Wimsey's economic model

[Zomgmeister]

Great model, Wimsey.

I am somewhat pessimistic about chances of Firaxis _ever_ trying something different and more complex than what they have since Civ 1. At least, not under their main franchise.

But this economic model is worthy of at least, well, a project. Open-source new generation strategy game.

About complex vs simple: micromanagement must die. It is a plague. "Strategy" and "micromanagement" should became antonyms. Simple as that, His Majesty The Eternal Emperor-President is too important person to actually micromanage anything, really. He should have staff of competent assistants and advisors, who will remove mundane matters from his shoulders.

Main instruments of player should be... laws and edicts. Not direct orders.

I want to say to my empire: "build a town on this island, develop it as a good agrarian plot, notify me when it will start exports of 5 wheat/turn" and to forget about it.

About research and "specialists". I always thought that specialists in its' current implementation are bad idea. How so? Well, "specialists" are _special persons_, not _several thousands people at once_. In reality amount of people who push the science or entertain the masses is very small compared to the whole population. City of science, where half of population works in laboratories, is just silly.

Population is never the problem for research. You do have enough people to make some research specialists, always.

Research needs money, and lots of it. Also probably generic level of education is important.

Possibly some other factors may influence research, such as availability of certain goods. Though again, because research is pretty small thing, performed by individuals in small dusty (or sterile) laboratories, only some small presence of commodity in the town/empire is required to think about it. Researchers don't need a full galleon of copper. They just need a few kilograms, thank you very much. Instead of amounts of some substance, they rely on different, various substances.

About raw resources: they should be depleteable, of course. Additional technologies / financing could prolong tapping into resource, effectively increasing its' amount, by introducing deeper mining, finer ore processing or whatever.


I used to think about "new generation strategy game" for quite a while. One of my firm beliefs is that someday the grid, be it hexagonal or square, must go away at all. Or at least, it must be miniaturized.

Right now the city occupies one tile, and its' fatcross occupies twenty more tiles. Not very flexible. Instead imagine (I will simplify it deliberately), that each of these 21 "big" tiles is breaked at 9 small minitiles (or maybe 16, maybe 25... not sure about exact number, it's not important now).

What we need here is detalization. 1 population point occupies approximately 1 tile as residence without advanced technologies, such as skyscrapers. Farm could occupy whole 9 tiles - vast fields and all that.

No need to set limits on city size on world map. Largest modern cities and aglomerations are immense, they can be compared with smaller countries in size. Player should be able to set city borders as he want to, not thinking about stuff like overlapping or "damn, either this wheat or that banana won't get into fatcross". They both will, just build some villages on these plots, and make them subordinated to the city. Of course, expenditure on goods transport will be somewhat bigger, but it is still cheaper than to import either wheat or bananas from somewhere else.


Anyway, I am very interested in participation of making of new generation open-source strategic game. If anyone else is interested (preferably with some skills of actually _making_ the game, but pure thinkers are welcome, because lots of things should be thought through and over), then probably we should start it.

Don't want to hijack Wimsey's thread, will make new one about this project tomorrow.

 

[Ramesses]

Don't want to hijack Wimsey's thread, will make new one about this project tomorrow.

Actually, I think he would appreciate it if you kept posting in this thread to help maintain its popularity, and increase the chances that others would see it. Well, if I had a great idea that everyone was on board with, that's what I'd want.

I'm not sure this would eliminate the micromanagement problem as you say. In fact, with the level of complexity this model shows, there's bound to be one or two resource shipments not being sent to the place where they could be most helpful. How to be sure that the computer wil set up trade routes in the most absolutely efficient way possible will probably be the biggest obstacle the model will face. And if the CivIV AI governor feature is any indication, there will be a lot of problems and pitfalls in programming bug-free trade route planning.

 

[Zomgmeister]

2 Ramesses: why not, I'd be happy to bump this thread.

I can imagine that computer can't always set up stuff in absolutely efficient way possible, and this is absolutely realistic. But again, _why_ he can't? It's not computer problem, it's algorithm problem.

Current workstations are so much more powerful than PCs of '91, it isn't even funny. Most of this power go to eyecandy and system inefficiency (see, absolutely realistic, as I said), and well, nobody really needs eyecandy in this project.

I believe that it is possible to make "governors" alert enough with, say, continuous checking of everything, trying to improve emphatic points according to edicts, not forgetting about mundane expenditure like food and happiness of people. It's just numbers and comparisions, nothing that computers can't do.

 

[Wimsey]

How will wonders fit into this algorithm if they are bonuses which means algorithm is already broken?

Is my algorithm broken? Most wonders would probably have to be changed from Civ4, to be compatible with the new model. For instance, Great Lighthouse could give a 10% cost decrease of any sea trade routes going in/out of your cities. I don't think this should pose much of a problem.

So there will be no workers? What depends on how fast a city can build its countryside?

I was thinking of making it a set time, such as road 6 turns, fort 20 turns etc. (Sort of playing CIv4 and never being allowed to use more than one worker at an improvement). There is no limit on how many tiles you can improve at once, but keep in mind that work points spent on building improvements can't be used for anything else. When you want to "replant" a tile (introduce a new biological resource), the time, work spent and chance of success is not a constant value. It depends on the proximity and quantity of other resources of the same kind. This is to prevent resources being planted anywhee too early.

Can workforce be traded(like people or slaves)?

