as an example. As cities continue to expand, the graphs expand but continue to keep the same rough shape.
What this means is: in the size 4 city up to 4 units of wine can provide . The first instance of wine (to the left) gives 2, while the others give one each. So a size 4 city consuming 1 wine/turn gets a total of +2 happiness, while the same city gets +5 happiness (2+1+1+1) if it consumes 4 wine/turn.
In the size 12 city, the first instance (again from left to right) of wine gives +3 happiness, the second and third instance gives +2 each, and the rest (up to a total of twelve) gives one each. Let's say the city needs 15. Getting this by only consuming wine requires 11 units of wine (1*3+2*2+8*1=15). However, if the city has access to several different luxuries, it only needs to consume 15/3=5 units (As the first instance of each different luxury gives 3)

This means a mix of different luxuries is much more effective than lots of one. Also, the first instances of any resource in a buying city is very lucrative for the selling city, as the buying city first calculates its demand for each , then simply multiplies this to find the final demand for a unit of that luxuries. This in turn means that a city producing lots of, say, wine, will want to sell its wine to several different cities rather than all to one in order to maximize its profits. Large cities will be the most lucrative markets, as they have the highest multipliers (and most likely the highest wage rates).

 

[Wimsey]

4.2 Food
I'll make two graphs to illustrate the same concept for food:
Size 4:


Size 12:



As you can see, each unit of a food resource gives 1food (which each citizen needs one/turn to survive), and the first instance(s) also gives a bonus of health. The city's demand for a particular resource is simply its demand for food + demand for health. As with luxuries, a mix of varied food gives the best and cheapest health bonuses. It might seem unfair to give large cities better use of resources than small, but keep in mind that the large cities will need them a lot more.

5.1 Profit of trade routes
A trade route is set up any time a city's demand for a resource is higher than the price of producing it in another city and transport it to a buyer (D>P). The difference between the demand and the price (from now on termed "profit") is split into 4 equal parts:
- One part goes to the city produces the resource.
- One part goes to the city(s) transporting the goods. If the goods are transported by several cities, they share their part based on how far each city brings the goods.
- One part goes to the city refining the resource, if any. In the case of a raw material, this part is kept by the buying city.
- One part is kept by the receiving city.

This is best explained with an example:
Rome's demand for a unit of wheat is 8.00. Alexandria, which is 11 coast tiles away, can extract a unit of wheat for 4.00. Merchants from Rome will transport the goods. The price of this wheat in Rome is:
4.00+11*0.20=6.20
The Profit of this trade route is:
D-P=8.00-6.20=1.80
This profit is split into four parts of 1.80/4=0.45
Alexandria gets one part. Rome keeps the other three parts (one for being the buying city, one because it is a raw material, and one because Rome transports the goods.)
So Rome pays Alexandria a total of 4.00+0.45=4.45 (4.00 to actually make Alexandria actually do the work, and 0.45 as profits) Alexandria expends 4.00 to extract the resource. Rome expends 2.20 to transport the wheat.
Let's summarize:
Rome: Down 2.20, down 4.45, up 1 wheat.
Alexandria: Down 4.00, up 4.45.

 

[Wimsey]

Now let's bring in the presence of Carthage:
Carhage lies between Alexandria and Rome, and has a 10% specialization in sea trade. However, if the wheat is to be transported by Carthaginian traders, it needs to make a detour of one tile to go through Carthage. How much work must Carthage expend to transport the wheat:
0.9*0.20*12=2.16
This is cheaper than Rome’s 2.20, so Carthage will transport the wheat.
Now the price in Rome is 4.00+2.16=6.16
The profit is 8.00-2.16=1.84
Split into four parts of 1.84/4=0.46
One part goes to Alexandria, one part goes to Carthage, and two parts are kept by Rome.
Rome pays Alexandria 4.00+0.46=4.46. Alexandria expends 4.00. Carthage expends 2.16 for transport. Rome pays Carthage 2.16+0.46=2.62.
Let's summarize:
Rome: Down 7.08, up one wheat.
Alexandria: Down 4.00, up 4.46.
Carthage: Down 2.16, up 2.62.

