ECONOMICS/TRADE (ver1.1): Hosted by Pythagoras

[Pythagoras]

Summary will be up tomorrow when I get the time.

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"I think you're all f*cked in the head!"
Chevy Chase-Nat'l Lampoon's Vacation.

[Eggman]

This was my post in the last thread. It was there for an hour until the thread was closed. I am reposting it, just because if I had to write it, then SOMEBODY has to read it. ;-)
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Daniel, a way to get around that is to have a certain number of "key" materials that your civ needs on an empire level. The materials would be stuff like copper, iron, uranium, oil, rubber, etc. and what you need and how much of it can vary depending on the timeframe. Your entire empire would need X units of each material a turn. If your empire can't produce the materials on its own, it needs to trade for them or, worse case, perhaps buy them at outrageous prices from the "black market". If the civ cannot get the minimum supply it needs, it takes penalties civilization wide (production and military comes to mind) and/or cannot build certain units and structures. Of course, if you have a surplus, the materials are worth big money to trade.

With just two or three materials per era, this could do a good job of simulating the need for vital materials. If you can't get them (see Japan after the US cut off its oil supply in WWII) you are going to fall behind which forces war. It also allows a civ to capture and/or cut off key materials and devastate a civ economically. Run out of oil - production drops by 50% - OUCH! Stockpiling in case of war is a good idea too. Plus, the demand for those key materials would grow as the civilization gets bigger (more cities) so you would need to make sure that you can secure those resources to expand (death to ICS!).

In addition, you keep the standard group of trade goods which are used solely for money. Stuff like wine, gems, silk, etc. would just be traded (like normal) for cash money. Preferrably in a more automated way (like CTP).

Of course, key to all this is that the key materials don't show up on the map until they are demanded. Hence, no cities setup next to uranium deposits in the Bronze Age thinking several thousand years ahead...

On a somewhat unrelated topic, I think that those material squares should come in "normal" and "rich" (and maybe "very rich") varieties. Yeah, that hill might have grapes (wine) but it also might be the best grapes in whole darn world (lots of wine). You may have gold or the mother load of gold in that mountain. This allows for more trade without cluttering the whole map with special squares (like Imperialism).

[Harel]

I posted this idea on the older thread, in a sub-section of three suggestions.
I do belive this is a good idea that can be easily implanted into the game: I don't agree with EnochF that it's better suited the radical idea section. I think this idea is right at home here.

I am talking about: BUDGETING

Let's consider the current budgeting section: between science, goods and Tax variables. Is this really enough?
Let's consider all the gold income shared into a big pool. Like in CIV II, the tax ratio decide how much cash you get.
That is money/unrest.
Here are my proposed sections:

* Health care - Divided between all hospitels on your empire. Higher rates meaning better treatment and health bonus. Health decided your popultion growth.
* Wealthcare - Reduce the effects of negative causes. Unrest is reduce, the effects of famine and other disasters. Parties demand high wealthcare ratios. Keeping it high gurntees your public favouriting ( place increase ).
* Education - decides the bonus to schools, acadmies and universties. Gives a science bonus.
* Science - Very strangely represnted in civ ii. Which company spend 20-80% of it's resources on Tech? Keeping money in science gives a tech bonus and decide the effectfs of labs, and related wonders: the observatory, darwin voyage, etc.
* Religoun - defines the bonus of temples/churtchs/related wonders.
* Military - share between all army units. Up-keep is now abiltive, decides the preformances of the units ( in term of speed and morale bonus/minus ).
* Intelligence - the chance of spy success, the number of spy and counter-intelligence value.
* Transporation - optional. The value defines the movement bonus of roads ( better maintained roads are faster to travel ), and defines the value of highways, mass-transit, etc.

[Flavor Dave]

Eggman--that's similar to an idea I had. You have 3 kinds of shields--fuel, building materials, and exotics. And you have higher concentrations in some areas than others. As long as your empire has at least 25% of each, you're OK. But if one of the 3 falls below 25%, you lose a proportionate number of shields.

Something along my or your lines would be good, b/c it would add to strategic options. When at war, do you attack a marginal city that is rich in exotics, where you're running dangerously close to 25%, or a wonder city? Same with you expansion--do you set up a rather isolated city in order to redress your balance, or a more easily defended city?

[Colonâ„¢]

I like the way how economy and reseource management is done it imperialism, to explain how it works, I've copied a a part of the review of imperialism1, from the imperialism site in Sidgames.

Resource Development: In order to develop your resources, you use special units similar to the settler units of Civilization. You start out with a prospector and an engineer. The prospector searches for various minerals that can be found in the hills and mountains, and the the engineer builds railroads and ports that are necessary to transfer those goods to the capital. Unlike Civilization, virtually all your production is centralized at the capital. Thus, in order for those resources to be of any use to you, you must have a path, either by sea or by railroad, to your capital. Later in the game, as your technology advances, you gain the ability to build additional units which can further improve on your resource squares.

