Economic Model II

[Mark_Everson]

From the colonization thread...

How is sea fishing modelled in the game?
Opinions? Idea about sea exploitation?

I haven't gotten very far in modeling fishing. The basic idea is that fishing would be done using fish resources that are out at sea and can be gathered. There would be an infrastructure class in any coastal square that would represent a fishing fleet. The fishing fleet infra would allow harvesting of fish resources offshore. At a guess, a given amount of fleet would have so many harvesting points that would be used to move to the resource and harvest it. For far-off resources, less would be able to be harvested since more time would be spent moving to it.

How exactly to do this with the existing code is a TBD.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Well for the colonist keeping traditional occupations or switching i think this should be based on the traditionalism EG parameter when it is implimented, athough maybe with some modifiers if the people are dying because of too rigid traditionalism.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi LGJ, that sounds pretty good to me. I think I'd make the default something like this:

Civ colonizing has traditionalism T on a 0-100 scale with 100 being super-traditional. For purposes of colonizing the traditionalism is T, but if the people starve try settling as if traditionalism were 2T/3. If that still doesn't work then the people won't colonize there. Puts a little teeth in being traditional. We can change the fallback setting to be more flexible or stringent after playtesting if needed.

[Gary Thomas]

Now that the technology model is actually doing something, I think that the time has come to consider in somewhat more detail how it actually works.

At present the technologies have, as well as a level, a characteristic of active/inactive. Not only does this currently do nothing, but I cannot see it ever doing anything. The player has no direct access to technology. The only way it can be changed by the player is through putting research points into an activity. Hence it is the activity that should have the active/inactive status, not the technology.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

Hey Gary, good point! But I'd prefer to have this discussion in the tech thread since its an overall tech issue. See you there!

[Mark_Everson]

I am now putting economic specials (gold, cloth, salt) back into the game after they were removed for D7. This thread has a moderately detailed discussion on specials and their function that took place in the april 2002 timeframe. There is also a writeup on specials functions on the econ web page on the clash web site. Please check it out if you're interested.

We also need artwork for specials to put in. The discussion for that is in Map Graphics Thread part III.

[Richard Bruns]

Has the econ code been updated to the new knowledge based system? If it hasn´t, farming effectiveness could be messed up even more than it already is. Ideally all tech-related calculations in the econ model would be replaced by user-definable Applications.

By the way, I think I figured out why the food spiral starts. The A variable for farming effectiveness, as described in the econ log, seemed to be equal to the farming tech level plus 4. This means, I think, that at the start of the game, food production is multiplied by 4, but when the tech level hit ten it was multiplied by 14. This meant that a doubling of the civ´s knowledge caused more than a tripling of effeciveness, while most applications are designed so that a doubling of knowledge multiplies effectiveness by at most 1.5. This, combined with free population due to food, was enough to kick-start a near-infinite spiral of tech growth, since with more food production there were more people and a bigger service sector, and thus more taxes to invest in the Food activity.

What other hard-coded technology-related calculations are hiding in the econ model that I should be aware of as I redo the tech tree in the updoming testbed?

Responding to Gary´s post, it is technologies that need to be labeled as active/inactive, not activities, because Activities like Food should be the same and available for the entire history of the civ, which means that they have to know not to give RP´s to the Genetic Engineering tech at the beginning of the game.

[Mark_Everson]

Hey Richard:

Originally posted by Richard Bruns
Has the econ code been updated to the new knowledge based system? If it hasn´t, farming effectiveness could be messed up even more than it already is. Ideally all tech-related calculations in the econ model would be replaced by user-definable Applications.

I'm aware of what needs to be done, just haven't had the chance to check out the tech-change code Laurent sent me several days ago.

By the way, I think I figured out why the food spiral starts. The A variable for farming effectiveness, as described in the econ log, seemed to be equal to the farming tech level plus 4. This means, I think, that at the start of the game, food production is multiplied by 4, but when the tech level hit ten it was multiplied by 14. This meant that a doubling of the civ´s knowledge caused more than a tripling of effeciveness, while most applications are designed so that a doubling of knowledge multiplies effectiveness by at most 1.5. This, combined with free population due to food, was enough to kick-start a near-infinite spiral of tech growth, since with more food production there were more people and a bigger service sector, and thus more taxes to invest in the Food activity.

