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

[Flavor Dave]

Eggman--yeah, that's a great joke. Wait, it's my joke;-)

What do you think of putting these materials into a generic form--fuel, metals, maybe two more?

Also, in every "age", where each of these generic goods are concentrated would change, to reflect the evolution from wood to coal to oil to nuclear power.

Realistically, and for gameplay, early on your civ should be self sufficient. But as time goes by, you either have to grow and cover more area, or make contact with the world. That's b/c the stuff needed will become more specialized, and more concentrated in certain areas, rather than available in somewhat limited amounts all over the place.

Anything that gets us out of the strategy funnel of "rolling over" a civ when attacking is good. What if you could cripple the Germans by taking two cities that provide it with most of its oil or metal? Then you have the choice of either going for trashing most or all of the German empire, or taking those two cities, defending them well, preparing a blockade, and waiting for German prodcution to wither.

[Colonâ„¢]

Hey I know very well that the economy engine of Imperialism is unlikely to work in Civ2, but I aslo know very well that the Civ2 engine is completely unrealistic.
I just believe that there should be somesort of industry/processing level, resources are 90% of the time useless if they aren't used to make a product.
Iron ore is useless if no iron is made of it.

But don't ask me how it should be done, I don't know either.

[korn469]

here are some ideas

Proposals to revolutionize the civ economic system:

1.cities should be capable of building more than one thing at the same time

i dont mean for them to be able to build 100 tank at the same time in the same city but each city should at least be able to build a unit and a city improvment at the same time

maybe cities should just have a certain amount of builders, larger cities have more builders each builder could work on one thing or if you wanted more than one builder could work on the same thing. maybe each time your city gets a certain population you get a builder for example if you get a new builder at size five then a size 25 city would have five builders while a size one city would only have one builder

2.instead of shields being collected there would be four critical resources

that's right in stead of shields being collected there would be four critical resources buildings and units would cost a variable amount of these resources some might not cost anything in one or two resources but might be extreamly expensive in the other two resources

expanding on the my idea above the industrial capacity should be represented as how much of the resources you take in can actually be used by a builder. whether it's dependent upon factories or tech level, their should be a limit as to how much raw good can actually be processed in some well developed cities you might never get close to exceeding the industrial capasity limit...but in some cities that were founded specifically to exploit resourcs you might not build factories and have a low industrial capasity but instead just ship all the resources back to well developed cities

and you should be able to trade your resources for whatever with other civs

3.trade goods should be seperate from gold and all cities should require them

for example lets have four trade items which are collected off of the land continuing with my industrial capasity in idea 2 the exact amount amout of each items you can collect off the land depends on tech or factory/artisan shop. each city generates a demand for all trade goods (including zero demand).

there would be a minimum and a maximum value in the demand numbers. the minimum would represent would be the break even point between happiness/unrest don't meet the mimimum then people will have a unhappy modifier if you exceed the minimum then people will have a happiness modifier because of it until you get to the maximum number. the maximum number is the point where even if you do provide your city with more of that trade good it doesn't increase the happiness. if the civ2 model is kept then governments would modify how the minimum/maximum numbers of the trade goods. if the SMAC system of social engineering is kept then that would modify the minimum/maximum numbers of trade goods.

naturally you could trade your trade goods. there could be trade within your empire like sending trade goods from an area with a surplus to an to areas of your civ that had a shortage and you could send them abroad to make money with other civs or maybe get resources or buy units or whatever

4.base squares don't directly produce any food/resources/energy

instead of the base square producing a certain amount of food/resources/enerergy it would instead provide a percent bonus to the food/resources/energy taken in by the outlying squares. you could have the base square only have a modifier according to factories refineries and such built in the city

or perhaps you could have your citizens actually work the base square and each citizen working the square would provide some kind of fixed percentage increase representing the labor force working in factories, mills, and such

for example if the base square provided a +50% bonus to food and your city took in five food from the outlying squares then the base square would produce 5 food

well those are some ideas that i think would really change the civ economic system so what do you think? feedback is good

korn469


<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by korn469 (edited June 17, 1999).]</font>

[Diodorus Sicilus]

Been wasting my time lately with "Birth of the Federation" game (henceforth: BotF) and it has some ideas that could be useful here...
Each solar system in BotF can have multiples of Production/Energy elements. They only add to the amount of Production Potential, so that you can build things faster, and the total number of everything you can have is based on the population of the system. Let's take a variation of that and apply it in CivIII. Here's the idea:
Each city can build as many Improvements as it has Population, with perhaps a bonus at the start so you aren't stuck with only one or two improvements for umpteen early turns - each city could start with a Base Number of improvements you can build.
If you have several Production Improvements (Barracks, Armories, or Logistics Depots for military units, Mills, Factories, Robotic Plants for equipment, Shipyards for ships, etc) you can build one New Thing for each such improvement OR you can combine several such to build one thing faster. Each Improvement would add to the cities total Manufacturing Points, which could be divided or applied as wished.
This would also allow/cause you to concentrate the production of certain cities: you would tend to have, as countries' did historically, a Steel City that cranked out all the heavy stuff (artillery, tanks, etc), a University Town whose points all went into Schools, Science Parks, Universities - Research, and perhaps an Artistic City (Athens?) in which the points went into Happiness/Cultural improvements that affect the entire civilization's Happiness/Contenment ratings.