Industry: Your industrial production is handled through a view of your various factories. By clicking on factories of each type, your can find out what you are producing, what your factories' capacity is, and how much of each completed product you produce. At this screen you can also control training and recruitment of new workers, creation of military units and special units, building of ships, and expansion of factory capacity. Production of finished products (which bring the highest prices) is handled in a fairly simple manner...4 timber = 2 lumber = 1 furniture. The interface is slightly awkward at first but once you figure it out it isn't too difficult. You can produce as much of each finished product as you have factory capacity, providing you have enough raw materials and labor.



Trade: The trade screen lists the different types of goods available. You can buy or sell any raw materials or finished products. However, you can only bid on up to four different products at a time, so choose wisely. Also, you are limited by your merchant ship capacity...run out of room in your ships, and you can't buy or sell anymore. Generally, you will want to buy raw materials from minor powers, and sell finished products. Whether you are actually able to buy or sell, and the prices you get, depend on your relations with the other nations, whether you have any subsidies in effect, what other nations are competing with you to buy or sell those products, and whether any boycotts are in place. Again, trade is vital for your industry to develop, especially early in the game, when your own resources are not available. But beware of spending beyond your means. You can buy on credit, but fail to pay back what you owe, and you will quickly go bankrupt.

Basicly the idea is that you exploit mines and farms, produce resources and afterwards make goods from it that you can either sell or use.

What do you think ?

[Eggman]

While I personally like Imperialism a great deal (I am playing a game right now - have to get more coal!), its economic model is too complicated for a game like Civilization. Civ is pretty complex already with city management, military, science, tile improvements, etc. While I and many others here would like to see Civ with a more complex economic model than caravans (which can be utterly ignored for trade and still win), an Imp1 style economy would greatly increase the amount of work that the player would have to put in and probably become the main focus of play instead of empire expansion, empire development and war. On top of that, the game would probably have to be redesigned to handle the new economy, which would effectively make Civ3 into Imp3, which is pointless.

Also remember that the economic model shown in Imp1 is based on the typical economy of the 1800s. However, that form of economy is relatively new. If you look at Imperialism II (which reflects the economy from the 1500s to the 1700s), they realized this and simplifed the economic system to reflect the less sophisticated economic structure. And the economics of the Middle Ages or Ancient Times are even simpler. There would have to be at least 4 different economic models, each kicking in at a different time. It would be a programming bear.

In my opinion, Civ3 has to make the economy matter more than Civ2. If your economy goes in the gutter, so should the country. If you can't get key resources through internal production or trade, you either use war or diplomacy to get them fall behind. Large armies become impotent when there is no money to finance wars. Trade should be a whole lot easier (no more camel crap) and more important. Spontaneous trade should be considered (trade starts up between cities that have and those that need based on the highest prices without the human having to do anything beyond a trade treaty). Economic powerhouses should be just as important powers as military juggernauts. But it also has to be simple enough that it doesn't require a large chunk of time to do.

[Bubba]

1) I like Eggmanns idea of three or four key resources for each Age that are necessary to build the units of that type. The resources would be automatically collected by the workers on the square and would only become visible when X technology was discovered. Thus, a Galleon might cost X production plus 100 wood and 100 cloth, a Dreadnought 100 ore and 100 oil etc. The goods should be stored at a civilization wide level (like CTP). As long as this system as not too complicated, it would help simulate history and spur expansion and trade. These goods might be traded for from other civs and bought in an international market that would reflect supply and demand (like Colonization).

2) In many ways, I like the trading system of CTP in that you don't have to move Caravans all over the map but I would like to see it altered in several ways:

a) give a first time bonus and distance bonus as in Civ II;

b) make their be some element of supply and demand as in Colonization (the more you dump the less you get) & related to this,

c) allow the creation of 'second' order goods once certain techs have been reached. Their would then be two trade units a cheap CARAVAN that would allow you to sell and trade trade primary products like spice, cotton, wood & fish that were within your radius and also a TRADE GOOD icon (perhaps 5 times more expensive) that would allow you to trade finished products like wine, cloth, & furniture that could be created with goods that were within your radius or traded to that city. This TRADE GOOD would be the same as the caravan in Civ II in that you would choose which product you wanted it to be after it was built. This would be a FUN and simplified version of Colonization which in its original form was overly intensive in micromanagement.

3) Keep the pirating of CTP but only allow trade routes to be destroyed when someone is at war with you. In other cases, pirating should occur when a ship sits on a trade route and should only siphon say 20% of the value of the route rather than destroy it.

[Colonâ„¢]

Bubba about 1, that would make a country that has a lot of resources the strongest country right ?
But if you look at reality is that automaticly the case ? Does a country would a lot of resources automticly becomes a strong country ?
No that's not the case, it certainly helps but there are many examples of countries that have few resources but are rich and therefore strong and vive versa.
They are rich because they have a large and advanced industry.

I think it's an obsolute necessity for realism that an industry (manufacturing) level is implemented.
That's the great thing about imperialism, you can have strong economy without masses of resources, by buying them, making goods of them and selling those.

It does not ha sto happen the way it happens in Imperialism, but I find that something like that should be there.
Striving for an advanced industry should be a part of the game.

[NotLikeTea]

Although an industry should never be necessary.