Food actually uses (old system) 5.1 + level for productivity. Food production is a bit odd in that for the utility function to work right it needs to be greater than 3 per capita. I need to reconcile effectiveness with food production at some point. One way would be just to start all agricultural civs with a knowledge of 4+. Whatcha' think?

What other hard-coded technology-related calculations are hiding in the econ model that I should be aware of as I redo the tech tree in the updoming testbed?

Um, none occur to me at the moment. All the economic sectors work the same as food for now.

[Richard Bruns]

If you wanted to duplicate the current spec, you would use this application:

<FarmProductivity>
  <category>variable</category>
  <value>1</value>
  <technology>
    <name>Farming</name>
    <baseknowledge>-4.1</baseknowledge>
    <knowledgeeffect>1.0</knowledgeeffect>  
  </technology>
</FarmProductivity>

whcih sets things so that the farm productivity variable is always the same as the civ´s knowledge plus 5.1, as per the standard application equation:

value * 1 + ( knowledge - baseknowledge ) * knowledgeeffect

1 * 1 + ( knowledge + 4.1 ) * 1

knowledge + 5.1

This assumes that threre is no code problem with a negative baseknowledge. If there is, then we set baseknowledge to zero and start the knowledge at 4.1 for everybody, as you suggest. To be safe, I would prefer to set the knowledgeeffect to something less than one, so that productivity does not rise as fast.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
Its correct that these things aren't in there yet. I am not convinced yet that we need them, although there are certainly individual items where strong cases can be made for requiring particular specials. A particular compelling case is in weaponry, where bronze is a Lot better than stone/wood/copper, and iron a lot better than bronze. I guess my position is that for flexibility purposes the system should include limitations on building things if a special isn't available in the civ. Whether these restrictions should be used extensively in the base game, I'm not so sure of. I believe that if aluminum didn't exist we'd still have satellites. Other, admittedly inferior, materials would be used out of necessity where Al is now the material of choice. People are generally very good about working around lacking resources, although there is a certain cost to the workarounds. We can figure out exactly how this is done in the game as things move forward.

Horses or other pack animals also. In every civilization that didn't have them or ignored them, the wheel was never devloped for anything beyond a novelty.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Lord God Jinnai
Horses or other pack animals also. In every civilization that didn't have them or ignored them, the wheel was never devloped for anything beyond a novelty.

Hi LGJ, that's a good point. Could you cross-post this in the tech thread and we'll see what Richard can make of if for the early tech tree he's working on now?

[Richard Bruns]

I have run across two issues with the economy model in my work on 7.7.1:

The first is that ports seem to be broken. I tried to add ports to provinces to see if that would allow me to make triremes, but I got an error message. I got the same error when I set the port to Rome and when I set it to Mare Nostrum, the sea square. I know the xml command was right, because it ordered the code to do something, but it can´t seem to make ports on either land or sea squares.

The second issue is more of a feature request. In my Delenda scenario I have special units that are made by events, but I don´t want the player to be able to build them. I can do this by forcing them to be made obsolete by the Mob unit, but this may cause problems later. A better solution would be to use the economics code to make a stub order to hide them from the GUI. But when I tried that, it said they were uninteresting tags.

Could you allow any economics xml code to be added to the scenario.xml file, the way scenarios can contain military and technology? That way I can have resources that are only in one scenario, as well as the aforementioned stub orders to hide scenario specific units.

[LDiCesare]

You currently have several ways to have not buildable units:
Give them a prerequired tech like "CannotBuild" (typical Civ II solution), or restrict an element to an unexisting nationality.

I don't know about ports, however.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Richard Bruns
The second issue is more of a feature request. In my Delenda scenario I have special units that are made by events, but I don´t want the player to be able to build them. I can do this by forcing them to be made obsolete by the Mob unit, but this may cause problems later. A better solution would be to use the economics code to make a stub order to hide them from the GUI. But when I tried that, it said they were uninteresting tags.