No, work points can only be expended locally.
Slave trade, on the other hand, could be very interesting. In that case you trade population, not work points. I'll see if I can get back to it, I'd definitely like to see some sort of bad-ass slavery in the game.

How is it a solution?(I need a explanation, I am NOT disagreeing with you)

If gold is generated every turn, but never ever disappears, we will end up with the strange problem of having too much gold in the world, thereby decreasing the worth it. In fact, this happens all the time in the real world, and it causes prices to steadily rise (inflation). Only when inflation gets ridiculously high does it pose a problem. (Such as Germany around 1930, indirectly helping Hitler to power) So this is not actually unrealistic. However, I want the value of gold to stay roughly constant throughout the game, because I think this will be less confusing for a player. Therefore, rather than raising the cost of work and goods during the game, I remove some gold from the world every turn to increase the value of the remaining gold. This loss will not surprisingly harm civs with lots of gold (compared to other resources) more. Does this paragraph make sense at all?

Great model, Wimsey.

I am somewhat pessimistic about chances of Firaxis _ever_ trying something different and more complex than what they have since Civ 1. At least, not under their main franchise.

Thanks for the praise.
I know, and I dont expect Firaxis to adopt or be inspired by this idea. It gives me something to do during the Christmas holiday though.

City of science, where half of population works in laboratories, is just silly.

Yeah, totally agreed. I once had a city with over 8 million spies!

If you want to make additions, suggestions or changes to my model, you're very welcome to post them here. If you start a (similar?) project of your own, I'd prefer if you do it another post. IMO threads with lots of ideas from different people are hard to read, even though all the ideas are good by themselves. Everything you're saying in your post makes sense, and I like most of it - except the bit about splitting tiles into small quantities. I happen to like the simplicity decent-sized tiles add to Civ (But they should be hexagonal!)

Anyway, here comes some additions to my model.

Colonies:

Spoiler :

Colonies are considered a normal part of your empire, not like the independent BtS colonies. I don't know exactly how we should determine which settlements are colonies or regular cities, but it should probably be affected be distance to other cities and whether they are on another continent. (I really want the option of having colonies on the same continent as my core empire. Didn't Europeans colonise Africa?)
They follow some special economic rules:
- A colony can only trade with or through the mother country. If there is some kind of "minor civs" in the game, colonies can trade freely with these (think of Europeans and Indians).
- A colony does not keep its share of the profits when selling goods. It is instead given to a city in the mother country.

This means the English colony of New England can't trade direcly with France, French colonies, or indeed any other country. It is however possible to send a unit of cotton from NE to a French city - but it must pass through an English city on the way. Imports to a colony must also go through the mother country, so they will be a poor market to any other nation.

If a colony in NE sends a unit of Cotton to London, it would normally recieve one fourth of the profits of this transactions. But London gets this share instead. This represents the owners of the trading company in London reaping their rewards. If a resource is sent through several cities in the mother country, or to another nation, the first city along the trade route gets this profit - not necessarily the city that consumes the resource. This special rule only applies to the profit of extracting a raw material - a colony gets normal profit from refining or transporting a resource. Imports to a colony follows all the normal rules for profits.

This means colonies will remain poor, while colonial masters will be very rich - especially the trade sities that imports goods from the colonies. The colonies wil not be wiling to live with this agreement forever though, and will at some point request equal trade rights. Denying them this could very well lead to a full scale rebellion. Colonies might also try to cecede later and for other reasons, but that has nothing to do with economy really...

 

[dragonnewby]

Is my algorithm broken? Most wonders would probably have to be changed from Civ4, to be compatible with the new model. For instance, Great Lighthouse could give a 10% cost decrease of any sea trade routes going in/out of your cities. I don't think this should pose much of a problem.

Yes, but only ONE city can have each wonders so the algorithm cannot be repeated since some cities will build different wonders...

I was thinking of making it a set time, such as road 6 turns, fort 20 turns etc. (Sort of playing CIv4 and never being allowed to use more than one worker at an improvement). There is no limit on how many tiles you can improve at once, but keep in mind that work points spent on building improvements can't be used for anything else. When you want to "replant" a tile (introduce a new biological resource), the time, work spent and chance of success is not a constant value. It depends on the proximity and quantity of other resources of the same kind. This is to prevent resources being planted anywhere too early.

So every city builds in exactly same amount of turns? Why then, stronger empire would expand as fast as smallest and weakest empire? ONE improvement a time would take a long time to complete building roads?

No, work points can only be expended locally.
Slave trade, on the other hand, could be very interesting. In that case you trade population, not work points. I'll see if I can get back to it, I'd definitely like to see some sort of bad-ass slavery in the game.

Agreed

If gold is generated every turn, but never ever disappears, we will end up with the strange problem of having too much gold in the world, thereby decreasing the worth it. In fact, this happens all the time in the real world, and it causes prices to steadily rise (inflation). Only when inflation gets ridiculously high does it pose a problem. (Such as Germany around 1930, indirectly helping Hitler to power) So this is not actually unrealistic. However, I want the value of gold to stay roughly constant throughout the game, because I think this will be less confusing for a player. Therefore, rather than raising the cost of work and goods during the game, I remove some gold from the world every turn to increase the value of the remaining gold. This loss will not surprisingly harm civs with lots of gold (compared to other resources) more. Does this paragraph make sense at all?

Agreed.

