{The List-} Economics/Trade

[Kramsib]

Originally posted by lajzar
I don't like the idea of trading food. The food which actually affects total population tends to be staples, such as grains or potatoes. Certainly, food does get traded long distances, but those tend to be luxury goods in the main.

As far as the game concept is concerned luxury goods are aimed to make people happy, but I don't think that in real life food is a luxury good, in fact, as many cities don't produce food at all they need food supply.

The reason why we want transport food, is to maintain normal levels of population in cities which are located in Tundra or Desert and their production of food is extremely low.

[lajzar]

But cities in tundra and desert have very low populations for a reason - no local food production. The amount of resources needed to maintain a city by importing food is truly staggering. It is quite normal for a city built in the middle of a non-food-producing region to have a very low population.

The best known historical example of transporting bulk foods is West Berlin during the height of the cold war. And that was a very short term endeavour and dangerously expensive.

[Kramsib]

If you play a World Map you would need to transport food to maintain the real population of some cities in Canada

Anyway I am not talking about huge metropolises, but a level 6 or 7 of population.

[lajzar]

Originally posted by Kramsib
If you play a World Map you would need to transport food to maintain the real population of some cities in Canada

In that case, perhaps the terrain model is broken? Of course, given the disparity between the population numbers listed in the game cities and what we have on Earth, I wouldn't read too much into that.

fwiw, in the sixties, food travelled an average of 20 miles before being eaten. These days, the average is about 40 miles. Which is still less than 1 tile on a world giga map.

[MartynC]

Hi
Don't know if mentioned before, but 1 thing i hate in Civ III, C3C etc is that i can destory other Civ's Ship with my pirate ships, but don't get any reward, except maybe one of their ships. I perfer the Colonization way of being able to take their goods. For Example, if I sink a ship carrying a settler or worker etc, why can't i 'force' him to join me?, also, if it comes from a civ with a resource i should be able to to take it, & sell itback prehaps & get Gold for it?

Worth thinking about!

[lajzar]

Well, I can accept you should be able to capture goods. Except that under most civ trade models, goods are abstracted, so there isn't anything to capture.

Capturing units however, seems off. Why would my civ's workers *want* to work for your civ? They aren't just automatons, they are people with a love of their own country. I can accept though that you might be able to make them into slaves if your government is of that persuasion.

[Kramsib]

Originally posted by lajzar

fwiw, in the sixties, food travelled an average of 20 miles before being eaten. These days, the average is about 40 miles. Which is still less than 1 tile on a world giga map.

Mmm, but you are talking about an average value and I am talking about extraordinary cases.

Argentina and Australia are big exporters of meat and I am sure their meat travel more than 40 miles.

Some food transport is difficult because some kind of food deteriorates easily, but when we talk about grain or other long durability products the result is quite different.

In the middle ages, a lot of grain was exported from Crimea all over Europe. The railroad allowed Russians to transport grain all over their territory, and so on, ...

Food trade was important in the past and it is important in present, as industrial cities import food from other places becouse their room is used for industrial purposes.

[MartynC]

Capturing units however, seems off. Why would my civ's workers *want* to work for your civ? They aren't just automatons, they are people with a love of their own country. I can accept though that you might be able to make them into slaves if your government is of that persuasion.

Why not trade them for one of yours, assuning the AI has done it to you, or dispand them in a city of yours & get the shields added to production prehaps?

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Taxation and Budgets

OK, this idea ties in, somewhat, with my ideas for societal influence and civ 'factions' (i.e. labourers, farmers, wealthy elite, military etc)
First off, I want to be able to REALLY set tax rates! i.e., there should be a taxation screen, where you can raise or lower the tax paid by your entire civilization-anywhere from 0-100%! Then, you should have a seperate slider for 'luxury tax', which generates revenues according to how many luxuries you have locally or through trade (raises revenue, but reduces luxury effectiveness, and increases the unhappiness of the wealthy factions of your civ). Company tax (with 'Corporation'), which raises revenue according to the number of financial improvements you have. GST (VAT) (With Industrialisation)-based on amount of production shields you have in your civ-downside is that it adds extra turns to your production queues, and increases general unhappiness. Resource Tax (with industrialisation), generates revenue based on the number of non-luxury resources you have, but increases their 'disappearance rate'. Pollution tax (with 'Ecology') generates revenue according to how much pollution you generate, but increases maintainance costs on all production improvements. Also, once you've set your 'BROAD' tax rates, you can then go into your 'faction' screen, and raise/lower the tax rates of each faction above or below the mean. This might generate more revenue, but could start to make that faction unhappy! Last of all, there would be a tax slider in each city screen, which would allow to boost/lower the tax paid by that city-again, though, you might cause a MAJOR upset amongst the people of that city/cities!
Obviously, though, your total tax rates determine how much money you recieve, and you then allocate that money through your budget.
Basically, your budget might be broken down into areas like: Science/Education, Health, Infrastructure, Defence, Industry, Environment, Welfare, Civil Service, Foreign Affairs and the like. The more you allocate to a certain area, the better that area performs for you. For instance, if you allocate a large % of your budget into defence, then several things will occur.
1) Militaristic improvements are built quicker.
2) You might get a bonus to hp, attack or defense to your units.
3) Your chance of generating an MGL is improved.
4) You increase happiness/influence of your military faction.