What has happened is that a merchant from Carthage has out-competed a merchant in Rome. The egoistic citizen in Rome buying the wheat decided to use the cheaper Carthaginian merchant even though it meant contributing to a foreign nation's economy. Compared to the first example Rome is down 2.61and up 2.20. If the player can make this 2.20 perform some labour that is worth at least 2.61, the Romans has actually gained from Carthage's control of the wheat trade. If not, they should better burn Carthage to the ground (or capture it to gain control of the trade themselves.) Note that Alexandria’s profit increased slightly from getting a cheaper trade route.

As all cities involved in a trade equally splits the profits, it's best for all of them if the difference between demand and price is as high as possible. Therefore it is good for the buyer to push his demand as high as possible by having large cities and high wage rates. Selling cities want to push the price as low as possible by cultivating fertile terrain, specializing in producing the right goods, and using cheap trade routes.

6.1 Wage rate
I have some times referred to a wage rate. This is simply the ratio at which work is turned into gold. Consider the wage rate of Alexandria in the second example above. It expended 4.00 and got 4.46 which gives a wage rate of /=4.46/4.00=1.12. Carthage got a wage rate of 2.62/2.16=1.21. When a resource is extracted and consumed in the same city, the working citizen is assumed to get one forth of the profits of this "internal trade route", to keep it consisted with the trade profits.

The average wage rate of a city is all the work done in the city divided by the city’s total income. This means all cities will have their own wage rate that may change from turn to turn. This rate is never used for calculating price, as all citizens throughout the game is willing to work for the basic wage rate of 1gold/work. Wage rate is however used as a multiplier when calculating demand, and it is essential when determining migration between cities. It is encouraged to have better wage rates than your rivals, as cities with higher demands secure the best deals, and will draw the opponents population to your cities.

 

[Wimsey]

6.2 Generating gold
Not all of your citizens will spend their time extracting, refining and transporting goods. Many will be bureaucrats or provide services for your other citizens. This is represented by letting certain building transform work directly into gold at differing rates. For example, an early bank will allow 2.00 to be turned into gold at a rate of 1.5, giving a total of 3.00 to the city’s gold pool. 1.5 will also be the wage rate of the citizens doing the work. Later buildings will give better rates. As my grand trade algorithm says (see 3.4), all hard work will be assigned first, and then all remaining work is turned into gold at the best possible rate. That is not exactly true, as a city will also generate gold in order to pay for goods it buys during the resource assignment process. During this process gold can also be turned back into work at the same rate. This is especially important if gold is generate at unemployed rate (see 6.4)

6.3 dependence on “hard trade”The amount of gold that can be generated is strictly limited by the amount of “hard business” in your empire and vassals. I don’t know exactly how this should be calculated, but both your amount of trade and the profit from it should affect your ability to generate gold. Especially capitals of large empires will be able to generate lots of gold, so they will become “black holes” into which lots of goods is sent but almost nothing comes out. This is fine, think classical Rome or Victorian London.

6.4 Unemployment
If demand is low enough some work points may be left with nothing to do. In this case the citizen is unemployed. He is able to turn his work into gold at a rate of 0.5 (by scavenging and stealing). Unemployment generates unhappiness and crime, and should generally be avoided.

7.1 Rules of trade routes:
1) There are five modes of transport: Road, railroad, coast/ocean, river, air.
2) A trade route can only change mode of transport in a city.
3) A trade route will always take the cheapest route.
4 a) A trade route will always use the cheapest merchants available, regardless of nationality. b) In the case of a tie, the city furthest along the trade route transports the goods.
5) A unit of goods can be transported by merchants from several different cities along a trade route.
6) A merchant from one city cannot transport goods beyond another city where the trade route changes mode of transport.
7) Trade routes will try to bundle together if possible.