Hmmm, sorry, no idea on that one. I don't have a functional java setup at the moment, so I can't check on it. When I'm back in the saddle (maybe a week) I'll check it out

Could you allow any economics xml code to be added to the scenario.xml file, the way scenarios can contain military and technology? That way I can have resources that are only in one scenario, as well as the aforementioned stub orders to hide scenario specific units.

That's the way it's supposed to work. I don't know why it doesn't.

I have no idea about the ports either. Maybe put in a request in the Bugs thread and see if someone who has some familiarity with the XML is willing to look into it. Otherwise I'll do it when I get a chance, but it may be a while.

[yellowdaddy]

different currencies?

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by yellowdaddy
different currencies?

For now we could have different currencies, in name only, fairly easily. I don't think it is wise to model in Clash true independant currencies and their interactions due to trade flows and internal interest rates.

[alms66]

Just a quick link to a noteworthy post made in the Infrastructure thread.

[alms66]

Reposted from the Demo 8.1 Goals and Plan thread.

by alms66:
6. Resource (special) quantities (so I can trade 30 units of silk for 100 units of timber).

by LDiCesare:
This is part of the diplomacy from my point of view.

by alms66:
Actually, that's not quite right. It does affect diplomacy, but it would also effect trading (merchants), and more importantly, the information available to the player. If the player could see that 30 units of iron were transported to the Germans from his own empire, he could shut it down before attacking them. It also has ramifications for units and infrastructure. The cost of a unit could then be 1 man + 1 unit of timber + 1 unit of iron, while the cost of a unit of infrastructure might be 5 units of stone + 4 units of timber + 2 units of marble. This also implies stockpiling of resources is possible.

by LDiCesare:
As for trading specials, these specials should first have some kind of effect before they can be traded (unless they are all general "luxuries" as what you traded in civ). The econ model and code makes for exchanges and merchants, but I'm not familiar with it.

by alms66:
Units and Infrastructure requiring x number of units of a particular resource is enough of an effect for me. I don't think Clash currently supports this though.

by Mark_Everson:
I am rather opposed to this approach. My reasoning is as outlined on the Special Commodities section of the econ page. All it does is screw over civilizations that don't have the X needed to build unit Y. Usually in the real world there are work-arounds for any lacking material. If you would like to discuss further, please copy this stuff over to the most recent econ thread and we can go over it there.

First, I may have just missed it, but I didn't see anything regarding why you are opposed putting quantities on resources and using them in the cost of units and infrastructure, but I think I do remember your reasons from my prior work with Clash. Your assumption is that a culture will use what is at their disposal and it is rather offensive of us to assume one method is superior to the other by granting it a greater effect, correct?

I agree with that, to an extent. Or, rather, I agree with that on infrastructure to an extent and I disagree on weapons and armor (units). First, I’ll tackle units. The current plan, I believe, is to say that access to the resource is enough to allow the construction of a unit (a Legion might require iron for instance). Civ3 used this method, and there was no shortage of people clamoring for quantities. Mere access to these metals was not enough. They were needed in sufficient quantity to outfit armies. If these metals played such vital roles in ancient warfare (not that resources are trivial in modern warfare, given our resource-low times), why do we not make them vital in the game?

As for infrastructure, I agree that a library is a library regardless of what material it is made of, and has the same effect regardless of the material of construction. The difference between libraries made of different materials is still significant though. One is an economic concern, the cost and labor is much lower for a library made of mud brick than one made of formed steel. The other is a military and common sense (for lack of a game-specific term) concern, the lower cost of a mud brick library vs. a steel library is made up for by the fact that the mud brick building is much easier to destroy (by disaster or by warfare or rioting) than the steel building. The steel building, of course has a lower maintenance frequency, though, etc. etc.

Since implementing units with quantities is so straight forward, I won’t even detail the process.