[Flavor Dave]

Korn, there's obviously something I'm missing in your idea to build more than one thing at a time. Even if you change from shields to "builders," you'll have the same situation. You can either build a city improvement and a unit in 5 turns each, or you can spend 10 turns building both of them at the same time. You'd have to be an idiot to use the 2nd option. B/c you'd be missing 5 turns of use for whichever you build first, under the 1st option.

So, what am I missing?

[Eggman]

Diodorus: Not sure I like the idea of having the number of improvements limited by the population. There is already a mechanism to control the number of improvements - maintenance cost. Extra buildings cost more money and come directly out of the treasury. If you want more buildings, eventually you will have to change the tax rate or change government to something that makes more money.

However, having a MINIMUM population requirement to build certain improvements might work (they used it in Colonization). Any city can build a Temple, but for a Cathedral, you need a bigger population. Plus, if your population drops below the minimum, you cannot use the building. That avoids the "temporarily increase the population, start building and then move that population elsewhere" cheat common in Colonization.

[EnochF]

Someone needs to summarize this thread for Firaxis! Any volunteers? Diodorus, Ecce Homo? Just use the last summary as a jumping-off point and update it to include the latest round of suggestions as best you can, and submit it to Yin at namk26@hotmail.com!

[korn469]

Flavor Dave

you are making a false assumption, you are assuming that the two things you are building cost the same amount. however that is not the case. take for instance building a fusion infantry unit which cost about 40 minerals and building a hybrid forest which cost 240 minerals. if your city is making 40 minerals a turn then it would take 2 turns to build the infantry and 12 turns to build the hybrid forest. and it'd be most useful in large highly productive cities. as it is now i've have super cities that could build the assent to transendence in 5 turns. and can pretty much build any combat unit in one turn. i think it'd be more incentive to build robotic factories, genejack factories, nano factories, and quantum converters

korn469

[Harel]

Hello everyone. I have a talk with Yin, and I was to make the summary instead of the now-aloft Pythagoras ( wanted dead or alive, preferable the first option ).
I tried to do three things: sum up this thread, the 1.0 thread WITH the old summary list Pythagoras put on the start of 1.0.
So, something might have slipped.
If I miss quoted, forgot to mention someone's name or explain his idea as it should be, my regrests. Please inform me, and i'll fix it swiftly.
Therefor, here is the list.

ECONMICS/THREAD SUMMARY

A. Economical concepts
B. Carvan issue.
C. People quotes.
D. List of thanks.

<u>A. Economical concepts</u>

1. Having a number of key materials per Era ( copper, oil, etc. ). If you
lack enough of those materials you gain minuses to production. Only the
used materials for the Era are showen up on the map. You may trade resources
with other civ's. ( Eggman, Korn469 )
2. Having a budget screen. The usefulness of city improvements are decided
by a Tax slide: how much money you put in Eduction dictates the bonus gain
per schools, etc. Military is divided between the upkeep of the units, and
give minus/bonus to morale. Wealthfare money gives extra happiness. In
democracy/Rebpulic, the Sanete may demend minimum budgets to some parts.
Harel ).
3. Having 3 global types of resources: Fuel, building matertials and exotic,
instead of shields. Works in other ways like idea number 1. ( Flavor Dave ).
4. Economy model should be like Imperlism, you find the resources with a
Geologist unit, then build roads to the patch and build "mining buiding" on
the patch and move the resource to the closest city ( Colon ).
5. Besides resources, a consideration to the processing ( industry ) has to
be notice as it's the main issue in economy ( Colon ).
6. You should be able to trade with barbains ( Diodorus Sicilus )
7. Some nations based soley on trade. It should get much bigger economical
bonus from trade routes ( Diodorus Sicilus )
8. The more types of luxury goods you have, the happier the people are.
Trade goods should be seperated from gold and have four main type of luxury
items. Also, combing many food sorts will give a happiness bonus. ( Ecce
Homo, Korn469, Stefu ).
9. You should be able to be a third-side trader contractor: be able to ship
resources for some civ to another civ, gaining a small percentile of the
money yourself ( Holland traded for most of eastern europe in the past
Harel, Mindlace, Diodoros Sicilus ).
10. City should be able to build several things at the same time ( with
sliders to refelt percents of labor ). ( Korn469 ).
11. Have a new type of civlian: builder ( Korn469 ).
12. Base/City squres don't produce anything, they give a bonus to outlaying
squares ( Korn469 ).
13. Each city can build as many Improvements as it has Population, with
perhaps a bonus at the start so you aren't stuck with only one or two
improvements for umpteen early turns - each city could start with a Base
Number of improvements you can build. ( Diodorus Sicilus )
14. The number of tile used should be as the city size, not size+1 ( Isle ).
15. City should be depended on one another, like in modern economy. Be able
to group cities to a shared pool of resource and support. ( Druid, Hans2 )
16. Having "contracts" to reduce micro-manage ( Don don ).
17. Have commodities, like in Colonization. Have around 10 resources and 10
finished goods and revolve the economy around them. They are replaced with
more fitting ones along history and deplet over time. ( Don don, Bulrathi,
Diodorus Sicilus, Zorloc )
18. Be able to build docks, airports and the like in other country area by
being a sum of money ( Trachymr )
19. Have "two" level of trade - internal and forgien. Forgien will be
automatic, ala MOO and internal economy will be based on commodities ( Fugi
the Great )
20. Trade advisors, like SMAC governors will automaticly control all trade
Fugi the great )
21. Trade will also generate shields ( production ), not only trade arrows
CapTVK )
22. If you have commodites, controling most of the world supply of a certain
item allows you to get more money for it, Monopol of the market
( Pythagoras )
23. The type of Goverment and Market status dictate the control on your
trade, and the income gotten from it ( Pythagoras )
24. Black market: automatic caravans created in cities with a high
criminality, or to trade goods which are greatly lack, or trade routes wtih
enemies. You gain no income, and it's a drain on your trade cause it lower
the income of your trade. Needs military units to destroy. ( Pythagoras )
25. You can build trading posts, which act as airports and fortress ( maybe
give a small bonus to trade in near by cities? ). built by explorers.
Flavor dave )
26. Spys can destory trade routes ( Flavor dave )