Colonies are considered a normal part of your empire, not like the independent BtS colonies. I don't know exactly how we should determine which settlements are colonies or regular cities, but it should probably be affected be distance to other cities and whether they are on another continent. (I really want the option of having colonies on the same continent as my core empire. Didn't Europeans colonise Africa?)
They follow some special economic rules:
- A colony can only trade with or through the mother country. If there is some kind of "minor civs" in the game, colonies can trade freely with these (think of Europeans and Indians).
- A colony does not keep its share of the profits when selling goods. It is instead given to a city in the mother country.

This means the English colony of New England can't trade direcly with France, French colonies, or indeed any other country. It is however possible to send a unit of cotton from NE to a French city - but it must pass through an English city on the way. Imports to a colony must also go through the mother country, so they will be a poor market to any other nation.

If a colony in NE sends a unit of Cotton to London, it would normally recieve one fourth of the profits of this transactions. But London gets this share instead. This represents the owners of the trading company in London reaping their rewards. If a resource is sent through several cities in the mother country, or to another nation, the first city along the trade route gets this profit - not necessarily the city that consumes the resource. This special rule only applies to the profit of extracting a raw material - a colony gets normal profit from refining or transporting a resource. Imports to a colony follows all the normal rules for profits.

This means colonies will remain poor, while colonial masters will be very rich - especially the trade sities that imports goods from the colonies. The colonies wil not be wiling to live with this agreement forever though, and will at some point request equal trade rights. Denying them this could very well lead to a full scale rebellion. Colonies might also try to cecede later and for other reasons, but that has nothing to do with economy really...

So can the colony try to declare independence and become its own country?



That's all for me.

 

[Wimsey]

Yes, but only ONE city can have each wonders so the algorithm cannot be repeated since some cities will build different wonders...

Ah, it took a while before I understood what you mean here - but I think I got it. You mean two processes such as these cannot exist at the same time?
1) "Transport a unit of steel to Paris and construct Eiffel Tower"
2) "Transport a unit of steel to London and construct Eiffel Tower"
Sure they can! The French and the British are both building the Eiffel Tower, and they are competing for your steel to do so.

(Well, we all know how this turned out. The French finished while the Brits still had 5 1/2 feet left on their tower. The Brits planned to invade France, but an American businessman intervened, and paid the British a heap of gold to have the London tower dismantled and sent to America as a souvenir to hang on the wall of his Montana cabin. The British Parliament voted for using the money to buy Sweden, but unfortunately the queen had already spent it on a tea party.)

Alright, it is unrealistic that two cities can build on the same wonder, but I'm not blame for that. If I still didn't understand your question, please ask again.

So every city builds in exactly same amount of turns? Why then, stronger empire would expand as fast as smallest and weakest empire? ONE improvement a time would take a long time to complete building roads?

You're not limited to building one improvement at the time, in fact you can build roads in 1000 tiles simultaneously if you want to.

So can the colony try to declare independence and become its own country?

Yes, ideally. Hopefully it should work better than the current BtS colonies that never try to break away (at least that is my experience.)

 

[dragonnewby]

Ah, it took a while before I understood what you mean here - but I think I got it. You mean two processes such as these cannot exist at the same time?
1) "Transport a unit of steel to Paris and construct Eiffel Tower"
2) "Transport a unit of steel to London and construct Eiffel Tower"
Sure they can! The French and the British are both building the Eiffel Tower, and they are competing for your steel to do so.

(Well, we all know how this turned out. The French finished while the Brits still had 5 1/2 feet left on their tower. The Brits planned to invade France, but an American businessman intervened, and paid the British a heap of gold to have the London tower dismantled and sent to America as a souvenir to hang on the wall of his Montana cabin. The British Parliament voted for using the money to buy Sweden, but unfortunately the queen had already spent it on a tea party.)

Alright, it is unrealistic that two cities can build on the same wonder, but I'm not blame for that. If I still didn't understand your question, please ask again.

You didn't get it but you still answered my question

You're not limited to building one improvement at the time, in fact you can build roads in 1000 tiles simultaneously if you want to.

Wait so you can build as many improvement as you want? Couldn't you just build everything in one turn? I'm confused

Yes, ideally. Hopefully it should work better than the current BtS colonies that never try to break away (at least that is my experience.)

Accepted.

 

[Ramesses]

Everything you're saying in your post makes sense, and I like most of it - except the bit about splitting tiles into small quantities. I happen to like the simplicity decent-sized tiles add to Civ (But they should be hexagonal!)

No, they shouldn't. If the map had a very high map resolution, the problem of equivalent straight and diagonal movement could be dealt with easily.
I am all for shrinking the tiles by 3 times, allotting movement points in multiples of 6 to units, and making the cost of lat/vert movement 2 point per tile and making the cost of diagonal movement 3 points per tile.
The advantage of diagonal movement over lateral/vertical movement would be diminished but not be made less effective than lat/vert movement. In fact, by this system, unit movement ranges would more closely resemble a circle.
See below the movement range of a unit with 6 movement points (Warrior) [top].
Also see the movement range of a unit with 12 movement points (Horse Archer) [bottom].


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Of course, units can move into any accessible tile as long as they have 1 or more movement points remaining. We already see this in Civ4 - when a worker moves into a forest or onto a hill (without a road) after having already moved one tile, they spend one more point than they actually have.

