Economic Model II

[LDiCesare]

I think I am cross-posting from military thread, but I have done a few things since, so it may differ a little:
This is about the cost of training armies.
How should army training be handled? In particular, what should the training/existing facilities relation be? I think it is a general issue of what do you need in terms of infrastructure to build another kind of infrastructure (here, service).
I model training as solely a services cost for units.
I propose that basic training cost be presented on a civ-level (maybe province) so that the user don't have to micromanage each unit training.

[Mark_Everson]

I'll respond to your partial cross-post with one of my own!

Yes we'll definitely have default training available (as a matter of fact, I know from your email of last night that you've already put it in ). And things like training depending on cost-effectiveness can be easily handled using a return-on-investment parameter just like much of the econ stuff uses. Essentially where training is cheaper per unit (due to training infra) more training will (or at least probably should) be done. The thing that will require a little extra effort is the idea of rotating troops thru the training facilities. But we can sure do something reasonable, if not optimal, on that front too. Perhaps letting there be just one training center per province that automatically supports training there is one way to do it.

Now building the best amount of training facilities will be a tough decision also, but I think we can get a decent solution when we're further along.

[Simon Loverix]

*bump*

It is possible to produce goods (eg cotton) on farming grounds, and there is the possibility of synthetic food as well. How is that handled in the model?

[Mark_Everson]

Produce cotton on ordinary farm sites -- no, not in the model as it exists now. But we might be able to work it so cotton specials sites can be used as farm sites. Personally I don't think this is needed since in most cases the special is much more valuable, but if a lot of players think otherwise it would be possible.

I hadn't thought about synthetic food, which I assume means hydroponics or such things that don't require land in the traditional sense. I suppose the best way for this to be able to work within the model is to be able to 'buy' more sites when the tech level gets high enough. This would be similar to forest clearance in how it works for the player and AI.

[Gary Thomas]

What about wool? This was the main staple product of medieval England, and is the main staple product of at least one modern (sort of) country...

Cheers

[Simon Loverix]

I thought mainly of using ordinary ground for growing cash crops. f.e. Enclosure movement, the early incentive of the IR.

We could define some specials in another way: f.e. 'cotton' special means when you grow cotton on (or on part of) the available sites you get a site bonus.

Synthetic food: margarine, bubble gum, fizzy drinks,.. have a nutrition value so they're more than luxuries; but people who use them have plenty of food normally. But the margarine is an important daily foodstuff (developed last century for the french army, by the way).

[Gary Thomas]

To extend my query about wool, is there provision for pastoral farming generally? It certainly had an enormous impact in ancient and medieval times. In fact, apart from immediate food requirements (and a lot of that came from pastoral farming) a lot of the "cash crops" were actually animal products. The biggest exceptions, I suppose, were wheat in the Roman empire, and timber in many areas.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

My notion was to combine herding with farming. So the number of 'farming' sites would also implicitly include grazing land. Also tech level would include herding-type techs in some way. In some more extreme cases there could be a special to cover herding of various sorts explicitly.

For true pastoralist societies, like the Mongols, I'm not sure about the best way to handle it. But I think something fairly reasonable based on extensions of the existing econ model is attainable when we get to that point.

[Gary Thomas]

I read a book on the origin of agriculture (I can't check which one right now - it is 100 miles away) which quite strongly made the point that all pastoral nomad societies were critically dependent on neighbouring agricultural societies, and required trade with them to survive. In effect there is pretty good evidence that agriculture made a pastoral nomad life possible.

We think of the Mongols as pastoral nomads, but in fact the empire that Genghiz Khan assembled included nomads,, farmers, and even a large contingent of forest dwellers who owned no horses.

The nomad/farmer interdependence does present interesting possibilities for the model.

Cheers

[Simon Loverix]

I think 'lifestyle' is a very important choice. While hunter/gatherers never assembled empires, both settled and nomadic societies did so. We could impose the rule that an empire must contain a homogenous, either settled or nomadic population,with trade and alliances still possible.

So the player (or the AI) could choose to stay nomadic until a (or several) big empire emperges nearby and then conquer it (them), like the Khans did. Of course, to rule it they must give up their nomadic status. The advantages of being nomadic would then be: mobility and military power, the disadvantages: limitations in technological development and social organization.