China is a superpower in the world now, but they are not very industrailized. At one point Mao said that it was not his goal to have China be the most advanced nation in the world, but to be a superpower among the unindustralised nations, and never looked at this is a failure. He also said that wars are won with people, not bombs... often diplomatic power can be much more important that industry.

[Colonâ„¢]

What's the point of resources if you don't have industry to process them ?
Japan lost WW2 because their industry was weaker then US', Britain became world power because they had the facilities to process resources, China is weaker than US today because they have a smaller and less advanced industry, Congo isn't the supreme power of Africa despite the fact they have large amounts of resources, ...

An economic engine based upon resources while the processing of it is ignored is unrealistic.

[yin26]

-=*MOVING THREAD UP*=-

[Eggman]

Having industry treated like it is in Imperialism is a VERY BAD IDEA. I like Imperialism but in that game the economics are the main focus. Not so in Civ. Considering that in my experience Imp1 games tend to last a whole lot longer than Civ2 games, having a complex economic model in Civ3 will make the game unplayable. You know that joke that if you want realism in Civ, you should play two turns and then die of old age? Well, that wouldn't be too far from the truth.

On the other hand, the Civ2 economic model is a joke. You can ignore trade altogether and it barely hurts you. So we need something more complex than Civ2 but less complex than Imp1/Imp2.

So none of this 100 iron and 100 lumber makes a frigate stuff. No micromanaging factories and workforces. I will shoot the first person that recommends a trade screen where you OK or reject each trade deal. Keep it relatively simple.

The key here is to make trade and industry as automatic as possible. At most, you should be setting percentages of surplus materials to be processed, traded and hoarded (like the Tax/Science/Luxury bar). Maybe making some priorities on what to trade for, who to trade to and what/who you won't trade. Stuff like that is fairly simple (you don't have to look at it every turn).

Also remember that economics has not always been as complex as the Imperialism system. Earlier ages should have trade (and lots of it) but very limited or no industry stuff.

Personally, I think that the introduction of key materials would be the most valuable addition to the game. If you can't get all the resources you need (through internal production and trade) to run your country, you start going down the tubes. Either find and exploit new sources, find a new trading partner or go conquer some key cities. Or die. Sounds like fun to me. And it may even be able to kill ICS as larger empires need more resources...

[Diodorus Sicilus]

Actually, from the beginning civilizations had to trade for critical materials: copper and tin are relatively rare as recoverable deposits, but they are both required for Bronze. The bronze age in Europe was marked by long-range trade in tin, all the way from Cornwall in England to the Mediterranean.
The trick is that most of this early trade was not with other (rival) civilizations, but with what, in game terms, are 'barbarians'. Give us more flexibile barbarians, who sometimes trade because (for instance) they've got the tin you need and you've got civilized goods like wine that they want, and you can put critical resources into the Trade System and realisticaly spread over the map and still not cripple some resource-deprived civ from the start. Also, in most of those early trades, the civ got the better of it, in that they also made money in the trading (a jar of wine for 100 lbs of tin is a Good Deal when the tin gives you the making of 1000 lbs of bronze!)
I second the motion, that Trade should be THE major money-maker in a civ economy: Athens, Byzantium, Holland, England: history is full of empires and states that had gobs of income from trade and dominated the "world" economy of their time with that income, and you can't get anything like the same effect with the Trade systems in either CivII or CtP.
At least, manufactured goods when traded should bring major bucks into the manufacturing civ: Holland and later, England, financed every war in Europe from 1680 to 1815 almost entirely from Trade income derived from converting raw materials like wool and cotton into manufactured goods cheaper (and selling them cheaper) and better than anyone else: the Industrial Revolution or Factory System of however CivIII defines it in game terms should give a huge boost to Trade Income for the civ involved.
Balancing that, changing the economy into a Factory Economy also leads to major unrest/unhappiness in the civ - the Luddite riots in England in the early 19th century being a good example.
My personal preference is for specific 'critical' goods to trade, just because I think it adds to the Atmosphere of the game. I like the idea of playing a Greek civ whose trade is built around (olive) Oil and Wine, or cornering the Silk Trade or Cloth, Tea, Coffee, Coal, Oil or any of the other big bucks (for their time) monopoly trades. Many of the critical trade goods are also directly related to other threads in the game, such as the link between tin and copper and Bronze, coal and early steam Industrial Power, or oil and a modern military. I don't see how you can model the problems civs had in developing what they wanted and how without also modeling at least some of the (named) critical materials as Terrain Icons and Trade Goods.

[Ecce Homo]

One important factor of happiness should be the availability of luxury goods - not quantity, but diversity. For instance, each commodity supplied would make one citizen happy. Searching the world for new luxury goods should be a decisive part of the game.

[Matthew]

I disagree that trade is not important in civ 2. If you are playing against someone who is getting 500 to 3000 gold and science or more per caravan, and doing this once every turn or two, you had darn well start looking at ways to do the same thing yourself. I don't know about CtP, but from what I have read they have pretty well adulterated the whole thing. It's easy to see why trade isn't as important in CtP.
Whatever is done to trade in Civ 3, I hope it isn't violated so.