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Coming back to the topic (i really take interest in it): I do not interprete the banks in civ as literal one bank. But it is a very (too) descrete step for my taste: Either a city has it (and thus +50% coins) or it doesnt (and thus +0% coins). I dont see a point in that simplification, really. You could as well just assign the production to commerce (based on the food/hammer/commerce system which, i too, contest to be real) and that would gradually improve the multiplier for coins, along with its normal cash revenue. The limit of the multiplier would then be tied to social (and/or technical) advancements - which then in turn would improve by this very practice. In other words: If you had 3 cities, and one is constantly "producing" (with hammers) commerce and the other two never do, then the maximum multiplier attainable by producing commerce in the first city would be rather low, compared to the situation, where all three cities would produce commerce. Result would be a smoother transition with some sort of homogenity across your empire. You could still attach building to that, if you wanted to, by saying for example that each step of 1% multiplier above, say, 25% resembles one bank per 10.000 inhabitants or something. It wouldnt make much sense, and would rather be for people who need tangible literalities. So dont claim that this approach would be too literal - in fact it is more abstract than civ is, while at the same time closer to reality. I even think that this would be fun, for boosting the coin-multiplier in your commerce-capital beyond a certian number would require you to produce commerce occasionally were it would seemed unprofitable (for there would be better options for that particular city) locally. Unreal ? I dunno - i think there is some validity to state that one place bleeds dry to make another one rich.
Kuci, i think you are right saying that the economic model of "sim-civ" oughta be labor-based. There should also be energy and material flows (for that both would need numbers - amounts - attached to them). I think you have the right ideas, on how reality works (IMHO) and i´d like to discuss a sim-civ with you. How would it look like ? Lets start with the beginning of a game. We still have a settler unit, right ? We still have the tiles - but something must change with the way we put them to use - let´s start here: How to model land usage and what would working land generate ? I start with a suggestion: The tile would have productivity indeci (spelling?) for each attainable good. So it would be goods (or ressources) that you would draw from the tiles. Food would be just one - hammers would not, but maybe ores would. Lets not discuss if there should be different kinds of food and ores for now. So you could draw anything from any tile, just with different producticvity. Lets have it, so that tiles might be used by multiple pops at once, with a penalty for productivity for each additional worker on the tile maybe. Each pop gives us "labor points" towards that tile, so we can distribute them among the tiles´ various ressources. The "labor points" per pop would grow with techs, but lets have it have 2 for the start (see why later). So we settle and look for the tile with the best food productivity ? Hold on ! No ! Why would we do that ? To grow the city ? Wrong ! Its growth would not depend on food (as its rate) - only if it becomes the limit (like the health cap now), or we can trade it profitably or ship it off to other cities (later on) we start to care about it. No - we just want enough food for the one pop we have. So we need to pick a tile to work on initially, that offers SOME food productivity. So its a secondary choice-element. We pick the tile with the best productivity for the most useful ressource at the time (would be wood, i´d see in the beginning) that also has at least some food prod. Of our two "labor points" (which have to be on one tile since we have just one pop) we assign one on getting us some wood and the other to getting us some food. The food will be consumed obviously - but what with the wood ? Well after having build houses for themselves for a while with it, people would cheifly use it as energy source. Anyways it is being used to raise the standard of living - which should become a number attached to each city. There would be some natural pop-growth (eg a number of turns after which a pop would become two pops - the number of turns depending on social and technical conditions) and there would be starvation in case we lack the food to feed all, but mainly the rates of growth and decline of the population of a city would depend on its comparative standard of living. As it keeps rising, more people will migrate into the city, from places were the standard of living is lower. In order to be able to do that, every tile, also those which are not "occupied" by a city, needs to hold population of barbarians which would flock to your city and get assimiliated. By that mechanic, i´d say, there goes the initial settler - you just start on a tile with its inherent population. I´d say you´d get to choose from a set of tiles within a vicinity at the start and you can only work that one tile you chose then. When you managed to depopulate its sourroundings (by force or migration) you get to work those tiles. You oughta be able to control migration to your city in a way that you can stop it when its not wanted, which then would cause hostilty among those barbs you refuse to join your civ. The distribution of pops on the tiles at the start might vary - maybe from 0-2 - so maybe you start with pop2 if you choose such a tile, and the barbs would not grow in population (or maybe just very slowly). Now to commerce: All your pops will crate a demand for goods - just have it as "trade goods" for now. With the rising standard of lving, also the demand for goods by any given pop would grow. To satisfy those demand then again has a positive impact on the standard of living (sol). If you can do that within your empire, that would result in internal trade yielding money. Just producing them (with a pop assigned to that very production and the required ressource, harvested from the tiles) would also yield profit, its amount depending on social parameters (civics basically). As for the ressources, or tile harvest in general: each tile holds a certain amount of any ressource (not just one normally) and a tile and ressource specific growth rate of which. pops assigned to farming for example do make the food of the tile avaiable for consumption, but also increases the food growth rate of the tile (or decrease it - depending on method and intensity (eg pops assigned to farming on the same tile) of the farming). Ressources in general, even those considered "non-renewable" (reason: technological advance makes more of them extractable), would have a dynamic growth rate that can vary from tile to tile. Over the times where a tile had "forest" or "no forest". A tile now may have the following properties - pre pop-assigning:
food : 5.000 tons / + 0% p.a. (natural capacity reached)
wood: 10.000 tons / +0% p.a. (-"-)
iron ore: 2.000 tons / +0% p.a. (not used, thus not investigated into more deposits yet)
Now we assign our pop to it. With its first labor point we want it to hunt/gather, and he does so with a productivity of 100t p.a.:
food : 5.000 tons / - 100 t p.a. (human activity) / + 2% p.a. [=100 tons] (natural re-growth)
The second labor point goes to wood-chopping - he does that with 100t p.a. as well (of course both harvest rates would be linked to the abundance of what to harvest on the tile - when there is not much left to gather, it is less productive):
wood: 10.000 t / -100t / +0.5% [=50t] natural regrowth
you can see that we would have a sustainable society in food, but not wood. We cannot go on like that indefineatly. There is reason to advance ! There is dynamics ! There is scarcity, there is an economic model with relation to the real world, there is realism....