To make this choice available, the starting pop of a civ must be nomadic. Then the player/AI can choose, depending on the terrain etc. to settle or to search for a better spot.

[Gary Thomas]

There is evidently a strong link between economic and social status in this area. I am not sure that it was ever intended that Clash start at a hunter-gatherer level, that is, pre-agriculture and pre-urban development.

Does anybody know if it was ever intended that hunter-gatherer societies be included?

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

Sorry Guys, I missed this way-back-when...

Simon: Players should IMO have the Option to start as pastoralist. But a player should also be able to start as a civ with farming land and farmers. But I don't think we want to require everyone to start as a nomad. Some will want to start the game as an existing civ around 1000BC or so.

Gary: I'm (I think) with you. I never thought hunter-gatherers would be interesting for the player, so IMO they shouldn't be an option. For one thing, such groups have no centralization to speak of, so I'm not sure what the player would Do .

[Gary Thomas]

There is a very good source book "Limited Wants, Unlimited Means" with in-depth studies of the economics of modern hunter-gatherer societies. As Mark says, there is no centralization. There is also no progress and there are no decisions to make, beyond "shall I get up today?".

Like Mark I cannot see such societies as providing very good game material.

Don't get me wrong - in many ways the societies in question verge on the idyllic. The comment made by someone (I forget who) that life in such a society was "nasty, brutish, and short" is completely wrong. In one account of the Kalahari Bushmen, there is a comment on a workaholic - he spent 30 hours a week in useful endeavour. The average was 16 hours a week. This left plenty of time for the really important things in life - sleeping and boasting.

Not much challenge for a gamer...

Cheers.

[Simon Loverix]

I never intented to make hunter-gatherer available as a player option. But when the computer places a tribe on a really poor spot to start or when their territory becomes unsatisfactory, you should be able to leave for a better place.

A few examples:
The Germanic tribes. Their incentive was overpopulation and the result was the fall of the western Roman empire (instead of the decay).
The Vikings: again, overpopulation. A few centuries later, their descendants owned England, Normandy and half of France.

So 'going nomadic' should always be available as an option. The disadvantages are significant: all remaining infra in your homeland decays very fast, tech progress only in a few areas, tech detoriation in others. Advantages: the full male population becomes available as warrior. I think players should start nomadic or as farmers depending on their homeland, but if they have the good enough technology (transport for nomads, agriculture for farmers) they can always switch. The advantages of settled life are much higher, but in emergencies you can always make a gamble..

The main reason to include hunter-gatherers is that you can generate all tribes/ civs at the start of the game, and once every while one of these hunter-g tribe becomes a civilization, be it nomadic or settled. For example, the Islam or the Mongols.

[Gary Thomas]

But when the computer places a tribe on a really poor spot to start or when their territory becomes unsatisfactory, you should be able to leave for a better place.

That is reasonable. However the examples quoted are not of this kind. Neither the Germanic tribes nor the Vikings left their homelands vacant. What moved was the overflow, and in the case of the Vikings at least, only a minority of the population moved. With a more centralized governmental system, the English did much the same thing a few centuries later. However it wasn't then called "nomadism" but "empire-building".

There is a strong feeling that nomadic pastoralism could only exist on the fringes of more settled civilizations, and was quite dependent on the agrarian and industrial produce of those areas. Salt and metal were two much sought after products, even in Scythian days.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

Simon:

I hope you agree with Gary's distinction between your two inital points: start-up nomadic behavior, and later migration/conquest due to population exceeding the carrying capacity of the homeland etc. We certainly plan to have migrating peoples be an important factor in Clash, just as it has been in the real world. There has already in the past been substantial discussion on how to handle migration that you can probably find using the search function.

Perhaps it was just nomenclature, but the distinction both Gary and I are making is between hunter-gatherer (which I don't think anyone would want to play as explained above) and pastoralists like the Mongols. A third type of 'nomad' is a more modern migrant group leaving because they have become refugees etc. For each of pastoralists and 'migrants' we need to come up with rules as to how they function.