If you put the bulk of your budget into health, though, you might get
1) Reduced chance of plague (and spread of plague).
2) Quicker building of aqueducts, retreatment plants and hospitals.
3) Your units heal faster in cities.
4) General happiness is boosted.
Essentially, each area of your budget will, if you assign above a certain proportion to it, generate a number of positive benefits in certain areas-it's up to the player to decide which areas they want to prioritise at any one time.
Anyway, just a few thoughts.

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[lajzar]

Have you considered that the maintenance cost of aqueducts, hospitals, etc, *is* your health budget? Similarly, your maintenance cost for each of teh other city improvements is actually your budget expenditure in each of those other social areas you mention.

Of course, you should have the option of paying more than the base maintenance to increase their effectiveness. That could make things more interesting (but hell for the ai to deal with I expect).

I'd refrain from anything that boosts the potential of your armies. If anything, the costs of existing armies should be increased by far. Modern armies are way to cheap to maintain in the late game.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

OK, I confess that my ideas regarding the budgetary side of the coin is a little less well developed!
I guess the best way to see the budget is as a replacement to 'maintainance costs'.
Essentially, what is now maintainance would, in this system, be the minimum gpt you need to maintain these improvements at normal level. Obviously the more of a certain type of improvement you have, the more gpt it will cost to maintain them all and, therefore, the greater % of your total budget you will need to assign just to keep them 'up to strength'. If you go below this level, then 'BAD THINGS' can, and will, happen-like general or factional unhappiness, degraded improvement/unit performance, slower build times or even improvement loss! Of course, if you assign a greater % of your budget than is dictated by 'maintainance costs', then many of the positive benefits I mentioned above would accrue! Of course, this means that you would have to be quite astute in deciding where to spend your money but, to reduce micromanagement, you could have a governer function which could take this out of your hands, if you so wished!

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[Fosse]

I started another thread about commerce. I didn't want to highjack this thread with a system idea that needs lots of bugs worked out, but I am linking because it's relevenat.

The gist:

Tiles never generate commerce, with or without roads.

All cities trade all the time, commerce rates are increased by distance and decreased by movement points. So building roads to connect distant cities generates more commerce, for example.

I think this simulates the demand for distant goods from foriegn markets, and the increase in commercial activity when trade routes are not too difficult to travel.

[Xorbon]

Finite Resources

Regarding Strategic Resources:

In Civ3, if a civilization has access to a single strategic resource, then that civ has access to that resource as if it was infinite. These resources should have finite values attached to them in Civ4. Each source on the map would produce a certain number of 'units' of the appropriate resource per turn. For instance, there could be 3 sizes of iron deposits which produce either 20, 30, or 50 units of iron per turn (the numbers are just examples). As the game progresses (tech-wise), certain resources could become more abundant. For example, iron sources could produce more once engineering is discovered.

Any collected resources could be traded to other civs, used for upkeep of units/improvements, or in the building of new units/improvements.

1/ Trade with other civs would involve the trading of a specific number of units/turn of a particular resource (eg. trade could involve 10 units of oil per turn). If a civ is unable to provide the agreed upon amount of a resource, that civ must provide compensation to the other civ, or the deal is cancelled and the one who broke the deal suffers a reputation hit.

2/ Upkeep: some improvements and units would have upkeep that uses a certain number of units of one or more resources each turn. For example, a coal plant could use one unit of coal per turn, and a battleship could use two units of oil per turn. If resource upkeep can't be paid for an improvement, that improvement has its effects reduced or it stops functioning altogether. If a unit doesn't have its resource upkeep paid, one or more of its stats would be reduced (i.e. attack str, defense str, moves, etc.) depending on what resource it is lacking (eg. lacking iron/saltpeter could mean reduced att/def; lacking oil/coal/uranium could mean reduced movement, etc.). If a unit goes for several turns without having its resource upkeep paid, it would lose an experience level ( to a minimum of conscript level).

