SE-influenced build orders for cities?

[Alinestra Covelia]

I was discussing this with a friend, originally with no intention of applying it to Civilization. But remember when you get into the endgame of Civ or SMAC, and the city management became tedious? You had to click through all the cities and sort out what you wanted them to build - oftentimes you missed a few things or you just couldn't care and just assigned an indifferent build order.

Remember that?

Well, I started musing on why that happened. It's because I, the leader, have direct control over what the city should build. And I, the leader, was bored out of my skull and therefore couldn't be bothered to take time and effort to build something good. Therefore, the city acting under my oblivious orders, built something that was waste, whilst not building what they needed.

Waste and insufficiency. Where have you heard those words before?

The answer is - a planned economy. The industrial functions in Civ and SMAC are actually Planned, since you have direct control over them. This is a unique feature to Planned societies, as they give the government direct control of what is built and when.

The problems with this are illustrated above - if the government couldn't care less, then Planned economies do very badly (qv Russia and China in the 60s).

How to implement this in Civ?

Well, I started to wonder about the Civ2 city advisors. They would ask for you to build something based on their nature, military or domestic. And usually their suggestions would be something different to what you would wish to build yourself, given the choice to do so.

What if the city itself had an agenda for things to build? Maybe they would prefer to go along the "Luxuries" improvements paths? Under a Democratic rule you would have to go along with what the people want, or maybe put it to a vote what you want to do.

The problem with Civ2 Democracies is that the Senate only interferes in military matters, when you take units away from home, or you try to break a ceasefire. The main reason why western Democracies are so productive in terms of trade is that they are Free Market economies. However, in Free Market economies, government interference is definitively minimal.

We've put military caps on what a Demo can and can't do. How about some similar influences on build orders for cities? We could say that the ruler (you) has a certain number of votes (perhaps equal to the total number of cities owned) and the city has a number of votes equal to the citizens in it. Whilst your votes exceed the city votes, you can build order with impunity and the city will not question your good judgement. However, once the city gets past a size relative to your total number of cities (ie their votes become bigger than yours) they will want to build other things and will oppose you if you choose to do otherwise. If you want to change their build orders, it will cost you a sum of money directly from your treasury (representing advertisement drives, legislation costs, settlement payouts, etc). This would be a further inconvenience, but it wouldn't cripple the Democratic players since the trade bonuses and growth bonuses would be so great already. It would merely make the Planned economy a more often used item - since it does have real world applications and can be useful if properly applied by the government.

What do you think?

[Russian King]

I concur: I have this problem too:
I always chose something like units or capitalization/infrastructure if all buildings are built.

There is another way to find a resolution. This could happen either automatically or you could claim it yourself:
Have an option that will enable more frequent barbarian attacks in your area or more natural disasters.EG:
normal Barb chance of appearing near a city of yours:2.5%
click an option that increases it to 20%.
(each turn)
that way, you'll have to build more units after some of your current ones have been destroyed.

This is just a fun activity. I ont think its such a good idea. I would rather build more units for attacking other nations.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Hmm not many replies. I can think of two reasons:

1. Bad idea and nobody thinks it'll work (in which case there's not much I can do... stupidity is after all fundamental ).

OR

2. Badly expressed idea and nobody understands what I'm talking about.

I'm going to try to simplify the blurb above in a few short sentences:

Communist and planned societies have direct government influence in the market forces. Thus, the government says what will and won't be built. This could be reflected in game by having the player have the right to directly determine and queue build orders for each city.

Democratic and free market societies have much lesser government influence in the market forces. The government can impose regulations but can't ultimately force people to build something they don't want to. This could be reflected in game by having the player need to "vote" against each city if he wants to make them build something, or perhaps even pay a small amount of treasury funds to change a build order to something he likes.

Just my two cents. As far as I know nobody has suggested this, and I think it could be an interesting way of making the "megasuperultra democracy" a bit less powerful and more realistic. You could factor in wartime elements (proximity to enemy cities etc) to reduce or increase the difficulty of forcing your citizens to devote time and energy to something they don't want to.

What do you think? Good idea? Mediocre idea? Downright impractical idea? I hope Firaxis is listening because I have far too much time on my hands.

[Captain]

Actually I really like your idea, I just didn't see the thread before.

Your points on planned versus free market economy are very good. Free market control seems like a good cure for excessive micromanagement. Let your cities build on their own. The only problem is that this depends on having a good AI that knows to build properly- which could be a problem.