Kuci, i think you are right saying that the economic model of "sim-civ" oughta be labor-based. There should also be energy and material flows (for that both would need numbers - amounts - attached to them). I think you have the right ideas, on how reality works (IMHO) and i´d like to discuss a sim-civ with you. How would it look like ? Lets start with the beginning of a game. We still have a settler unit, right ? We still have the tiles - but something must change with the way we put them to use - let´s start here: How to model land usage and what would working land generate ? I start with a suggestion: The tile would have productivity indeci (spelling?) for each attainable good. So it would be goods (or ressources) that you would draw from the tiles. Food would be just one - hammers would not, but maybe ores would. Lets not discuss if there should be different kinds of food and ores for now. So you could draw anything from any tile, just with different producticvity. Lets have it, so that tiles might be used by multiple pops at once, with a penalty for productivity for each additional worker on the tile maybe. Each pop gives us "labor points" towards that tile, so we can distribute them among the tiles´ various ressources. The "labor points" per pop would grow with techs, but lets have it have 2 for the start (see why later). So we settle and look for the tile with the best food productivity ? Hold on ! No ! Why would we do that ? To grow the city ? Wrong ! Its growth would not depend on food (as its rate) - only if it becomes the limit (like the health cap now), or we can trade it profitably or ship it off to other cities (later on) we start to care about it. No - we just want enough food for the one pop we have. So we need to pick a tile to work on initially, that offers SOME food productivity. So its a secondary choice-element. We pick the tile with the best productivity for the most useful ressource at the time (would be wood, i´d see in the beginning) that also has at least some food prod. Of our two "labor points" (which have to be on one tile since we have just one pop) we assign one on getting us some wood and the other to getting us some food. The food will be consumed obviously - but what with the wood ? Well after having build houses for themselves for a while with it, people would cheifly use it as energy source. Anyways it is being used to raise the standard of living - which should become a number attached to each city. There would be some natural pop-growth (eg a number of turns after which a pop would become two pops - the number of turns depending on social and technical conditions) and there would be starvation in case we lack the food to feed all, but mainly the rates of growth and decline of the population of a city would depend on its comparative standard of living. As it keeps rising, more people will migrate into the city, from places were the standard of living is lower. In order to be able to do that, every tile, also those which are not "occupied" by a city, needs to hold population of barbarians which would flock to your city and get assimiliated. By that mechanic, i´d say, there goes the initial settler - you just start on a tile with its inherent population. I´d say you´d get to choose from a set of tiles within a vicinity at the start and you can only work that one tile you chose then. When you managed to depopulate its sourroundings (by force or migration) you get to work those tiles. You oughta be able to control migration to your city in a way that you can stop it when its not wanted, which then would cause hostilty among those barbs you refuse to join your civ. The distribution of pops on the tiles at the start might vary - maybe from 0-2 - so maybe you start with pop2 if you choose such a tile, and the barbs would not grow in population (or maybe just very slowly). Now to commerce: All your pops will crate a demand for goods - just have it as "trade goods" for now. With the rising standard of lving, also the demand for goods by any given pop would grow. To satisfy those demand then again has a positive impact on the standard of living (sol). If you can do that within your empire, that would result in internal trade yielding money. Just producing them (with a pop assigned to that very production and the required ressource, harvested from the tiles) would also yield profit, its amount depending on social parameters (civics basically). As for the ressources, or tile harvest in general: each tile holds a certain amount of any ressource (not just one normally) and a tile and ressource specific growth rate of which. pops assigned to farming for example do make the food of the tile avaiable for consumption, but also increases the food growth rate of the tile (or decrease it - depending on method and intensity (eg pops assigned to farming on the same tile) of the farming). Ressources in general, even those considered "non-renewable" (reason: technological advance makes more of them extractable), would have a dynamic growth rate that can vary from tile to tile. Over the times where a tile had "forest" or "no forest". A tile now may have the following properties - pre pop-assigning:
food : 5.000 tons / + 0% p.a. (natural capacity reached)
wood: 10.000 tons / +0% p.a. (-"-)
iron ore: 2.000 tons / +0% p.a. (not used, thus not investigated into more deposits yet)
Now we assign our pop to it. With its first labor point we want it to hunt/gather, and he does so with a productivity of 100t p.a.:
food : 5.000 tons / - 100 t p.a. (human activity) / + 2% p.a. [=100 tons] (natural re-growth)
The second labor point goes to wood-chopping - he does that with 100t p.a. as well (of course both harvest rates would be linked to the abundance of what to harvest on the tile - when there is not much left to gather, it is less productive):
wood: 10.000 t / -100t / +0.5% [=50t] natural regrowth
you can see that we would have a sustainable society in food, but not wood. We cannot go on like that indefineatly. There is reason to advance ! There is dynamics ! There is scarcity, there is an economic model with relation to the real world, there is realism....
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