Governmental Income and Production

[Dida]

In current Civ games, our government gain income by having our citizens work on a particular tile of land that generates some food, shield or gold. This system is so far okay and simple to handle.
However, it has serious shortcomings. As we know, while food production is directly related to land, because we need to grow crops or raise domestic animals for food on farmlands, other incomes like money and industrial production is not directly related to land.
By tying all three of them to a tile of land, it produces the snow-ball effect. As the civ gets more land, it becomes more powerful in all way (more food, more population, more gold, more shield, more tech), thus enabling it to wave wars to acquire even more land. All in all, I think the game put too much emphasis on quantity and not quality.

I think the government should gain income not by directly working a tile of land (unless it has 'gold' as bonus resource), instead, government should make money on taxations or state-owned enterprise. The player can raise or lower taxes, the amount of tax received will be based on the following factors:
-population size
-wealth of population (wealthier pops pay more tax)
-amount of business/industrial activities
-import duties
As the civ becomes more developed, the amount of business activies increases, and people becomes wealthier, generating more income.
Another way to make money is directly get involved in business. The government establish things like chinaware studios that makes china-dishes, and sell them abroad or domestically.(has to pay salary to workers), or automobile factories that make car and sell them around the world. You should even be able to establish business in another civ. This way, one civ can control another economically, reducing the need to wage war.

Military units and city improvements should not be build by using shield directly obtain from land. Instead, they should be built in those government-owned or private businesses. For example automobile factories can build cars, but in war time, it can switch to build tanks.

This way, it is possible for a tiny country to be much more powerful than a huge country, if the small country is more advanced and developed.

[Odin]

I agree with your idea for commerce, but dissagree with your production proposal. The way I see it is that the shields on the land represent raw materials, and the production bonuses from city improvements represent the production increases resulting from industrialization industrial technology, and improvements in resource extraction. I do think, however, that empires should be allowed to trade food, gold, and shields so a rich empire with few raw materials (like Japan) can give gold to a poor, but resource rich, nation (like the Democratic republic of the Congo) in exchange for shields.

My economic model also has a variable relation to the degree that your empire tends toward a planned or a free market economy. A planned economy gives a production bonus with a tax income penalty, and a free market economy gets a tax income boost and a production penalty.

[Max Sinister]

Yeah, income and production... tricky somehow...

People produce food (which is eaten), weapons (which are around till the units are destroyed in battle, disbanded or updated), buildings (which will be around unless they're destroyed). Plus other things, which (I assume) are represented by "trade". However, they don't produce money - IRL the government can print as much new money as they want (unless they don't want inflation), people work for money for firms who sell the products people made. But there's no such thing as in Civ where people make money directly - they produce wealth, but mostly in the form of wares.

[Dida]

I would say it is possible to produce food and shield (raw material) directly from working a piece of land. But to get money directly from land is kind of ridiculous, unless the tile has gold, diamond, or something of value.

People produces goods and service, and they make money by selling goods and services. Government makes money by taxing that income. This economic cycle is never simulated in civ, I think it's about time they start thinking about it.

As for shields, I would look at them as raw materials. But raw material is of little use without the facility to process them. You can't make a man-o-war with just wood, you will need a shipyard. Power lies where factories and research labs lie. Not where raw materials are found. Iran has tons of raw materials, is Iran more industrially mighty than Japan, who has almost no raw material? To simulate this, we need to make raw materials tradable. So a country can import shield from another and process it.

Maybe in the ancient age, power goes where raw material is found. We can simulate this by making all ancient age units not requiring any special facility to be built, reflecting the simplicity in building ancient units.

[Shogun Gunner]

Why don't you consider that the trade arrows represent the portion the government "acquires" from commerce? With some governments it's more than others due to progressive business law, tax code, and governmental support in economic policy.

If considered the way you propose, you will be building a great microeconomics model that could be used as a teaching aid in the university, but likely to be rather unfun to the game playing population.

Just a thought.