I'll try to illustrate with a crazy example:

During the medieval age, the trade algorithm decides that Bern (Swiss) has enough demand to buy a unit of silk from Mumbai (India). The shortest route is calculated (3): Mumbai-Basra (coast), Basra-Baghdad (river), Baghdad-Antioch (road), Antioch-Venice (coast), Venice-Milan (river), Milan-Bern (road). Merchants in Mumbai and Basra are equally skilled, so Basra transports the goods (4b). Baghdad is more skilled at trade than both Antioch and Basra, so Baghdad transports the silk from Basra to Antioch (4a). Note that Baghdad couldn't work from Mumbai to Basra because of (6). Venice is better at trading than Antioch and Milan, so they get the silk between these cities (4a), but not beyond (6). Finally, Milan has skilled road traders, so they transport the silk to Bern (4a).

During its trip from Mumbai to Bern, the silk has been on two different coastal ships, two different river barges, and two different road caravans. Merchants from Basra, Baghdad, Venice and Milan have handled it, so these cities all get a share of the profits. Poor Antioch gets nothing. Note that this is a rather extreme example, and I guess trade routes in the game will seldom or never get this complicated.

 

[Wimsey]

8.1 Terrain, resources and improvements
This economic model requires a different system of terrain and resources than civ4, as all tiles must be able to produce units of a resource, rather than the generic food, hammers and commerce. The terrain will be more like SMAC; each tile has a set of four parameters. These are:
-Climate zone: Tropic, subtropical., Mediterranean., warm temperate, cold temperate, polar.
-Fertility: None, bad, medium, good, excellent.
-Humidity: Dry, arid, medium, moist, wet (?)
-Altitude: Meters above sea level, increments of 25m.
This gives a vast amount of different tiles, and hopefully an interesting-looking terrain. But it is more important when it comes to growing crops. For the purposes of my system, I consider all domestic animals as crops as they follow exactly the same rules.

8.2 Crops and suitability
All crops have a preferred climate zones, altitude level and humidity to grow in. A high fertility is generally good. The suitability of each tile type for each crop type ranges from impossible, bad, medium, good, and excellent. Rice for instance will have a rating of "excellent" on a humid subtropical slope, and "impossible" on a typical Greenland tile (duh!). The suitability of a tile affects directly (along with techs) how many units of a resource you can grow in a tile, and how cheap they are to extract (if you still remember the formula from post 1). It is of course desirable to grow crops in a terrain that suits them well. The player does not have to learn the suitability of each crop and terrain type by heart however, if he right-clicks on a tile he will get a list of its suitability for each crop type, with the best ones placed at the top (as well as a recommendation if he plays with advisor on). There will in many cases be lots of crops which have the same suitability for a tile, so it is not necessarily a no-brainer to decide where to plant what.

8.3 Biological resources
Biological resources are still found around the map, often in just a very small area of the world in their preferred terrain. They will sometimes spread to new adjacent areas, and sometimes disappear from a tile. Once a player gets hold of at least one tile containing a crop, he can attempt to plant it anywhere in his empire. The work and time required and chance of success to plant a crop in non-native tile is determined by the distance to the closest tile where the crop is already growing, and the amount of these within a certain radius. Thus, planting a new tile of wheat in a river valley where there already are several is easy, while introducing potatoes from America to Europe is quite another matter. This should help prevent resources being spread all over the world too early. In all tiles not containing any crops there should be a few units of meat available for hunting, as well as some fur in cold terrain. In forests you can extract both lumber for construction, as well as meat and fur if the climate permits (yes, you can extract meat and wood at the same time).

8.4 Planting and improvements
Instead of workers I want a right-click menu for tile development. When a player right-clicks a tile, he gets a small menu where he can see the parameters of the tile, the suitability for all crop types, and a list of what he can do to the tile. He then decides which crop to plant there or what improvements to build. An amount of is deducted from the nearest city for a number of turns, representing the citizens going out to work. While a tile is being replanted, nothing can be extracted from it. When you decide what a tile should grow the appropriate improvement is built automatically. It makes after all no sense to grow corn in a pasture. All improvements require a steady maintenance of work from its closest city once built, on a very small scale of around 0.01-0.02/turn. This will not be a notable drain on a city's economy, but it makes it possible for improvements to fall into disrepair and be consumed by the forest if not used, and it prevents ugly road-spamming.