The other thing is that having to worry about 'votes'in controlling the build order might become more micromanagement than you'd care for if you're taking the 'hands-free laissez faire' free market approach. Of course, a planned economy would be a lot of micromanagement but that's probably what people who use it want anyways.

[Alinestra Covelia]

As it is, I present this as a way of equalizing absolutist regimes with the more laissez-faire ones. Under an authoritarian rule, such as a military junta or a fundamentalist rule, the existing corporations are directly commanded to build things at the behest of the state. Under a Communist rule, the economy is state-owned.

So this is to make it more difficult for those who run peacetime governments to build what they want. We could have the individual cities pursue a very luxury-orientated building queue as a matter of fact, and require the ruler to pay out of his coffers in order to force them to build something else.

I just mentioned the voting system because I realized that cities newly founded will definitely need the leader to build a few essentials (defenders and possibly Barracks) for it to survive. I know it's a very vague idea but I couldn't come up with anything better. If you have a more practical idea than this (somewhat unwieldy) one then feel very welcome to post it here.

I think that government systems don't just have different economies (trade, etc) or police laws (martial peacemaking). They also have different industrial systems, and this is one possible suggestion for illustrating that.

[Grumbold]

At the moment the populace make their desire for luxuries and amenities known by revolting if you do not supply sufficient happiness improvements. Perhaps the effects of the government bonuses are insufficient to reflect the differing demands of their people.

[Captain]

it seems like the bonus is for planned economies since you can directly control it and would use it for the benefit of the empire.
but I think there should be a bonus to laissez faire besides not having to micromanage. your city should be able to build things MORE EFFICIENTLY than if you controlled it directly. In the free market system, you are penalized because you cannot build whatever you want and the people/market get to decide, but this should result in more efficient construction that translates as cheaper and/or faster. as much as we mock modern office management, government control usually results in even more bloated bureaucracy.
so recap,

FREEMARKET:
Bonus is more efficiency, cheaper, faster
Penalty is lack of direct control, to assert control must declare a state of emergency, either pay funds or take a political hit

PLANNED:
Bonus is direct control, use it however you want
Penalty is less Efficient.

[Urban Ranger]

No.

In a planned economy (communism and despotism) things get built quickly since the government can pour resources of the whole nation into projects it considers to have top priority. Just like what the PRC is doing with the Northwest provinces. There is no evidence that free market is more efficicent overall. A company might be fast in bringing out products, but it always waste a lot in market competition. Just consider how many cars are over-produced each year.

There is no problem with the idea itself, the problem is with the implementation. Since we all know the AI advisors leave something to be desired, they probably will start doing dumb things.

Hm, maybe we can have a "pork barrel" feature for the national government to bribe a city into building what it wants

[This message has been edited by Urban Ranger (edited May 19, 2001).]

[Theben]

I do understand where you are coming from as I once made a similar suggestion in the...well, you know...

Only my proposal called for multiple builds allowed in the same city. And while the SE suggestions called for a slightly higher productive capacity for free-market systems (~+10%), somewhere between 40%-80% of the "shields" and maybe trade were under control of the AI (your citizens), while totalitarian states had greater to total control. So the market economies got more overall (esp. with +1 trade/tile as in current civgames), most of it was not yours to choose where it went.

As for "pork barrel" funding, I also suggested allowing the govt. to buy back shields as needed for emergencies.

[Alinestra Covelia]

I think we're heading in the right direction here by drawing a distinction between industry and economy.

Industry is the "shields" or "minerals" and Economy is the "trade arrows" or "energy".

As it is, SMAC has the right idea by having every single type of government experience some degree of inefficiency regardless of your actual SE efficiency rating. I suggest that the Free Market model will experience an industrial penalty of sorts, but retain the extreme trade bonus that Republics and Democracies have in Civ2.

Likewise, as somebody mentioned rightly, government-influenced economies and industries like PRChina will be able to build things quickly (by dictating how the industry is applied) but would not get the same trade bonus since personal trade endeavors are hampered by state intervention.

This is already sort of what happens in Civ2, except that in my opinion the Free Market gov'ts have an unrealistically easy time of it. The government never has to deal with public decisions regarding civic expenditures, and the only drawback of the industry is that any military units you build have to be industrially supported.

The military units causing unhappiness is caused by pacifistic tendencies, and has nothing to do with Free Market doctrines. (A low Police rating, in SMACtalk.) The military units requiring support is owing to a low support rating. But the main point of Free Market societies is bypassed, namely that industry is privatized, giving a boost in economic output but depriving the government of direct control over this industry.

I like cheese, and I'm off to eat some now. Brie is my favorite.