If you'll notice the movement costs of this tile system, diagonal movement is exactly 1.5x lat/vert movement. In actuality, the diagonal of a 1x1 square is approximately 1.414. But this system sets the cost of diagonal movement (and sight, and transport, and everything else) at a much more realistic ratio to lat/vert movement (sight, yadayada). And for only a tiny sacrifice in realistic movement, this grid allows movement in 8 directions, instead of 6 like a hexagonal grid. The 6-directional movement of a hexagonal grid is the feature which many Civ players (myself included) are opposed to.

How could this facilitate your economic model? Well, by using the diagonal-to-straight ratio of 3:2 established above, trade routes can be calculated along the square grid without significant difference in transport costs in comparison to a gridless model. Hexagonal grids would be more likely to produce problems. Take for instance a case where two cities are placed horizontally from each other on a hexagon grid (with vertical movement being in straight lines). Unlike a square grid, a trade route between two such cities on a hexagonal grid will have to make unnecessary vertical movement to connect the cities, artificially increasing the distance of the route to a greater extent than a square grid.

"Our grids can beat your grids any day of the week, Wimsey. Convert to Squaregridism now before the heavens rain their displeasure upon you."

 

[Wimsey]

You didn't get it but you still answered my question

Good enough for me. The important thing is: I don't think wonders should cause any big problems in my model.

Wait so you can build as many improvement as you want? Couldn't you just build everything in one turn?

Each improvement would still require a minimum number of turns. If we say a road takes 10 turns to build, you can't build it faster than 10 turns. But you can also build 50 roads in 10 turns by building them all simultaneously. This will however drain your economy seriously during the construction period.
(On second thought, it might be more natural to only be able to construct roads/railroads next to an existing road.)

Before we go on, I'd like to quote myself from my first post:

(please don't let this become yet another hexes vs. squares thread).

I am well aware of the advantages and drawbacks of the different grid types, and I still prefer hexagons. That is mostly because they have a consistency that squares lack. Your model with square-root-of-2 (Do you know if there is a symbol for that hidden deep in secrets of the keyboard?) solves many of the problems people have with squares, but not all. You correctly point out that hexes aren't perfect either, but I still maintain they are better than squares. And they look nicer.

So sorry, you won't be able to convert me unless you bring a big stack of doom.

 

[Ramesses]

Before we go on, I'd like to quote myself from my first post: (please don't let this become yet another hexes vs. squares thread).

Sorry about that.

By the way, I thought of a way to allow for geological resources to be limited and still prevent running out of crucial material for war and defense. Each unit and building created will be worth the resources that went into them when they are destroyed. Defeating a legion of swordsmen in battle will provide an "item drop" which consists of the Iron1 used to make them, which can then be hauled back into friendly territory by any unit and subsequently transported via trade routes. This could probably replace experience as the reward for winning battles.

Buildings can also be recycled into materials.

 

[Wimsey]

Yes, recycling of resources would be a realistic element, but I can't really see how we could make it work. The way you described seems a bit micro-manageish (having to move units carrying captured metals to your cities to drop it off), and it clashes with my policy of no storage of goods. And you could still risk running out for example by tying all your iron up in ships that are lost at sea. Now that being said, I wouldn't mind seeing mines run dry if the game mechanics ensured there was always some new mines being available at the same time.

Anyway, I'll make an attempt at slavery:

Spoiler :

Although I scrapped the idea of social classes, I want to see if I can get slavery back in along those lines. Now we have two basic classes of people; slaves, and everyone else. Cities running slavery will have a mix of non-slaves and slaves in their population. Slaves have the following special rules:
- They have a basic wage rate (BR) of 0.50 rather than 1.00.
- They can only extract raw resources or construct buildings.
- Slaves have a very low or even negative pop growth rate.
- They have no demand for luxuries.
- When a city with slavery looses a pop point for any reason, a slave always die first.
- Slaves may revolt.

Profits and wage rates for slaves are used normally to calculate trade routes and average wage rate of a city. They are a cheap and profitable way to perform labour, especially in government projects. However, there is always a risk of slave revolts, especially if the ratio of slaves to non-slaves in a city gets very high, and there are not enough military present to keep them in check.

Getting new slaves
As slaves tend to live hard and die young, and are not exactly encouraged to raise children, the pop growth of slaves is much lower than that of free citizens. This means a city with slaves will often have a negative pop growth (But don't panic - the slaves will die first, and once they're gone the growth rate will get back on track). So a steady supply of slaves from a is required if you want to keep your cheap labour. There are two ways of getting slaves: Capturing them from conquered enemy cities and slave trade. If you're running slavery and conquers an enemy city, I imagine you would get up an additional option when asked to raze or keep the city, to enslave the populace. In that case, some people are killed, and the rest are transported as slaves to your cities along trade routes. Cities must have a way to calculate their demand for slaves to make sure they are distributed in a good way around your empire. This method is a quick and cheap method of getting slaves, but once you run out of land to conquer, you also run out of fresh slaves.

The other way to get slaves is by forcing a "slave-trade" agreement upon a vassal. By doing this, his citizens will be considered goods that can be transported along trade routes. His cities will calculate a price of slaves based on the population and pop growth, and your cities will calculate their demand for slaves. A pop point of slaves is considered a unit of a resource, and slave trade is handled exactly like any other trade. Needless to say, acepting a "slave-trade" agreement will be rathr crippling for a vassal.

The aquisition of slaves through both of these means has the trade-off that slaves will bring their culture to your cities, creating a multicultural society that might not be desireable, especially if the slaves are freed at some point in the future.