8.5 Non-biological resources
Geological resources like iron and stone works pretty much as in Civ4. They have certain tiles where they exist, and you can of course not plant them anywhere else. You may however be lucky and find new ones during the game. As it is possible to extract several types of resources from one tile, you can build a mine and a farm in the same tile. The presence of the mine will decrease the output from the farm, but not the other way around.

8.6 Two lasts points concerning terrain
In order to make my economy model work properly, the game needs rivers placed on tiles rather than between them (like Civ2), and a hexagonal grid (please don't let this become yet another hexes vs. squares thread).

 

[Wimsey]

9.1 City specialization
As in Civ4, if you want to specialize a city towards something, you must of course build the appropriate buildings and improvements for this. In addition, your citizens can get better at doing certain tasks. If a city for example has a 5% specialization in agriculture, it means that this city gets a 5% discount on used in to extract all agricultural products. (If you remember the formula from 1.2, S is now 0,05). Cities can specialize broadly (i.e. getting a small bonus on all agriculture) or narrowly (i.e. getting a large bonus when growing wheat). Cities should be able to specialize in anything: fishing, trade, manufacture, warring, banking, etc. Cities gradually specializes over time, and large cities can get bonuses in more than one field. I can see two ways of determining city specialization, and I am a bit ambivalent concerning which to choose:

1. You get good at what you're doing. When a city is working a wheat tile, it gets specialization points in wheat/agriculture, and if it trades, it gets discount on transport cost. This will become a self-accelerating process, as people gets good at what they're doing, and prefers to do what they're good at. This is the most realistic method.

2. 2. Player chooses. There could be a specialization window in the city interface where the player decides what and how narrow fields the city gets better at. This has the advantage of giving more control to the player, but can get unrealistic. (The player can for instance order a city to specialize in growing a crop it has never seen before).

Most city specialization will be on a small magnitude (1-10%), so why bother? Remember that the grand trade algorithm (see 3.4) says that people are egoistic and will always buy from the lowest bidder, and let the cheapest merchant transport their goods. This means that although a 3% discount in itself isn't much, it can be absolutely imperative when it comes to securing the best deals.

10.1 Taxes
Of course the player needs to fill his coffers too, and this is done by taxing your people. Every time a transaction takes place within your empire, a portion of it is deducted as tax. I didn't take this into account in my earlier calculations, as it would only complicate matters. This tax rate is a percentage set by the player. High taxes will decrease profit of all your trade, and lead to a stagnation in economy as it is hampering private initiative. I do not think taxation in itself should give unhappiness, as this should occur naturally when your citizens can afford fewer luxuries.

10.2 Export and import toll
What would be the fun of trading with your rivals if you can't have a share of the profits? A player will have a screen where he can set the import and export tolls of each resource, or totally deny import/export if he wants to. The toll is an amount of gold, and this is added to the transport cost for the purposes of calculating profits of trade routes. Tolls will be a powerful tool for the player to control flow of goods and to gain income to his coffers, but remember that the AI also can use it. Certain civics may limit the use of tolls.

10.3 Diplomacy
I feel my system needs a few new diplomatic options:
- Trade agreement: Two nations become part of the same market, and their citizens will buy and sell to get maximum profit regardless of nationality of the trade partners. The leaders can still set up toll walls against each other. This is the default setting between two civilizations.
- Free trade agreement: As above, but there is no toll between the partners. The player can still set toll levels, but they will only apply to partners without free trade agreements.
Military right of passage (Civ4s open borders) should be a different diplomatic agreement.

 

[Wimsey]

11.1 Industry
I have now dealt with food and luxuries, as strategic resources complicates matters a little. But it can’t be totally ignored, so I’ll begin with some rules for refining of goods.
1) Food and luxuries are never refined. Their part is already complex enough.
2) A resource can only ever be refined once. There will be no crazy Settlers-style production chains.
3) A building refining a resource can always produce a lower refinement of that resource.

Refinement works pretty much as in col2. One unit of something is consumed in a building, work is expended, and a refined product comes out. Does this mean we need an enormous amount of different manufactured goods? No. All resources are refined into generic grades of that resource.