Infrastructure, however, may not seem so straightforward to all. The solution is to define a single infrastructure object (library for instance) by its effect. For example:

Effect:A library grants +.03% RPs to research per turn.

Allow multiple construction paths via resources using logical operators:

Resources: Wood (10) OR
Stone (10) OR
Marble (6) AND Wood (4) OR
Brick (7) AND Wood (3)

Letting the resources used define the maintenance costs and hit points of the infrastructure built.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Alms:

On specific commodity requirements for building units etc. (BTW thanks for summarizing the prior recent discussion here!)

Originally posted by alms66
Your assumption is that a culture will use what is at their disposal and it is rather offensive of us to assume one method is superior to the other by granting it a greater effect, correct?

Nothing really as politically correct as that! But I do maintain that the people will work around any material limitations that exist. It may be more expensive to achieve the same result, but the desired result can in some fashion be achieved without the availability of the usual commodity. The "more expensive" part is already handled by the fact that a civilization gets bonuses for having enough of the critical commodities of the age on hand. This bonus Does depend on the amount of the commodities, the place that we differ is that those commodities are not required for building Specific things.

A secondary assumption that I don't think that I have stated in the write-up on the web page is that if some material is available but in short supply, vital military uses will take precedence. I implicitly assume in the model that a lot of the commodities are available in small amounts for local use such as outfitting troops.

These are my philosophical underpinnings for my position. There are also several practical ones. Things are built in clash at the map square level generally. Distributing all these commodities that you want used to build all these things in the right amounts to all the different map squares seems like a lot of work and processing power spent for not much gain for the player. The player already gains Substantial economic benefits from obtaining commodities that are important in any age. For example, the manufacturing sector can be 20% more productive if it has a good amount of iron versus having virtually none.

Another practical issue is the AI. The AI already has enough to do IMO without worrying about balancing needed amounts of large numbers of commodities of various sorts to be able to build virtually anything of importance in a civilization. There are probably at least twenty other things I would much rather the AI think about first.

The current plan, I believe, is to say that access to the resource is enough to allow the construction of a unit (a Legion might require iron for instance) (snip) If these metals played such vital roles in ancient warfare (not that resources are trivial in modern warfare, given our resource-low times), why do we not make them vital in the game?

Just for the record, there are no resource requirements of any sort to build units currently in clash, nor are they planned, due to my reasoning above. (There are of course technological restrictions.) The importance of iron in military uses, and its vast superiority over bronze, is the one thing that I might consider as an exception. Except that iron in amounts sufficient for outfitting military units is available virtually everywhere in the world. Iron just isn't really all that rare! If I recall correctly, Japan and some areas of Africa are the only places where there is a notable shortage at ancient and medieval technology levels. The tipping point for military iron usage is generally not its availability, but the presence of a technology available to turn iron ore into weapons etc. for that reason, I think the need for iron drops out of this discussion unless we are trying to model the real world Very precisely.

Once the economics model is a lot further along, we will be able to judge if the absence of required commodities to build military units and infrastructure is a real problem or not. You can bring it up again then, and if a large section of our audience really clamors for it, then we might do it. But for now, the combination of my philosophical and practical objections, and also the extreme limitations on the time that I have to program clash, means nothing is going to happen on commodity requirements for a long time anyway...

Merry Christmas Everyone!

[LDiCesare]

I agree with Mark regarding iron. There are many many places iron can be found. Most of them are not used now because they are no longer economically sound, but that's all. I have the same problem with most if not all strategic resources in civ3 by the way. Coal is very easy to get. If you can't get coal, you can either build some out of wood (not very efficient vut feasible) or you have oil deposits nearby. Wood, timber, is in fact more of a strategic resource than anything depicted in civ 3 (consider the wars the Egyptians waged in order to have some dominion over Lebanon and its forests). Wood's still fairly common. Saltpeter, well come to my home, I'll show you how common it is . Oil and horses are the only resources that are really rare in the real world, but even then, once horses have been introduced to America, it wasn't long before the natives used them, so there's only oil left (aluminium is not that rare either, and rubber can be processed out of oil)... So having mandatory resources needed to build units/infrastructure I don't see as practical or realistic. Having them needed before you can research some tech (horseback riding) is ok for me however.

