A whole new level to the game $: your input

[civman2000]

I think it should be more laissez faire. You can make investments in something on whatever terms you and the "owner" (city planner, or whatever) agree on.

I'd like to be a broker. I can't lose money , though my value could decrease due to inflation.

WE just also be able to gamble on what will happen in the game. ALso, we could invest in a military unit. If it dies all is lost, but when it gets promoted to value increases.

[Shiber]

Here's a wager for you: I bet you 5 Lytons that there are no barbarian encampments in Uber Isle.
The bet will be decided either once we make contact with barbarians in Uber Isle or once we have a complete map of the Island and find to barbarians.
Anyone wanna place a bet?

[jdd2007]

how about small salaries for government officials and pensions for former ministers?

[GePap]

How will we judge overall money supply? right now, as the currency thread goes, I think a consensus on 1g= 1 Lyton, with Apos, (our cents) being a more convinient measure of everyday wealth (just as a full dinner used to cost 5 cents, not $20).

If we go ahead with this, would we not need a sort of banking and accounting system- to insure against fraud and so forth. I am not opposed to a fun, side game, but I agree with Spiffor that it should not have undue ifleunce in the overall game- certainly not in Central policies, perhaps a little in local policies if we implement governors (everyone likes bribes).

Also, we need to keep oit simple and strightforward- an undully complex side game might be difficult.

[Kramerman]

I like the idea. I like what others have said too Lets do it

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

I like Spiffor's suggestion of working out a system of goods and services to be provided and paid for. I also think it would be cool if we could come up with a way for people to invest in a settler that goes off to form a colony.

If we built a harbor the government could put that harbor up for an IPO, half the money goes to the government, and the other half becomes the capital of the harbor company. Then say the harbor built a ship other citizens could buy shares in the ship, this time the government gets 25%, the harbor gets 25%(for building it) and the ship owners keep 50% for their working capital.

Or something along those lines, we might need to do some planning but I'm sure we could work someway to make an effective under economy for Apolytonia.

If we needed someone to maintain a thread with posts, and shareholders I would be willing to that for a VERY small fee. I'd simply have a post in the thread for each enterprise with the lastest listing of the shareprice, and a list of the shareholders and their shares:

GAIA DYE GUILD(or Ubergorsk Iron Mines)

Current Interest Value 4 smd (small metal disks)
Total Interests - 100

Interest Holding Parties
UberKrux - 6
Spiffor - 5
GhengisFarb - 5
....yada yada yada

I don't think this should affect any of the stats in the game, we would simply keep the Roleplay money as a separate economy. Creative members could find ways to earn money for other services too.

NOTE: We can't call them shares or shareholders as we haven' t discovered that yet, but even in ancient times people would put their resources together for ventures.

[Captain]

Interesting ideas all... I wanted our economy to be tied to the ingame economy, at least in SOME fashion - so that there is some kind of basis for it (instead of arbitrary). Maybe, just as a bare minimum, our currency value could be based on our nation's performance? (i.e. how do we determine how much money is in the system? because that will affect the value of the currency. just like in real-life , if you just print more money without a basis for doing so, they just devalue it - no real wealth is created in such a fashion.)


I was just checking out Civfanatics game (lured in by the tale of civil war) and noticed an RPG discussion thread that has some ideas about creating a market/economic system as a parallel game. I hope to get even more ideas after reading it all, but it's very long ...

[Captain]

hmmm.... what about starting with a simple economy and letting it evolve as our tech evolves?

right now, we've just got currency and we're agri-based. more businesses can come into development once we have more infrastructure.

using the RPG idea, we can have people select "imaginary" occupations (businesses) they want. People who do real jobs that affect the C3DG game in a tangible way (like the Gazette, the ministers, etc...) will also be rewarded in the economic system.

say, everyone who wants to play has to declare a place where they live. their available occupation depends on where they live (within city tile limits). you can be whatever you want, but it should be limited/regulated so that it's fair. you can't just suddenly declare yourself a multi-millionaire, you have to work for it within the system.

at present we can only have these:

1. farmer (reqs avail tiles)
2. miner (reqs avail tiles)
3. rancher (reqs avail cattle/horse tile)
4. forester-lumberjack (reqs avail forest/jungle)
5. ?waterman (reqs fresh water access, river, lake)
6. foreman (reqs avail worker)
7. merchant (reqs marketplace)
8. artisan (reqs city with any culture per turn)
9. priest (reqs temple)
10. scholar (reqs library)
11. entertainer (reqs entertainer)
12. jack of all trades (no reqs, no specialty, but what do they do??)

official roles
13. minister/official (reqs palace or ??)
14. judge (reqs courthouse or palace)
15. Newspaper owners (reqs culture)

It should be pretty obvious what each occupation does and we can determine supply from occupation, but how to determine demand (and therefore base income)?

Reflecting survival needs (air, water, food, shelter) how about this as a basic requirement:

Each participant requires 1 food per day (or chosen unit of time). You can get this 1 food automatically from your own farm, or purchase from a farmer/rancher. Prices depend on supply and demand. In the beginning, most people will have to be farmers. This would also accurately reflect our primarily agri-based economy and as we improve in game (say, move to monarchy, irrigate more, etc...), it would allows us to improve our parallel game.

Assume you get air free. Prior to the modern era, clean potable water was a concern, but for simplicity, say you can collect enough water from rainfall so this need not be part of the economy.