Example: Raw iron is called iron0. Iron of the first refinement is iron1. Iron1 represents all crude iron tools and weapons, from shovels to axes (in fact, anything made of iron during this technological era). Iron4 could represent fine mail armour or clockwork gears. Iron6 could be steel. A building able to produce iron4 can also produce iron1, iron2 and iron3 (rule 3). A raw clump of iron0 is refined directly into iron4, it does not have to go through iron1, iron2 or iron3 first (rule 2).

This means that old goods will become obsolete and phase out during the game, and the number of different goods in the game will be manageable. Each building can only produce a limited number of goods per turn, but a city can build as many of these buildings as you want. The industrial capacity will still be limited by the availability of raw materials and workforce. Sometimes several resources can be used for the same purpose. Swords could for example require either iron2 or copper3. Higher refinements of a resource requires more work than a lower.

11.2 Demand of industrial goods.
All cities will have a civilian demand for industrial products, so industrial cities will be economically viable also during peacetime. Instead of giving health and happiness bonuses, these products should keep a city running at peak efficiency.

A city extracts grain from three tiles. The civ researches a technology that gives a 5% bonus on grain production, but only if the city consumes one unit of iron2 (now representing heavy ploughs) per field per turn. The city now has a demand for three iron2, which must either be produced locally or imported from another city. If the city only gets hold of one, only one field will get the 5% bonus.

All industrial goods should work along these lines (cars, oil etc.) As I said in part 3.3 I don’t know exactly how to balance this demand with demand for food and luxuries, but I feel sure it can be done by relatively simple algorithms.

11.3 Buildings and construction
Constructing buildings is also much like col2. Buildings, wonders and projects are set up in a production queue like we’re used to. A certain amount of work is expended, and an amount of building materials are consumed. The time it takes is determined by the least available of materials and workforce. Cities will have their own demand for buildings (including housing for the citizens), but the player can control the production queue by paying his citizens to do what he wants (see 11.4). Once a building is constructed, your citizens will work in them by refining resources, or turning work into gold, culture and research (The citizens have essentially become specialists). All buildings require a small maintenance each turn, in the scale of 0.02-0.03. If a building is not used for a number of turns, say 50, it is assumed to be obsolete and abandoned, and is destroyed.

Overall, buildings will work similar to Col; they will not do anything, rather they are facilities for processes to be done. Like a library allowing a maximum of 5.00 to be turned into at a rate of 1.10. A theatre allowing a maximum of 10.00 to be turned into at a rate of 1.50. A steel mill allowing a maximum of 3 units of iron0 to be turned into iron5 by expending 2.50 for each.

11.4 Player demand
The economy will generally plod along by its own steam, but sometimes a player will want to build buildings, troops and ships. He does this by using tax money to create a demand. These demands affect the trade algorithm, and will make people work for the government. Demands from the player (and AI leaders) are always artificially high (on a scale of 15-20), to make sure the work gets done. However, your citizens never shares profit from your demands, they always work for the basic wage rate of 1.00. This is because you have the power to order them around a bit. Under some democratic civics this special rule does not apply, and you have to actually pay your people good money to make them do your bidding. Also, if your demands involve buying goods from another civ, they will take their normal share of the profits. This means selling weapons to a trade partner is very lucrative, as the AI player’s demand is very high.

12.1 Military
Troops are classified as either professionals or reserves.
Professionals take longer to train and can not do any work once they’re trained, but they are much better than a similarly equipped reserve troop. Their food and wages are paid from your treasury.
Reserves take half the time to train of a professional, and can go back to their fields to work after they’ve been trained. They generate marginally less work than a common citizen to account for the time they spend to train, as well as a small upkeep of gold from your treasury.

12.2 Recruiting troops
Troops are recruited by training your citizens and giving them equipment. All cities have one recruitment queue in addition to its production queue.

Let’s say a unit of spearmen reserves needs 3 turns of training and 10 units of either iron2 or copper3. A citizen spends 3 turns training (i.e. does no work in this period), and demand is created so the city makes or imports 10 units of either iron2 or copper3. The citizen can now either go out to war, or be sent back to the city as a reserve troop.

A total of ¼ of your citizens are assumed to be combat capable and may be soldiers at any time. This limit may be influenced by certain civics.