 

[dragonnewby]

Yes, recycling of resources would be a realistic element, but I can't really see how we could make it work. The way you described seems a bit micro-manageish (having to move units carrying captured metals to your cities to drop it off), and it clashes with my policy of no storage of goods. And you could still risk running out for example by tying all your iron up in ships that are lost at sea. Now that being said, I wouldn't mind seeing mines run dry if the game mechanics ensured there was always some new mines being available at the same time.

Anyway, I'll make an attempt at slavery:

Spoiler :

Although I scrapped the idea of social classes, I want to see if I can get slavery back in along those lines. Now we have two basic classes of people; slaves, and everyone else. Cities running slavery will have a mix of non-slaves and slaves in their population. Slaves have the following special rules:
- They have a basic wage rate (BR) of 0.50 rather than 1.00.
- They can only extract raw resources or construct buildings.
- Slaves have a very low or even negative pop growth rate.
- They have no demand for luxuries.
- When a city with slavery looses a pop point for any reason, a slave always die first.
- Slaves may revolt.

Profits and wage rates for slaves are used normally to calculate trade routes and average wage rate of a city. They are a cheap and profitable way to perform labour, especially in government projects. However, there is always a risk of slave revolts, especially if the ratio of slaves to non-slaves in a city gets very high, and there are not enough military present to keep them in check.

Getting new slaves
As slaves tend to live hard and die young, and are not exactly encouraged to raise children, the pop growth of slaves is much lower than that of free citizens. This means a city with slaves will often have a negative pop growth (But don't panic - the slaves will die first, and once they're gone the growth rate will get back on track). So a steady supply of slaves from a is required if you want to keep your cheap labour. There are two ways of getting slaves: Capturing them from conquered enemy cities and slave trade. If you're running slavery and conquers an enemy city, I imagine you would get up an additional option when asked to raze or keep the city, to enslave the populace. In that case, some people are killed, and the rest are transported as slaves to your cities along trade routes. Cities must have a way to calculate their demand for slaves to make sure they are distributed in a good way around your empire. This method is a quick and cheap method of getting slaves, but once you run out of land to conquer, you also run out of fresh slaves.

The other way to get slaves is by forcing a "slave-trade" agreement upon a vassal. By doing this, his citizens will be considered goods that can be transported along trade routes. His cities will calculate a price of slaves based on the population and pop growth, and your cities will calculate their demand for slaves. A pop point of slaves is considered a unit of a resource, and slave trade is handled exactly like any other trade. Needless to say, acepting a "slave-trade" agreement will be rathr crippling for a vassal.

The aquisition of slaves through both of these means has the trade-off that slaves will bring their culture to your cities, creating a multicultural society that might not be desireable, especially if the slaves are freed at some point in the future.

Dude, you're ideas are AWESOME. I hope they all get accepted in the game!

 

[Ramesses]

What we need now is some ideas for implementing economic civics, like Mercantilism and Free Market. I'd like to see the ability to put restrictions on what may be imported from other civs. You could indiscriminately close all trade routes, bar the import of particular resources from certain civs, promote or discourage the usage of resources in general, among other policies.

 

[Wimsey]

Good thinking. I feel economic civics is a bit of a problem, partly because they already arise naturally from how you set your tolls, taxes and trade agreements. Some civics would typically limit player control (such as free market), so we need some bonuses to compensate for the lack of control. Extra trade routes obviously don't work. Any suggestions?

State property used to bother me. You might rightfully argue that under SP the player should be able to micromanage all his processes. I didn't like the feel of that, because any sane player couldn't possibly like to individually manage all of his trade routes, and it fundamentally clashed with my free trade algorithm. But then I realized it would be possible to let an economy in SP work exactly as normal, but the player should be able to set up individual domestic trade routes (working without profit, but gold must still be paid from the buying city) if he wanted to, and also to remove existing ones if he didn't want them. It would need an extra advisor screen that only will appear in SP, where a player can see which trade routes he has forced or removed, and change things as he sees fit. Foreign trade routes will generally be unaffected by SP.

 

[Wimsey]

I'll descibe another concept that I've wanted to add for some time: Trade fleets.

Spoiler :

Trade Fleets
In order to transport goods on oceans or rivers, a city must have one "trade fleet" for each unit it wants to transport. A trade fleet is constructed by refining one unit of raw timber (and later metal) in a shipwright building. Once a trade fleet is built it stays in the city, and is now used for transporting goods. In the city interface a player can see how many trade fleets of each type there is in the city. TFs are categorized in river and ocean/coast types, with different upgrades of each. Better TFs will allow cheaper transport. (For example, the earliest coast TF1 has a cost of 0.20 per tile, while TF2 has a cost of 0.16 per tile). Once a TF is built, it is bound to its home city and can not be used by another. A TF will only last for a limited number of turns (say 10) before it disappears, and the city will have to build/import a new one. This represents ships being fased out and scrapped, and occational ships lost at sea.

Demand for trade fleets
During the algorithm for determining processes that I have described earlier, the computer will first use any already existing TFs for transporting goods. When it comes to a process that involves a sea trade route but there are no TFs available, the cost of building a new TF (ie. extracting timber, possibly transporting timber to shipwright, refining timber to TF, possibly transporting TF to city) becomes part of the process. But this cost is divided by 10, as a trade fleet lasts 10 turns after it is built. When the average wage rate for all involved in process is calculated, the wage rate of those providing the TF only counts 1/10 of what they would normally do. A TF is able to transport goods on the same turn it is built. As you can see, a process involving the construction of a new TF can be very complex - but don't worry, the computer handles all that, not the player.

