Demo 5 Economic Model

[Mark_Everson]

I did a little poking around with historical atlases, and have the following Very Crude estimates. Taking 1000 people per square as the point at which we count a square.

Please note that 1000 people per square is Very easy to achieve since at pastoralist population densities of ~0.3/sq mi a square would have a population of about 1000. So most of the central asian steppe is populated using this definition. However no Atlas I found that gave pop densities went that low. So we are talking primarily about agricultural populations here which may seriously underestimate the Medieval and Classical Antiquity numbers.

Modern times ~ 10k populated squares
Medieval ~ 2k
Classical Antiquity ~1k. (China all by itself has probably 100-200+ in this period)

The latter two estimates might be off by a factor of 2 either way (not counting pastoralists). The modern one something like +/- 50%

It is the modern one that is by far the most troubling for doing calculations at the square level.


[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited August 09, 2000).]

[Lord God Jinnai]

quote: Yes, agreed, 20,000 total land mapsquares. Minus Siberia. Minus the Rockies/Himilayas/etc. Minus the Sahara/Gobi/etc. Minus the Ozarks/Everglades/etc. And on, and on.

Ok every place you listed does have population and is capable of supporting it. Does that mean that there is much? No, but technology does change, even there. Siberia FE has, mainly because of Russia, better mining than it did before (course better is a relative term). The deserts have better technology for the people also. FE most defend themselves with rifles and pistols insterad of spears and swords. That's also not including stuff like oil, etc. The fact is you're assuming that since there are only a few people there and that they seem 'primitive' they can't change or adapt quickly and so you want to say they are unpopulated when they aren't. Like i said, there is a differance between unpopulated and minimally populated.

quote: Someone needs to check some numbers. I can not believe Lordy's assertion that the Earths crust is near 100% populated (meaning, in this case, more than 1000 people in a 60m by 60m area).

There are differnt levels of density, but that is pretty much true, Most of those areas you mentioned above are nomadic areas (like deserts), sparesly populated houses like Alaska or small tribal areas (like Alaska and Jungles)

quote: Even in modern times, with a 6 billion population, we have those massive mountain ranges, wide deserts, vast swamps, endless forests, etc that are not going to register pop in this game. I'd guess (based only on my own ignorance, but I'd like to see some actual data) that at worst we'd need to worry about 8,000 to 9,000 mapsquares, under the most amazing of conditions (unless, as I said, someone makes a 'Soylent Green' scenario).

Why? There are several reasons. First for political reasons. FE much of the SA jungle would be unpopulated as far as you're concerned, but they have enthic groups out there that are quite active now in politics to preserve the forest and their way of life. You can't do that if there is no population. Disease is also a factor as well as quelling local uprisings. Yes small numbers of people can do a lot. Use as slabve labor...most of those places you talk about have minorities in them. Most of what i said does haveto do with lower tech people, but they too can have influences even in modern times.

I guess you could have those squares designated as "minimal population" and not worry about the actual population number unless there seems to be a sprawl from an area that is calculated and then only change that to actual numbers when ness.

[F_Smith]

Mark:

So for the first 4000 years of gametime, we'll have at most about a thousand squares to calculate tech, econ, etc.

Not a problem.

After that, we can easily lean heavily on preprocessing, I think. Altho even 10k squares is not such a big number, considering the number of calculations per second these machines are capable of.

[Richard Bruns]

We are discussing horses and other farm animals in the Technology and Ecology threads, and part of the conversation turned to the economic aspects of the animals. Here are some of the ideas I came up with:

There are two ways of modeling animals that I can see: specials and infrastructure.

I think the infrastructure modeling is a better abstraction. This way, the results of the animals' presence can be modeled, and they are "behind the scenes" so they won't clutter up the map. This method of modeling may seem odd, but as far as I can tell the equations for animals and other infrastructure would be the same. There are a few differences, but the "animals" class of infrastructure objects can be derived from the basic "infrastructure component" object class

FE the number of horses available would be an important part of the farming and transportation infrastructure, as their presence increases the ability to complete economic activity. Just like the amount of blacksmiths available, the amount of certain animals affects the general economic ability to do things.

But unlike most infrastructure components, animals can be moved around. They could be transferred from one province to another, and invading armies could take them home and add them to the infrastructure of their civ. Another difference is that animals are bred rather than built. You don't have to expend any inputs other than food to increase the animal infrastructure; you just have to avoid eating too many of them. This leads to another point: animals can be consumed. This is a major difference, but we should be able to take care of it by altering the methods used to calculate depreciation.

While animals integrated into the economy can be tracked like this, wild animals should be specials. But unlike most specials, they are only used once. When your civ discivers the proper tech, the wild animal specials are turned into domesticated infrastructure components.

We should probably have the following infrastructure components:
Horses
Oxen
Donkeys/Mules
Food providing animals
Camels

I also think there are some good reasons for including Dogs and Cats as well. Dogs help farm operation, and cats control granary-draining rodents.

What do you think of this? Is this a good plan, or is there a better way of modeling these animals?

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Richard:

Interesting suggestions. I will need to think a bit before I respond.