12.3 Supplying troops
All soldiers in the field requires food, and in the case of some late units, oil. These supplies are transported from the nearest allied city using normal trade lanes. Supplies are paid from your treasury, but as with all player demands, your citizens do not take a share of the profits. Long wars are now very costly, as not only do your soldiers require upkeep, but they are also needed at home where they could do useful work. If a unit is disbanded, the soldiers go home to their home city by the fastest route. Ships and aircraft are built using the construction queue rather than the recruitment queue, and do not require upkeep of food.

13.1 A note on storage
In my model, no goods are ever stored. This is not strictly realistic, but I think it helps in avoiding unnecessary micromanagement and possible abuses. I feel the flow of resources is most important in an economic game like this. Some storage is involved though:
- Gold is stored in both your treasury and the cities’ gold pool.
- Cities will store food in a granary to use in times of siege and famine. This is not the same as the current pop growth granary.
- Goods are of course stored for a short while in the production and recruitment queues.
- Weapons and equipment can be “stored as troops”, as you can train and equip troops and then still use them as workers.

13.2 Other stuff
I have not mentioned research, culture, espionage, corporations, religions, warfare and lots of other things. Does this mean these have no place in my civ? Not at all, but they are rather irrelevant to the economic model of this game. And quite frankly, I have written enough already. I do have thoughts on other aspects of the game though, and might share them in another thread.

Congratulations, you have now read trough a grand total of 7314 boring words. I salute you!

 

[Wimsey]

Reserved in case I want to make additions.

 

[Scilly_guy]

I look forward to reading it all, but you really did go to town on this didn't you!

 

[Wimsey]

Yep, but almost all of this cropped up while I was walking the dog (sometimes several hours each day), time that would've been "wasted" anyway. It's nice to have something to think about sometimes.. I had never intended it to get this long, though.

 

[Lockesdonkey]

Overall a good job, but I'd like to know two things:

1. Why rivers on tiles are necessary. I know that prima fascie it appears that way, but I can imagine several ways (which I am too lazy to mention here) how it might work with the current system.

2. Why hexes are absolutely necessary. I can't even fathom why what sort of tiles we're using matters at all.

 

[Phrossack]

You've clearly worked on this, Wimsey! But it seems complicated; beginners will have difficulty with it, so the governor will need to be heavily improved to fulfill these new tasks properly.

 

[Wimsey]

Yes, I designed this system mainly for that "hard-core" of players who cries out for more realism and complexity in their games. Players who have never played Civ before will indeed find it confusing, but with a good tutorial/advisor we could probably keep them from quitting the game in desperation. Also, I'm not the only one who hopes that the "dumbed-down" CivRev means that Firaxis intends to go the other way with Civ5, an overall more complex and realistic game for a different group of players.

@ Lockesdonkey: Yes, rivers could stay the way they are, and consider all tiles bordering a river as river tiles for the purposes of where a trade route could go (was this among your ideas?). I still think I would prefer rivers on tiles, to emphasize the advantageous effects of going quickly up-/downriver, rather than the hindering effects of crossing rivers (which doesn't work properly in Civ4 either IMO)

As the calculation of distances is much more important in my system, the property of hexes that they are equidistant to all bordering tiles is a significant advantage. If we use squares, we will end up with the funny result that almost all traderoutes goes southeast-northwest/northeast-southwest. You could solve this by giving all diogonals a multiplier of 1.4 (like Civ4 does when calculating city upkeep IIRC), but this would mean a player could no longer simply count the number of tiles to see how long a trade route actually is. Anyway, the issue of hexes/squares has already been argued to death before, and I am not interested in discussing it any more in this thread (I'll happily do it in another thread though).

Edit: I found one more reason for rivers on tiles. If the game uses different elevations like SMAC, a river will always flow to the lowest bordering tile. Although rivers running between tiles of different elevation would be possible, it would be counterintuitive and just look plain weird.

 

[gazius]

I would strongly urge you to finish fleshing out the rest of your civilization outline, if nothing else it makes for a good read, as seven thousand words is just enough to flesh out a concept, hardly long reading for anyone but the TL;DR crowd.