Now you might argue that ships realistically last for more than 10 turns, and that is right. I was initially thinking of letting a TF last for 50 turns or so, and require about 5-10 timber to be built. However this caused some problems with how to calculate when and how a TF is built. By letting a TF cost only 1 timber I could ensure that it would always start working on the turn it is built, simplifying things greatly. To balance this out I set the lifespan of a TF to the unrealistic low 10 turns. Effectively, it works out so a city needs upkeep every 10th turn for each of its TFs. The computer will spread this turns as evenly as possible in a city with several tradefleets. (So instead of a city needing 10 timber every 10 turn, some TFs will be granted "free" lifespan so the city will need 1 timber per turn. This is to make the economy as stable as possible from turn to turn) If a sea trade route is plundered or intercepted by enemies, this may result in loss of TFs.

An example of a trade fleet:
London has a demand of 9.00 for grain. Hamburg can extract this grain for 3.00 and transport it for 2.00, meaning this process will give a wage rate of 1.20/ (9-5=4, 4/4=1, 5+1=6, 6/5=1.2). However, Hamburg has no trade fleets available. It buys a TF from Oslo, as Oslo has a good shipwright and plenty of forest. Oslo extracts timber for 2.00, refines to a TF for 4.00, and is transported to Hamburg for 2.00. (A TF does not need to be transported by another TF, it is unique as it can transport itself - but it can never be transported over land). The total cost of the TF is 8.00 (2+4+2). The total cost of the grain is now the original cost plus the cost of the TF divided by 10:
5.00+8.00/10=6.00
And the new wage rate that decides if this process takes place at all is:
1.14/ (9-6=3, 3/4=0.67, 5+0.67=5.67, 5.67/5=1.14)

London pays Hamburg normally for the grain, and Hamburg pays Oslo normally for the TF (until it is based in a city it is considered a resource). This means Hamburg actually goes at a loss this first turn. But now it has a TF that it can use for free the next 9 turns (for any trade route, not just grain to London.)

Why?
Why did I add such a complicated and seemingly unnecessary feature? I have two reasons.
1) Shipbuilding industry
It has always seemed strange to me that in Civ4 you can have lots of overseas trade routes, without a ship ever being built. If you however want to build a measly little galley, you must pay with lots of production. I really wanted to add a business for making civilian ships, so the dockyards are not idle unless warships are being built. Now a player can make a profit by selling ships to a seafaring rival. In fact, it is better to build ships in a city with available timber rather than the city where the TF will be used, because a TF can transport itself, while raw timber can not.

2) Commandeering trade fleets
Now I finally come to the reason why I began thinking of this in the first place, and the most important feature of trade fleets IMO. It has always bothered me in Civ4 that I can be a major sea trader, but still can't move so much as a missionary without spending to build a ship first. But no longer! A player can at any time commandeer TFs from a city for military use. By doing this he gets free transport ships! These transports are limited to carrying one unit, can't be used for amphibious assault, and are virtually defenceless in combat. But as they are so cheap, you can get lots of them. The 10-turn lifespan does not apply to commandeered TFs (fortunately!).
When you take all or some TFs from a city, it will immideately start to build new ones to fill its own need. When you no longer need the TF as a transport, you will send it back to its home city by disbanding it. This means a city will actually not have to build more TFs than normally - it only has to build new ones sooner rather than later (TFs that are not in use are not affected by the life-span rule). Therefore, commandeering TFs does not cost anything from your coffers, but if a transport is destroyed the state will automatically pay the city a sum of gold as compensation for the lost ships.

This means that it will be a lot easier to conduct warfare across a body of water, as you no longer need to spend on ships. Warships to protect your transports and proper military transports that can carry more units and conduct amphibious assaults must still be built normally. That is, using the production queue and paying with state money.

 

[Trade-peror]

I haven't checked into CFC in years, so it is certainly a pleasant surprise to see complex economic models continue to be debated. (Also, thanks for your citations.)

Keep it up!

 

[V. Soma]

Yes, Wimsey, keep it up!

Economy (and society and diplomacy and... ) is (are) the area(s) where Civ can improve the most

 

[civhelp121]

I love this topic. I feel that economics is given waaay too little attention and is very unrealistic in the civ games. Economics is what causes empires to rise and empires to fall.

I have a question and some suggestions.

My question is, if money is simply being transferred, how is money generated?

Demand formula

I'm going to try and take a stab at the formula for demand

As for the formula, I am no mathematician, but I will take a stab at it just to get the ball rolling. P+(BR+WR). P represents population and the food needed to sustain it. Just as in real life, even if wages decrease to 0 demand will not go below a certain point because people always need food. Hence P.

The other part will be the total of all wages, including BR and WR. I will write the total of BR and WR as simple TR, for total wages (I'm just keeping the R). The higher TR, the more the citizens are willing to spend for a resource. The best way to think about this is that TR represents a ceiling. Each resource, luxery or military or food, are at a fixed point. If the ceiling is raised above the luxery, the people will demand it.