Editorial Note:

This is Not a demo 5 issue. Could any further discussion of the draft/war animals idea move to the regular Econ thread? Perhaps moving the original post above to there would be useful also. The general econ thread is http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum21/H...tml?date=14:36 .

[Richard Bruns]

Sorry, I didn't know there was another current economy thread. I've moved discussion to a new, unified thread. When discussion finishes, I'll post the results to the economy thread.

[axi]

***bump***

Let us not forget what our priorities are!

So how does coding the demo 5 econ model go? Any progress we can see?

Will it be easy to transform this code to the final econ model afterwards? There are some important issues with trade, prices and the cash flow you know. Apart from that the govtecon submodel is currently suspended in mid-air.

The economic managment (of the accountant type) of the civ is a very central issue and it should have been finalised way before the specific parts were coded (production, trade, infrastructure, specials). If we do not want money to miraculously vanish or be created out of thin air (as in civ2), then we have to create an airtight accountant system. In a way, it looks like the trouble we're having with population; it should have been there from the beginning.

[Mark_Everson]

I can't answer all the questions now...

But for accounting, its very simple. Services = Clash Cash. You can take services out of a province 1:1 as CC, and you can put CC back in that becomes services. Of course prices change when you take out or put in services so it can mimic the inflationary effect of having lots of money dumped into an economy.

That is the state of play on CC currently.

[axi]

But you still insist that we don't need to balance the amounts of commodities after applying the demand for infrastructure? You are planning to keep bookkeeping exactly as it is in the v.11 spreadsheet? Do not forget that the state must have the ability to invest money in the economy of a certain province (money input).

Beör was wandering how can the player make the game build the Bismarck for him in a certain province. Is the answer I gave him in the infrastructure thread correct. It it compatible with your econ model and with your vision of the game in general?

What I really want is to coordinate myself with you, to correct both yours and my design errors. I am afraid that your bookkeeping is not solid enough, so that, apart from your possible errors, it lets me make mistakes in it's interpretation. I repeat: I have a strong feeling that we must finalise bookkeeping now.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Axi:

(I still haven't been able to look very carefully at your proposal, the responses, and the spreadsheet. I just haven't had the time... So it's possible we will have problems based on my lack of understanding of exactly what you are proposing. I will try to take a closer look sometime today.)

For the people's share of the infrastructure it is as you said my viewpoint is. I think that once the prices of all commodities are determined, just before the people buy infrastructure, that we should just reduce it to a big pile of cc. That is what I think is best given the trade-offs in the system. You are free to argue against it if you like .

And my mind boggles at what F. Smith will say about the whole thing, since he will probably want infrastructure to be broken up on an ethnic group, social status, and age cohort level

quote: Do not forget that the state must have the ability to invest money in the economy of a certain province (money input).

I don't understand what you mean by this. I just told you above that the government can put cc into a province. If the player desires they will be able to go into each province and say "I want to build x units of health infrastructure here with this money". However, generally the most efficient way to do this is just to subsidize the price of health care or whatever.

As for government purchases, I am in basic agreement with the response you gave. However there are a few things that I don't understand in what you said, and one clarification. First, the clarification. For the central government, the government should be able to buy whatever it can afford wherever it chooses. The AI will help to reduce management here. However, if others buy into the idea of provincial and local governments, these will only proceed automatically (similar to what the people do) but under central government general guidance if appropriate, depending on the centralization. This whole thing has not been discussed in detail, so I have just presented my view.

Now for the statements I have trouble with...

quote: If you have enough money for the Bismarck, you can funnel them to the province that has the capability of building battleships. They will increase the total budget for infrastructure and also the amount of public investment. This will raise the weight of the govt in the preferences machine enough, so that, if your government profile is actually in favor of building battleships, you will find your money in the military units budget and they will be transformed into military units. If they will build the Bismarck or a couple of Panzer brigades instead, is an issue decided by the General Staff (this is you).

First of all, at the lower micromanagement level the player can simply say "build the Bismarck with this money" provided its enough depending on the local economy. What you say about the government preferences machine matches my general expectation of what happens when the player has just issued overall guidelines to the economy, and expects them to be followed in each province. However, when you have a specific thing in mind, it is better for the player to order it directly using the micromanagement approach. Or alternatively, the player can simply say build me three battleships somewhere along with this coast within the next three years, and let the AI work out how exactly that should be done.

One other thing... You mention about military units being handled as infrastructure. And that this necessitates the "dry" infrastructure version of the military units to the given flavors such as x units of cavalry, Y of infantry. This is not what I intended. Military units can probably be built with the general preferences set up, but should Always be built as specific units IMO. This requires the military unit "infrastructure" class (if we do it that way) to be a bit different from the others. Essentially, you would enter into a queue of units that you desire to be built (or the AI will) and when the cost of the unit has been paid, the particular unit that is at the top of the queue comes into existence. That is the way I envision it. Whether we should handle this as an infrastructure class at all, is a topic I/we need to think about.

But remember infrastructure per se is not planned for demo 5 now... So only where infra impacts the Base system (as you talk about accounting FE) can I afford to spend a lot of time on it.