Gary:

The point you make about the interrelation between pastoralists and 'settled' civs to trade with sounds reasonable to me. I think this effect (pastoralists needing to trade or take certain items) may come straight out of the econ model once I define exactly how the pastoralist economy differs from that of settled civs. Stay tuned!

[Simon Loverix]

I still think there have been migrations of a complete civilization. Nearly all Germanic tribes (they were settled) broke with their homeland and travelled across Europe during the next century, going as far as North Africa. Only the Franks were more cautious, and did their journey in two parts.
It was more than individual people who left their community. Instead, whole communities were on the move. Afterwards, new empires existed almost everywhere, be it with largely the same population as before. And the start of all this was the invasion of the Huns, whatever their motive might have been.

[Gary Thomas]

I agree that there is some evidence for whole peoples migrating, but they didn't do it because of overpopulation. It wouldn't make sense, when your population became too great to vacate lands.

In fact the "barbarian" incursions into Europe were either raiding armies, or peoples displaced by more warlike invaders.

Cheers

[Simon Loverix]

Whatever the reason, it certainly happened and it had a great impact, by replacing the leaders of the conquered areas. In Europe it gave a nice German/Gallo-Roman cultural mix. Only christianity had to be added and all major contributions would have been made.
And of course, they would have stayed home if the Roman Empire hadn't been in such a sorry state. If they did, we would now speak neo-Latin, or pidgin Arab .

We can generate from the start a number of larger tribes (hunter-g) and then pick a few (on the best spots). These tribes become civilizations and the game starts. After that, once every, say, 1000 years one of these becomes a civilization. Players who want a challenge can start later. You will have a broad range of fresh and maturing to ancient civilizations throughout the game.
Another use: now and then such a tribe 'goes nomadic', probably bringing major upheaval to the settled world.

Nomadic civs only at the fringes is very good. They also want luxury goods, but cannot produce them and therefore have to obtain them by trade or raids. Unfortunately, they usually haven't much to trade with either..

[Gary Thomas]

The book "The Emergence of Agriculture" (Bruce D. Smith, Scientific American Library) follows the emergence of agriculture, using recent detailed archeological data. It appears that agriculture emerged (around 10,000 year ago in the Middle East) on settled sites that had been previously established on the basis of harvesting wild plants or animals in the area. It is an extremely interesting book.

This fits in well with your suggestion of staggered emergence of civilizations (if we accept that "civilizations", in this sense, equates with "agricultural settlements").

Nomadic civs only at the fringes is very good. They also want luxury goods, but cannot produce them and therefore have to obtain them by trade or raids. Unfortunately, they usually haven't much to trade with either..

They actually did very well, right through into Roman times, by trading animal products, either livestock for meat, or hides. They also traded products that were sometimes available in their area - furs and ivory are a couple of examples. In some cases, particularly in the Mongol era, a symbiotic relationship existed between nomads (animal products), agricultural people (grain, mainly) forest people (wood) with a scattering of mining settlements.

Cheers

[Simon Loverix]

Yes, that's true, and they also acted as traders between settled areas on each side of the area they frequented (the Arabs).
In case of the Mongols, when they conquered the surrounding agricultural societies, they took strong measures in favor of trade (better and patrolled roads, less tolls, ..). Later, when the empire fell apart again, the mongol dynasties were culturally 'absorbed' by the peoples they ruled.

In terms of models, maybe nomadic civs have more merchant agents. The cultural influence can be handled by shifting the numbers of the cultural attitudes a bit.

I think the vital point for being a civilization, is the presence of a surplus in production that is controlled by the leading figure/class.

[Yoav_Sissman]

I agree with the several last above posts on nomadic civilizations.

I think that pasturing may have significant advantages in large maps and while the world is relatively unsettled; Perhaps we can introduce this concept into the game, by allowing increased gains from farm sites for a limited period after they are left barren for enough time.

So the nomads will be able to enjoy better agricultural results due to pasturing/hunting/gathering.

This probably belongs in another thread, but since the nomads don't have steady jobs and their lifestyle and culture encourages military might, they should be able to recruit large armies of good quality in a relatively short time and small investment.

They will obtain knowledge on a relatively large part of the world, which will allow them to be the first to know of good terrain, special resources and weak civs that can be plundered.