3/ Building certain units or improvements could require access to a strategic resource. As a simple way of doing this, as long as a player has a surplus of a resource (after factoring in trade to other civs and upkeep), then that player may use that resource to create the appropriate units or improvements. Units and improvements that require access to a resource to build wouldn't necessarily require that same resource for upkeep (and vice versa).

4/ Leftovers: There are a few options as to what the game could do with any surplus units of a resource: the player could be allowed to stockpile surplus resources; any surplus could be converted into gold and/or shields; or the surplus could simply be lost to waste. Or there could be some combination of the above. If the player is allowed to stockpile, there should be limits to how big the stockpile is allowed to get.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Hi Xorbon,

You make some good points, and they have been discussed at some length elsewhere! My idea for limited resources goes into strategic, luxury AND bonus resources. Basically, I like the general idea of Civ3's resource appeance/disappearance ratios, but I think they should apply to ALL resource types AND be based on a more accurate resource-use model-as follows:

1/ When a unit appears, it will have a 'size'-say from 1-10, larger sized resources appear less often, but have less chance of disappearing, and vice versa.

2/ Having access to more than one source of a given resource obviously reduces the chance of disappearance.

3/ Trading works much the way you described it, Xorbon, with you setting the 'size' of the trade you want to give (with larger trades being worth more) The more of a resource you trade, though, the greater the chance of disappearance.

4/ In my opinion, there is always some general use of resources in normal, day to day life, which could still risk straining resource access! This is reflected by the fact that, the more cities (or population) you have, the greater the chance a resource has of disappearing.

5/ The more units and improvements that you build with a given resource, per turn, the greater the chance of disappearance.

6/ Last, but not least, as Xorbon has suggested, it should be noted which resources a unit/improvement requires on an ongoing basis (like uranium for nuclear reactors and nuclear subs, or oil for Gas Plants and tanks). The more units you have in the field (either literally 'IN THE FIELD' OR just the total number of units you possess), then the greater chance, per turn, of that resource drying up.
In addition, luxury resources of any given size should only be able to increase the happiness of a certain amount of population-not the whole Civ. Such additions, I believe, would drive expanding empires to pursue new sources of a given resource, more agressively, in order to prevent it drying up! It might also be another way of reducing RR sprawl! After all, the more track you lay, the more chance you have of losing your coal and iron !

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Oh, speaking of RR's and RR sprawl, I definitely think they need a new way of generating bonus commerce, food and production from RR's and roads.
Rather than the current system of each new RR square, in your radius, generating the bonus, the bonus should be a ONE-OFF which you gain from connecting the city to your trade network. The way I see it is, when you connect a city by road, to that network, then your city could gain a bonus of +5% of the total production/food and commerce that exists within the trade network.

For instance, lets say that all of the cities in your trade network have a total production output of 40 shields, 30 food and 20 commerce. When you connect your city, for the first time, to this network, they gain +2 shields, +1 food and +1 commerce. This reflects the movement of commodities throughout your empire, and is a possible, micromanagement-free alternative to the food/shield trade which has been floated elsewhere (and which, I might add, I prefer ) If you upgrade the city's connection to a Railroad, then the bonus becomes +10% (in the above example, this would be +4 shields, +3 food and +2 commerce) It doesn't matter how the rest of the trade network is hooked up, what matters, for that city, is what connects IT to that network! The main benefit of this proposal is that you get the bonus whether you have a single connection or SIX (or even more!) If you also add a maintainance cost for Road and Rail, then this will discourage players and the AI from building masses of 'superfluous' rail/road! i.e. NO MORE SPRAWL!
Although I would prefer commodity trade (i.e. trade in food/shields and commerce) to occur through the normal trade screen, this system could be used for some type of resource trade with other nations-working on much the same formula (i.e., both sides could get bonus food/shield and commerce based on the +5% and +10% idea above)! In addition, international trade could produce gold per turn, for both sides, based on the how much commodity they are trading, and with a 'distance multiplier', as suggested by Fosse, where longer distance trades might produce extra gold! Of course, this system could operate side-by-side with the normal ,negotiated, trade in commodities-which has been proposed elsewhere.

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.