[alms66]

Sometimes I wonder why I bother, but, I fail to see a method of depicting wars for control of resources and resource shortages, both of which are fairly frequent throughout history, using the current system.

Using the bonus to production system, there's absolutely no reason to fight for control of resources. That Iron may give a 5% bonus to production, but if you attack a weaker neighbor you could double your land area and get a "bonus" to production via its population. Which would you choose, a war you may or may not win for some Iron, or a war you are almost certain to win for a greater return in the long run?

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by alms66
Sometimes I wonder why I bother, but, I fail to see a method of depicting wars for control of resources and resource shortages, both of which are fairly frequent throughout history, using the current system.

A reasonable point. But Fredrick the Great did not attack Silesia for its iron and coal because he couldn't make muskets without it. he did it for the economic power that those resources would give him.

Using the bonus to production system, there's absolutely no reason to fight for control of resources. That Iron may give a 5% bonus to production

First of all, the bonus is larger than the 5% number cited. The 5% means a 5% bonus for the first 1% slice of production you bring in. For the second 1% slice of production it goes down to 4% . . . The cumulative bonus for a lot of Iron, when you had none is approximately 5+4+3+2+1 = 15%

, but if you attack a weaker neighbor you could double your land area and get a "bonus" to production via its population. Which would you choose, a war you may or may not win for some Iron, or a war you are almost certain to win for a greater return in the long run?

And if you take over the neighbors you get the problems associated with all those people, likely of a different ethnicity, possibly backwards, etc. Like I said, lets get the game further along, and we'll See! If it's as big a problem as you think it will be, then we'll re-address it. It is Not going to happen in the next few months anyway so I don't want to spend too much time with back-and-forth on this because discussion time comes out of programming time.

[yellowdaddy]

I don't see why there should be any bonus for capturing iron resources, unless you are capturing fully functional mines and processing factories.
I do, however, think that it makes sense to have ENERGY RESOURCES present in the game to fight over, otherwise I wonder what AIs are competing for?! Attacks would be almost random surely? the AI neighbour simply attacks a section of territory for no other reason than ethnic groups or random/general expansion for the sake of it?! it doesn't make any sense - however stick a coalfield, diamond mine or oil well - perhaps even a forest that a neighbour needs to develop a navy in it's desert domain? Then you've got some real dynamics, and something to play for.

To state a truism: resources (being part of environment) are a critical defining factor of culture, concomitant with location.
Where a tribe originates: be it an island, a desert or a jungle, defines their economy and direction of technology is also defined by resources.
The resources also define politics.
Britain: a well-forested island naturally developed into a naval power as the geography and resources made that feasible. A lack of resources then directed Britain to use that maritime edge to acquire more resources.
This obviously didn't work for the Maoris, who were purely missing out on imported technology and information - which Britain acquired from other societies whose geography and resources precipitated or enabled them to develop things like ironwork, paper and gunpowder.
I think this demonstrates how important geography, resources and then trade are.

fossil fuels and building materials (stone and glass) - all depend on geography... it'd be simple and effective to stick to the terrain-specific resource idea:
desert = no wood
swamp = no metal
jungle = no sand for making glass

I mean while it may be true to say that iron isn't that rare, it might be interesting to have a set list of specific resources for countries to fight over, essentially fuel (which drives all economies):
wood/peat - forest and swamp tiles
coal - plains, forest, and hill tiles
oil - desert and sea tiles
gas - swamp and tundra tiles
uranium - desert, tundra and mountain tiles?
(hydrogen can be the final fuel, and a free one!)

You might also fancy having luxuries like gems, pearls, and spices located in less economically productive locations like mountains, atolls and jungles.

Although I doubt it'll happen, I think it might be nice rather than to just make certain resources more valuable according to this "ages" thing, to have a simple market, and make the price rise according to demand/availability of resources.
I'm not too sure about the idea of "ages".
I mean yes, where some powers dominate through technology, parts of the gameworld not in contact with these powers have no reason to know this, so the price of resources in their locality shouldn't be affected by the goings on in places they've never heard of - which then begs the question, why have "ages"?