Their mobility will allow them broad borders (relatively to their numbers) so they will be able to trade with other civs that are outside their boundaries (or tax foreign merchants).

I agree that a nomadic civ won't progress much so this can't be a victory strat; On the other hand, it will be against the spirit of the game to have it based on settled civs only (and perhaps some barbarians).

This is why we can decide that in games that begin in the times of the first civilizations (and not 1000 BC) all civs start as nomads; They than have to choose between settling down right away and continuing to wander for a while, until they find a satisfactory location. This somewhat resembles civ2, where the player start with his first settler rather than town.

Some computer players should perhaps stay nomadic indefinitely, even though they will never win the game.

I'm not sure we should allow a civ to become nomadic after it has settled down; There are few examples in history of an immigration of a complete nation, even when the situation became very troublesome in their homeland.


On to a completely different subject, I understood from the model that some special resources, such as salt, will add a bonus to the food supply. I thinks that such an implementation of them will miss the true meaning of spices and other food-related special resources; They have little or no nutritional value (salt is required by the human body but only in small quantities that are naturally found in agricultural products anyway).

This may have been discussed and decided upon already, but I think that those special resources should have their effect directly on the people happiness level.


A third issue I would like to comment about is the rate of return on investments. I understood from the model that private investments will be made while they are supposed to yield 10% interest per turn; Is this done regardless of the populace income level?

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Yoav, an official welcome to the forums

My current plans for the nomadic economy is to treat it with the same utility function as farming. With very little capital invested, subsistence will be available for about the right population densities historically had by nomads. Although I might need to throw in some special rules for herding to make the tech results representative of what nomadic peoples make progress in, which is quite different from where settled peoples make the breakthroughs.

Salt is a bonus to food because of its value as a Preservative. Its the primitive version (along with smoking) of canning for meats. I was planning on having things like spices function as you say, directly going into services (usually at first for the wealthy) and indirectly making them happier.

The ROI of 10% was just part of an example. Nothing is final in regard to which investments the people will find attractive, and the value for a civ will depend on its culture and environment among other things TBD.

[Yoav_Sissman]

I appreciate the quick response.

Your plans concerning nomads sound fine to me. I guess that we can overcome the unique pasturing qualities since the farming utility function already places a significant weight on the number of farm sites used, so a thinly stretched population that resemble the wandering tribes will get its bonuses. Also, since every turn in the game represents a long period of real time there is no need to represent seasonal wandering.

Also I agree with the spices concept; it’s just that I thought that they are all like salt.


Since the rate of return subject isn't concluded yet I would like to raise several ideas for discussion.

Investments, much like consumption, can be either public or private. The advantage of the first kind is that the ruler has complete control over it and can guide it to rely on his information and match his goals. The advantage of the latter is that it is made more efficiently, because the guy that is responsible for the investment also expects to enjoy its returns.

The simplest way to implement the disadvantage of government investment is by deciding on an arbitrary adjustment to the cost of all government operations. We may choose to use the same factor that was proposed for the inefficiency of public consumptions - 80% (that was offered to represent the fact that not everybody gets exactly what he wants). This way all government purchases and investments will cost 25% (1/80%) more then they would have if they were to be done by the private sector. We may allow this percentage to vary depending on the social qualities of the people and their government, but I believe that a constant rate will also fill that purpose fairly realistically.

Now lets discuss the advantages of public spending, and start with a discussion of what motivates our civ citizens to invest.

Basically every household has a given amount of available income (after taxes) to spend on his private consumption and to invest in his business. Actually in the real world the people also own financial assets and debts, but I think we better disregard them on this for the sake of simplicity (for the same reason we ignore inflation).

I think we should assume, that the people consume as much as their income that is needed to keep them in subsistence level without any regard to their future. The rest of their combined free income is invested in real assets if they expect to achieve at least a certain rate of return for their investment. Otherwise it's also consumed.

That rate of return can depend on the amount of risk involved (increase with risk) and on social factors, perhaps most impotently the level of lifestyle (decrease when consumed income rises).

The amount of risk likely depends on the following factors:

(1) The government and political stability. Is it possible that the government will confiscate all private property in the foreseen future? Is it possible that there will be a revolt or that the current government will be overthrown and replaced with a government that will do so?