For example, lets say we are trying to determine whether a city will demand a luxery item or not. Luxery items are purely demanded by TR. If TR totals 20, and it costs 5 for all the food, and there are two resources, one costs 11 and one costs 12, the city will choose the cheaper since it can't have both. Lets say TR skyrockets to 28, now the city will demand both. If the luxery resources are cheap, and cost 7 or 8 each and the TR is high, then it will simply choose the combination of items that yields it the highest happieness.

As for international trade routes, that is just factored in. For example lets say of the two resources I mentioned above, the 12 one costs more because its from another civ and is thus farther away. I didn't need to mention that in my explanation above because the distance is already factored into the cost. However the player would want to keep in mind that if the city takes the 12 resource, instead of its demand increasing because of higher wages, your civ will get the resource but not the usual benefit of higher demand. A real life example would be that although the Americans have lots of resources, they don't benefit from most of them since China exports the resources to America. However America has a high enough TR such that it can rely on services rather than products (aka the amount the American merchants charge to sell chinese products in America is high enough because of technological advancement that the demand created from American merchants is enough to support the economy. Add that plus services that are produced in America that would count as things in Civ 4, like a university).

Boom and Bust

As for suggestion, I think that the idea of a recession and growth period should be brought in. Now the study of such periods didn't really begin until Adam Smith, however over time I think you will find plenty periods of such. For example when rome fell one major reason (among a multidude) was that it couldn't pay for its soldiers since other empires didn't want to buy its goods. Therefore you could say that the slower rate of growth, or possibly a severe depression, has caused the fall of major empires.

Recessions and booms pretty much work naturally in your cycle combined with the demand formula stated above. However now we need to figure out how wages are formulated. As I stated above, I'm no mathematician, but I will take a stab at it.
BR stays the same. However WR is completed through the simple formula A*P. A is a constant<1, and P is the amount of profit. I think you already addressed BR by stating that it is constant, by little suggestion would be for calculating WR, use A*P where A is a constant<1. P could change so that a more technologically advanced product would yield more profit, and since the demand is determined by a portion of the profit, higher technology means higher wages. The gritty details will have to been fleshed out by someone who can play and find a balence in the game.

A*P. If we wanted we could sub that into the formula I stated for demand above, making the demand formula P+(BR+(A*P))

A recession can occur if a random event happens that causes unemployment to occur (housing bubble has popped!). In a real economy it isn't a random event, but going that far into realism is too complex for a computer, and goes into things even real life economists haven't figured out.

Government intervention

I've talked a lot about demand, I'm a little bias since I subscribe to Keynsian, but supply matters too. The way I proposed it supply is automated since it increases with demand. To be honest, even though something like computers increased supply and that helped the economy, in the game I would probably put it as a demand increase since I can't think of a way of adding supply into my preexisting formula.

Instead, I'm just going to talk about supply in the government intervention section. The only way to change supply other than changing demand, in my view, should be subsidies. What would happen would be that the government would spend money to make a product cheaper to produce, causing its cost to go down and then more cities will buy it, causing an increase in tax revenue. The amount of subsidies would be something the player manages, not something in an automated formula.

Subsidies would be more like a player wanting more of a product being produced (I want more iron for war, so subsidize iron) than helping the economy. As for pulling out of recession, I'm going to ignore monetary policy because that will get wwaaaayy too complicated for anyone to play. Instead, I will focus on what the player (aka the government) can do.

The player can either decrease taxes, or increase public spending. Those are the two government ways of increasing demand, which in our game translates into increasing TR, since a drop in TR is what causes recessions. Decreasing taxes is simple, just slide the bar (I think upping research from 70 to 80 would count as decreasing taxes). Another way would for the government (you) to use that unused . for example, lets say you are building a building, and the rest of the is used for producing a luxery resource. Since there is extra you could put them to work on a new building or weapons. Then when the TR is raised since you do this throughout the empire, you can let go of some of the and return it to producing that luxery resource.

What do you think? Did I forget anything?

 

[Wimsey]

Thanks for the replies and encouragement. I'm rather pleased to see Trade-Peror again, as I greatly enjoyed reading your UET. I have some more modifications and additions. I see my idea is getting a bit split up throughout the thread, and the total is getting a bit confusing (as I keep contradicting myself as I get new ideas and suggestions and discard others). I intend to start a new thread sometime when I have made enough improvements not to feel like it's just a copy of the old. That might be a while though. I don't really feel like editing a lot in this thread, as it will leave a lot of posts with no meaning, both mine and others.

I noticed my new "Grand Economy Algorithm" had some serious flaws, but I believe I managed to fix it up. (What was the flaw? I realized a city would rather buy goods from a a nearby city than produce the same goods locally for equal cost) Anyway, here is the third GEA:

Spoiler :

It is actually simpler than the previous one. For each and every possible process in the world, the computer will divide the demand for the process by the cost of the process.

Demand/cost

It will then use this ratio, rather than the wage rate obtained, when allocating processes. Otherwise, it will work exactly like the second GEA I described (in post 39)

I will also make some changes and additions concerning the demand and use of industrial goods and trade fleets.

Spoiler :

When determining a trade route that requires a new trade fleet to be built, the computer first calculates the total cost of buying the TF. It then adds one tenth of this cost (or another value, depending on how long a TF lasts.) to the total cost of transporting the goods. This 1/10 will also be added to the cost of all trade routes using this TF for the next 9 turns, even other trade routes than the one the TF was originally built for.