The last need is shelter, but it is not a consumable. Assume you live in a shack. The basic improvements will require lumber or stone (depending on your choice) plus labour units (LU). Assume each person has a base labour output of 1 unit. As your skills and tech improve, this can be upped (how?). You can pay for products and labour with money you earned doing other stuff, but the supply must exist. (i.e. even with money, you can't just buy a house if it doesn't exist, and you can't build it without actual supplies and labour). If it is lacking, hopefully entrepreneurial spirit will create some supply.

Assume, to start:
Mud Shack (no cost)
Shack (5 wood, 5 LU)
Cabin (10 wood, 10 LU)
Cottage (15 wood, 15 LU)
Loghouse (20 wood, 20 LU)
House (20 wood, 5 stone, 30 LU)
Manor (30 wood, 15 stone, 60 LU)
Mansion (50 wood, 25 stone, 200 LU)
Grand Mansion (80 wood, 50 stone, 400 LU)
Palace (200 wood, 100 stone, 1200 LU)

[edit] other buildings, like shops, mills, industries, could have costs too. example: to store food, you need a granary (10 wood, 10 LU). Or to store other goods, you need a warehouse (20 wood, 15 LU). [/edit]

This however, seems more complex than the original idea. Please keep up the discussion, I am sure we can streamline this so it is easy to understand, easy to track, and more fun.

Note: This would only minorly affect the actual game, as the "demands" to improve certain tiles (for personal gains) are not significant enough to actually damage our nation as a whole.

[Epistax]

If you want to do this well, you should into PHP/mySQL scripting to get a realtime economy


You also noted that judges would be with the palace (or courthouse). *moves out of tassagrad*

[Captain]

on the other hand...

Personally, I can't see the fun in turning this game into something that I would have to buy food and pay mortgage every turn. I would choose not to participate in such a system, as I have quite enough of those expenses in real life.
My big question as I began to think this concept up was: Why would anyone (unless they have never had to work) want to model that side of our existence? Also, as I pointed out in my previous post, I think that our members should be considered the shakers and movers of the world we play in rather than the burger-flippers. As such basic food, clothing and shelter expenses would not be something that these people would be concerned about. Do you really think that a state governor spends a lot of time worried about these issues?

I saw this as Civfantics thread and I thought maybe this was a good point. who wants to micromanage one person's living expenses? we want to be movers and shakers!

But the proposal is still good. Just imagine that instead of you needing 1 food and building 1 mansion, harvesting 1 wood or labouring 1 unit... it represents your business (probably family owned at this time) expenses, revenues, and assets/equity.


(edit: say if you don't have an occupation, you're a banana harvester by default! you can harvest 100 bananas a day, plus meeting your own food needs. You can sell these 100 surplus bananas on the market, if there are any buyers of course!)

(edit2: if the city you live in doesn't have a granary and you're not a farmer with a silo, you can't stockpile food)

[jdd2007]

this is all very interesting. a few notes:
-pres and vice should be given free shelter (like the white house) as well as Phoenatican Diplomats (we would partially fund the embassy) but ministers should buy their own pala... err, huts... with their salaries.
-i dont think the system should be tied to the game too much, but it should definitely have parallels
-there should be small pensions
-at first there should be taxes on just bussiness transactions and the like, but only later should we have income taxes. we shouldnt tax incomes until Apolytonia is more wealthy.
-a few people need to monitor currency, bussiness and money. they wouldnt have official duties ingame (and therefore wouldnt be ministers)
-as for a stock market, that would be a lot of work.
-this will be awesome

[Kramerman]

the one problem that can cme out of tieing the economic system into the game is the fear of bribing and 'favors' such as campaign contributions and such. I dont think we should have any problems of corruption in a game, but it is possible. I guess an upside to this is that it would give our court more to do and the odds of getting to impeach someone would increase significantly .

Kman

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

Originally posted by jdd2007
this is all very interesting.....

READ ORIGINAL POST FOR MORE INFO

.....is will be awesome

How about we give each citizen a "salary" of x smd(small metal disks) and then take a small amount back as taxes. I can't really say I'm for the idea of housing, food consumption, and such as that's far too much roleplaying for me.

[GePap]

I have to say that we should not start with everyone having equal amounts of money. This would distirbute wealth to people who may not want to participate- thus making it sit there. I propose a non-equitabe beginning (reality) to be modelled around our current level of socioeconomics. Over time, as we dsicover and expand, new opportunities would rise to create new types of wealth. This might introduce ointo our little game the ageold struggle between those that control the old economy and those that want a new one. I say we divide our people into three groups:

Government folk: Sort of late Roman Empire beurocrats- get salaries from the government (how this is figured out I don't know)
Wealthy landowners- woul own peasants (pop. points) and benefit from their production, mainly the food and shields produced
Townspeople- craftmen and traders, benefit from the wealth and uxuries that flow into the town.

At this point in our history, farmers (peasants) have 0 capitol, so why would anyone want to play a peasant, and why would a peasant get anything other than a beating, or not a beating?

Obviously, with so little infrastructure, landowners would be the wealthiests, and their interests would be best served not by cultural growth (helps the towfolk) but territorial and population expansion. Townsfolk would have a clear incentive to push for culture growth, while the government folk would be in the middle. With new tech over time, how each group makes money, and possible new groups like industrialists and so forth, could come in.

[Kramerman]

how would we decide who is what class? I dont know to many people who will jump at the chance of being a worthless peasant. Perhaps we should randomly decide, have a minister take out the list of those who said they would want to particpate, and a bag of dice, and roll to see who is what class. Those who did not want to participate would then just automatially become peasants in the eyes of those who are playing.