(2) Geopolitical situation. Is it wartime or peaceful times? Is our civ winning or loosing? Is our province near the combat zone? Is it likely to fall into enemy hands? What kind of an enemy is it? This kind of uncertainty can be reduced if the government offers compensation to its civilians for war-damages and as far as we don't expect so much destruction that the government won't be able to do so.

(3) Type of investment. Infrastructure is generally safer than merchants, which are in turn safer than armies (if we will decide to implement private armies, and I don't think we will).

Having said all that it is obvious that often the government will want to intervene in those investing priorities, to encourage people to invest in the suburbs, etch. We can now discuss the ways in which it can do that.

(1) Taxes and subsidies. That was already explained.

(2) Government investing. That is probably the quickest way but it will result in the penalty discussed above. The player will be able to set his policy in the civ level, province level, or drill down to specific investments.

I think we better ignore the influence on the rate of return that can be made by changing the amounts of money available to the markets, as we ignore other monetary issues.

We should notice the fundamental difference between public investments and private ones; Public spending benefits the entire population while private ones are meant to benefit individuals. Despite that, it seems that we generally ignore the class differences in our economic model and I would like to keep it that way and leave that issue to the social model.

How do we consider effects that don't have a direct economical value to the investor for the purpose of calculating the expect rate of return? That issue was discussed earlier, and is indeed troublesome. We should keep in mind that when the investment is private, the non-financial benefits are irrelevant. The private investors don't care about the safety, education, happiness or health of the people, unless they are going to get paid to supply it.

Does anyone still follows?

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Yoav:

I'm not sure how much time I'll have to respond, so first I'll tell you about a thread you should look over. (You may have found it already) It discusses some of the general issues that you're talking about. One thread is: Proposal for a Complete Infrastructure Model by Axi. I don't agree with his formulation completely, but you can learn a lot about where the design was at that point (it hasn't changed greatly since). Other threads that may be useful are: Demo 5 Econ Model and Government - Economic models interconnections .

This should give you the background to know where discussions have been on many of the things you are interested in.

I need to tell you right now that I'm no longer participating in long discussions of things we might do with the various models unless we are ready to implement... That's because its all too easy for me to get sucked into design discussions -- but my limited time is better spent in actually implementing things or discussion of things about to be implemented. (And my Clash time has unfortunately been Very limited of late.)

So with that, I'll try to respond briefly to some of your points!

Public vs Private investments are good, and we have them. As to whether they should cost different we will leave to playtesting.

I agree in principle with most of the other points you make, although who knows about specific implementation. Most of them are likely not to be implemented until D7 or later.

On your final point about investments without direct monetary value, I believe we should just Define a monetary value. The preferences machine that Axi talks about is another mechanism we will use for private spending allocation. Finally, for things like military units, we can define a function that gives a monetary equivalent depending on player orders, diplomatic and geopolitical concerns etc.

Hope this helps!

[axi]

Hi Yoav! Do you feel worthy enough to continue the work from where I stopped? You can ask me anything, about my models, i'll try to reply.

Hi Mark! How is the project going? Is there any possibility that demo 5 will see the light?

[Yoav_Sissman]

Hello again all!

Marc,
Thanks again for the input. I'll try and hold my ideas until I get better aquainted with the existing design. Hopefully that will also allow me to locate the fields in which I can best assist the actuall development.

axi,
Let me get back to you on this...

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Axi! Well, all I know about D5 timing is its likeley to be a few weeks. But of course we know these predictions can fail to work out

[Simon Loverix]

The central Asian steppes were first inhabited by farmers, only later (when a decent horseback riding technology was developed) they became nomadic again, including the later Mongols. The Celtic tribes started migrating around 200 BC because they lost their profitable trade position to the region north of the Alps (and they were more inclined to do so because of their war-like culture).

[Gary Thomas]

The Urnfield Folk were a Celtic people who inhabited northern Europe, specifically eastern France, western Germany, spreading into eastern Germany and across the Alps into the Po valley, and other parts of Europe. They had a concentration in the Danube basin. They were a farming folk living in small communities who were also skilled in bronze working. They flourished in the period 1200-700BC. This information is from the book "The Celtic Empire" by Peter Ellis.

Cheers