Using the same example as in my last post, Hamburg wants to buy a unit of grain from Hamburg, but Hamburg must first buy a TF from Oslo. The total cost of buying the TF is 8.00, so Hamburg immediately pays this to Oslo. The cost of extracting the grain is 3.00, and transport is 2.00.

The total cost of the grain is now 3.00 + 2.00 + 8.00/10 = 5.80

As Londons demand is 9.00, the profit of the trade route is:

9.00 - 5.80 = 3.20

Hamburg shall have half of this (1/4 for being the extracter and 1/4 for being the transporter), so London pays Hamburg a total of

5.80 + 1.60 = 7.40

As you can see, Hamburg is actually going at a loss this turn, as it paid Oslo 8.00 for the TF. Next turn however, the TF is already there, and 0.8 will be added to the cost of all trade routes using this TF for the rest of its duration, paid from the recieving city to Hamburg

A city will neither profit or loose from buying a TF, it is (as in real life) an investment that is paid down during the life-time of the TF. Still it is best for a transporting city to keep the TF as cheap as possible, as the 1/10 cost of the TF reduces the profits the city gets a share of. (Theoratically, it is possible for a city to be harmed if it buys a TF and then is permanently cut off from a trade market so the TF is never used. But a this city is screwed anyway in such a situation, I don't think it really matters.) Each TF will now have a value (8.00 in the example above) and it is possible for a city to have several TFs of different values. These differences should normally be so small a player can safely ignore them. Cheaper TFs are always used first, both when determining trade routes and when a player commandeers them. The value of the TF is the amount of gold the player must pay as compensation to a city if he loses a commandeered TF (regardless of the remaining life-time of the TF.)

Trains and airplanes
When I thought up this system, I realized the exact same mechanics could be used for trains and airplanes. That would create a natural limitation on a Civ's ability to transport large masses of military troops by train or air. I don't think I need to elaborate further on this, as you probably can imagine how it works.

Other enhancing goods
Also, this model can be used for any type of industrial goods, with a small modification. As I said in point 11.2 of my original post, I imagine industrial goods to work along the lines of "produce grain 20% cheaper if your city has access to iron3 (representing heavy ploughs)". In this case, the calculations will be exactly as with trade fleets: The city buys or makes a unit of iron3, and this resource will then give a 20% discount on the next 10 units of grain it produces (it does not have to produce all of these on the same turn). The cost of the plough is distributed over the cost of these grain units. If iron3 is so expensive it is cheaper to produce the grain without it, the city will do so. The player does not have to keep track of each and every industrial resource his empire consumes (although he should have the option too). Instead, the city interface will simply inform him whether a city has access to a resource or not, just like in Civ4. I imagine cars, oil, aluminium, coal etc. could all work in this manner, but I have not bothered to get specific about what each resource will do. Only I want to add that each raw resource should have just a few uses, in order to keep things simple (For example, aluminium could be limited to only cars, planes and space programs), as they will also be used heavily for military purposes.

Some more on transporting with trade fleets

Spoiler :

One thing that has always bothered me about Civ is that water is mostly an obstacle to expansion, while it really should be the other way around. If you for example play the Romans on a world map, you will inevetably expand in Europe because buildings ships to conquer the Carthagians just takes too much time and resources that you otherwise could spend to build troops, and when you finally take it (most likely by going around the whole meditarrenean), it is a pain to move your units across the sea because you first have to find/build a transport, then move the transport manually, load it manually, move it again manually, then manually bring it back to pick up the next load of troops. Meh... I'll rather have an inland empire. But I'm a sailor at heart, and want something new for Civ5. Actually, it was a fondness for coastal trade cities and trade fleets that started this whole economic model! Okay, now I have ranted a bit. Here comes the solution...

As I said in my last post, trade fleets will work as virtually free transports a coastal civilization can commandeer to transport it's units. I'll take it one step further. TFs are always basd in one city, but as they always have a trade route between this city and one or two others, it can be commandeered in any of these cities, even if it is a foreign city. For all practical purposes, it exists in all cities at the same time. (Schroedingers ship!) A player can always manually commandeer ships. To make it even simpler, let's say an English player wants to move a unit from Manchester to Chicago. It then simply gives the unit an order to go Chicago, and then the unit will go to Liverpool, automatically commandeer the cheapest TF available, sail to New York, disembark, move to Chicago, where it will revert to player control. The TF will automatically disband and return to Liverpool when the unit disembarks. This process will be automated even with large armies that sometimes must wait several turns to wait for enough TFs. Now sea transport will require no more mouse clicks than land transport, and the only drawback is an economic loss that is so small the player won't even notice it in most cases. Trains and airplanes will work in exactly the same way.

@ Civhelp121:
I read your post, and promise I'll get back to it. I'm a bit tired of writing now, and have to walk the dog, and I'll have to read your post a bit more carefully. I appreciate the effort to help anyway.

 

[BakingTheArt]

Jeez, that's a eyeful. Well, I read it all, and I have to say, it looks amazing. I always hated the trade system of this game, where it wouldn't allow the once extremely powerful island trade kingdoms to exist as anything other than a unimportant city that maybe gains 3 commerce per turn. In this system, resources are much more important than in civ4, in which you can trade them to a nation (A nation, not the people - the nation buys it) for a set number of gold per turn, instead of creating a market for a good before any demand is created. All goods are exactly the same, it's boring.

EDIT:

You should email this to Firaxis or something. I'd love to see this in a game, even if not a core civ game.