The whole concept I believe could use a bit of work on fleshing out the pop side of it regarding gold, demand and labor. One thing in particular struck me was your wage theory - surely wages should grow and shrink? What about labor that works for nothing at all? Is it is cheap labor that has driven huge expansions in a society - whether we look at Asian river valley civilizations, or the slavery of Rome, or when christianity brought it's humanizing morals, it was not until the Industrial revolution that once again societies were able to make leaps ahead. What you would need is a way to get away from generic population units, and into specializations for particular groups. This already exists in the game to some degree, and is just in need of refinement, such as killing off specializations and moving more towards social classes, from slave to mega-rich. The final group, from what I've been reading in my greek and roman history, has been known to have had civic duties towards contributing forces and money and buildings for society, so I believe this is a valid class that could be expected provide something like bonuses in exchange for local prestige over national. We see this again in modern times somewhat with the mega wealthy donating their money to various causes.

My main concern is how to calculate all of this. If you were to break stuff into the various groups, I wonder if you could use a simple matrix to calculate demand and output, leaving bigger calculations to pathfinding for trade routes.

 

[Ramesses]

The system could do with a bit of simplification to make the learning curve less steep. Of course, it's so complex right now that I can't think of more than one way to simplify the system without compromising elements which may be integral to the whole thing.

The one idea I do have: Instead of having both population and work points for cities, they should be combined into one number: CP (Citizen Pool, or Command Points).

 

[Lockesdonkey]

I think the work-points system is chiefly to simplify the math. Because one citizen can do many things a turn, it's just much easier to deal with using at least some whole numbers rather dealing entirely in numbers =<1.

 

[Wimsey]

@Gazius
I don't actually think 7000 words are a lot, I regularly read books a thousand times that size. But for a CivFan post it's long, and probably bordering what people bother to read. And as you said, it's just a basic outline.

I'm glad you thinks this needs fleshing out, and comes with suggestions along the lines I hoped this would encourage. The concept of social classes has indeed crossed my mind, but I haven't thought enough about it yet.

A take on social classes:

Spoiler :

Just to avoid complications:
I realize it's a bit confusing that I have two different concepts using almost the same term:
"Basic wage rate" - the minimum amount someone will work for. From now on called BR.
"Wage rate" - the actual amount recieved for doing a job. From now on called WR.

Having a constant value of BR = 1.00 is indeed a simplification to make the model more streamlined. I do not really believe that's how the world works. However, I do not think BR should be a fluid number depending on WR or other factors. Although realistic, that would make the game confusing both for the computer and players. (Such as BR increasing because of high WR, causing lower profits, causing lower WR, causing lower BR...)

Instead, as you suggest, all citizens could belong to one of several social classes, each of which has a different BR. Something along the lines of:
Slave/serf: BR 0.5
Poor worker: BR 1.00
Rich worker + merchant: BR 1.50
Aristocrat/elite: BR 3.00

The classes should probably have some additional unique properties to make them interesting (such as free upkeep elite military units from aristocrats during feudalism). This of course leaves us with the problem of determining how many citizens will belong to each class. Being influenced by civics seems obvious, though something else is also needed. Help is appreciated, and I'll keep thinking about it.

Funny thing is, because of the slaves low BR, the goods he produces will have a low price, therefore getting good deals, which in turn causes high profits. So, the slave will end up with a very high WR, and in fact be rich. Hm, that feels a bit wrong. Therefore, all classes should also have a percentage of how much of their profits they keep for themself, such as:
Slave: 0%
Poor worker: 25%
Rich worker: 75%
Merchant: 100%

Profits are calculated normally, as per section 5.1. But once it is determined that a poor worker will get a profit of, say, 4, he must immediately give 3 (75%) to an aristocrat in the same city, and only keep 1 (25%)himself for the purposes of calculating WR. The aristocrats portion is added to whatever other profits he has, and used to calculate his WR. Aristocrats can become filthy rich thanks to the toil of others! Even better, we could add the option of sending profits to aristocrats in other nations, representing multinational corporations exploiting cheap work force in poor countries.