However, it is a point worth considering that what items are made of might deserve some (cost and defensive?) effect - within reason... no steel libraries or wooden space shuttles for instance, but then don't we already have wooden and steel ships?

[Mark_Everson]

Hi yellowdaddy:

Originally posted by yellowdaddy
I don't see why there should be any bonus for capturing iron resources, unless you are capturing fully functional mines and processing factories.

It is the iron commodity that I was talking about.

I'm not too sure about the idea of "ages".

There will be no global "ages" or anything silly like that. I am using "age" above as shorthand for technological epoch of the civilization in question. Copper and Tin are Vital in the bronze age, but lose a great deal of value relative to other commodities once a given civilization gets into the iron age. That's all I'm saying. The commodities that are "special" will change with tech.

In regard to the rest of your comments, certainly some of the standard specials will be energy commodities. All the specials and their relevance depending upon tech will be in the hands of scenario designers. We'll no doubt do some of the other things you say also, just the extent is TBD. Much (FE local evolution of civs depending upon their environment) has already been discussed in depth long ago. You can maybe find the old discussions with the search function

[yellowdaddy]

Yes, I missed that (as usual).

So as you won't have iron everywhere, (like in a desert or tundra), just like you won't have more significant resources like timber everywhere. So that when you start the game off you'll have to find th resources; build some extraction facilities; then processing and/or production facilities?

when you say "specials" do you mean like in Civ where you have an almost randomly scattered singular locations for things? Or could you have something more realistic like seams of coal or gold? (I s'pose you could do it like mountain ranges, except it'd be invisible)

[Mark_Everson]

Hi YD:

You won't Have to find the resources, but it will be to your benefit to either trade for them (Merchants will do this automatically also) or acquire them. You can already see how exploiting some resources and trading works in the Cartago Delenda scenario. We will try to place the specials in sensible places rather than randomly.

[yellowdaddy]

so you mean that if your tribe starts off in the middle of the Sahara you will still have all the timber and metal etc.. you need to build things?

I suppose I'm thinking more from the angle of a dawn of time scenario rather than a historical one, where resources are less of an issue (probably because most of the historical scenarios will take place in locations where civs can develop, i.e.: ones with adequate resources, like the mediterranean).

I haven't had time to try the latest release. Hopefully you'll retain and develop the dawn scenario. I wonder how the AIs would behave given different terrains/biomes/climates to play in? I would expect them to behave slightly differently than in these "ancient world" ones, which are pretty much the same in terms of environment.

Are there any tundra, swamp, forest or desert tiles yet?

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by yellowdaddy
so you mean that if your tribe starts off in the middle of the Sahara you will still have all the timber and metal etc.. you need to build things?

No, it means that you can build things out of what is handy, but less efficiently than if you had good supplies of timber and metal. But civilizations in deserts are under so many disadvantages that this seems pretty small among them.

I haven't had time to try the latest release.

Well, knowing where we are now and figuring out next steps is a lot more important than discussing fine details of where we might be a ways in the future. I'd really appreciate it if you could try it out soon. We need all the feedback that we can get!

Hopefully you'll retain and develop the dawn scenario. I wonder how the AIs would behave given different terrains/biomes/climates to play in? I would expect them to behave slightly differently than in these "ancient world" ones, which are pretty much the same in terms of environment.

We haven't gotten that far yet.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
No, it means that you can build things out of what is handy, but less efficiently than if you had good supplies of timber and metal. But civilizations in deserts are under so many disadvantages that this seems pretty small among them.

True, but if you can overcome them, they should have better abilities and knowledge of surviving dry spells for agriculture, finding sources of water, advanced glassworking (maybe...atleast your supply of the base resource for glasswork wouldn't matter so you'd have plenty of chances to make things right

[LDiCesare]

I read somewhere that the Japanese developped so good swords, steel and forging techniques because they had crappy iron ore to start with. How does that fit in?