The concept of social classes of course gives an enormous potential for interesting in-game situations. What if your merchants and aristocrats want you to do different things, and you can't appease them both? What if the peasantry decides to rise up against their masters in a grand revolution? What if you as a rich civ imports all your food from a poor civ consisting of low-BR workers? It really depends on how much complexity you want to add into the game.

Social classes indeed makes calculations a bit harder, as cities no longer has a uniform WR for the purposes of calculating demand. I still think it's doable though.

@ Ramesses
It's funny how some people already wants to add more complexity, while some wants it to be simpler .
Although I don't doubt this game could be enjoyable to play once a player master the basics, I too have been worried about the steep learning curve. I have consciously tried to keep things simple if possible (yes, really!), and as you say, there's is not much you can simplify without breaking the whole thing down. What the game needs is a good interface, tutorial and advisor to help new players.

Incidentally, after I posted this, I found an old post from Trade-Peror, where he describes an economic system which is very much like mine. It is an interesting thread, as the philosophy Trade-Peror expresses as his reason for making his system, is more or less exactly the same as I have for mine.
Here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=85582
And second version here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=2070431#post2070431

 

[gazius]

While the concept of, say, variable BR sounds complicated, really, the game should be calculating all that, NOT you, therefore while in theory you may have complexity, if you simply display a BR alongside a WR you should be fine. As long as we're delving into labor theory, I feel it would be a misjudgment to recognize, through wages in one aspect, the rising middle class from humble origins. The unskilled worker of ancient times probably works a hell of a lot harder for a lot less than an unskilled worker of today, which I though really deserves to be recognized. This would work in with the global troubles of labor markets we see today, where first we shipped much of our manufacturing to China, only as they rose in prosperity for them to turn around and ship to Africa, Vietnam, and other countries not as developed. And really, while you can tinker with all of this in your civics, a sid advisor could give you a button, you click it, and the whole issue goes away. You may not be getting the most efficient economy, but it's working, and you have more important things than to manage an empire (Which I enjoy, much more so than the running out to dominate all the other civs, if not direct micromanagement) such as expanding through various means. Or whatever other Civ'ers enjoy.

A slave should obviously keep nothing, but the rest I should think would be open to what policies you have for civics. So in actual implementation you might instead of the one screen where you choose your civics have something like the little windows in the tech screen, and each takes you to a deeper level of your society. These civics can be run mostly without you by simply playing, alongside the economic aspects, the domestic, and to some extent foreign, politics game. So that unskilled labor may only keep 25% initially, but his efforts retentions could be increased as your society implements health care and automatic stabilizers such as unemployment. Of course, I think it would be fair to keep it at, say, a range permissible such as, say, 10%-40% or something. For a skilled worker, they would retain more in exchange for greater output, but it shouldn't scale quite as well. You can't have all office workers. Maybe some sort of artificial cap, though that feels wrong. To counter a situation where you have, say, the Detroit workers - once skilled, are now no longer considered skilled labor, that falls to technology workers, and this mechanism would be compensated for in techs, as they would bring about a natural change in the definition of unskilled vs skilled. Higher groups may be merchants, but I'd definitely want to add in a class for the aristocrats, who produce nothing themselves but simply control the land in medieval Europe. They should be deriving profits not only from ownership, but taking a cut off those unskilled laborers so that the state receives even less than would otherwise be produced by the pop.

A great opening for depth that requires no action from the player, merely reaction unless they wish to take the initiative. With each layer being active on it's own and only requiring the player to react - we can maintain the ease of getting into the game, and leave each layer of complexity to be peeled away by the player. Many of your initial ideas, complicated in text, but once you get them into the game, you would probably never really notice it unless you looked. The best way to achieve this in implementation would be - I believe - would be to have the internal politics of the nation drive these activities the player responds to. Unless you get someone who wants to look deeper into the issue, most of these issues are long term and thus only require some maintenance, easily done through the events BtS brought. Of course, it would be necessary not to overwhelm the player, but there is no reason you could not create advisers to make decisions in a manner you lean towards.

Anyhow, hope we'll see your next outline soon, and thanks for the links.