<u>B. Carvan ( only trade ) issues:</u>

1. Have the trading bonus relate to supply and demand ( Bubba ).
2. Have an more expensive sort of caravan which delivers finished goods, not
materials, and give a bigger bonus ( Bubba ).
3. Having pirating and pillaging the trade routes, ala CtP ( Bubba, DanS ).
4. Caravans automaticly move back and forth, not just trade routes
Pythagoras )
5. Carvans need to evolve along history, with sea and air types
( Pythagoras )
6. Trade should be a part of diplomacy, automaticly created a "carvan"
building contract. Good trade will increase the level of diplomatic
connections ( Pythagoras, Hans2 )
7. War should cancel all trade bonues ( Jele2 )
8. Be able to give military protection to carvans by arming them (bab5tm )
9. Have air-lift carvan which can help besieged cities ( give them less
damage from artilery, you get a trade bonus, civ attitude to you is
better ). ( EnochF, Harel ).
10. Have SMAC-type way-points for carvans ( Trachmyr )
11. Have a MOOII trade, gaining an automatic money&Science bonus, no
caravans ( Prefect )
12. Once a caravan is built, he is automaticly sent to the most profitable
town, and gives and automatic bonus ( no actul movement ). ( Harel )
13. Caravans act like spies and show parts of the other-side maps
( Utrecht )
14. Caravans are automaticly built by the AI, and sent. The entire trade
process is done by the computer for you, a bit like SMAC ( Lancer,
Pythagoras )
15. Be able to hire caravans, and get a percent of the income ( Trachymr )
16. If you enable free-market SE, some of the caravans will belong to a
private company, and you get a percent of the income by tax ( Ecce home,
Harel )
17. A new wonder that will increase the movement rate of caravans ( Flavor
Dave )
18. A new city improvement to increase the output of caravans ( Diodoros
Sicilus )

<u>C. People quotes:</u>

"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" ( Eggman )
"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 "
( Diodoros Sicilus )
"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."
Colon )
"For Civ this could work by having 10 raw materials, and 10 manufactured
goods. All of these will be shared between all of your cities. Then to
trade, you make an agreement with another Civ (similar to CTP) and a caravan
creates a trade route from your closest city to their closest city. Then
your caravan (or whatever) will travel this path continuously - and can be
prirated." ( Zorloc )
"Why not have a real budget in civ III? For example, let's take hospitel.
Each one, takes lets say 2 gold per turn? Why not have an advanced budget
section, when you have "Health care". Here you allocate a budget that is
shared between ALL hospitels in the empire. The more money is per hospitel,
the more useful it will be. The more useful is will be, the happier people
will be and will live longer. Same thing with schools ( "Education"
section ), that will decide how much +% to research it gives, army which
decided how useful the units will be ( a minus if support per-unit is below
standard, a plus if above, etc ). You can even have the council fight for
different increase in sections. In the realigon section, someone said that
the popes ( or other big-shots ) of the religon would be like civ's inside
your civ, you will need to debate with them. Let's show up how terrible are
the democartical struggle for budgeting in civ III. Each party would demand
something else... This could be fun... ( Harel )
"I think the trading from both SMAC and Imperialism should be used. The
basic average everyday items that get traded if you are a friend of another
nation should be automatic like in SMAC. Then there are certain commodities
like wheat - bread, oil - petroleam, iron ore-steel-guns, uranium -
plutonium ... that should be traded on the market like in Imperialism (the
important things you need to grow a nation/empire). You could then do what
the US does with Russia now with the selling of wheat to them when they have
a surplus. Could also get food if there is a major famine in your country.
Trading for oil like the world does with OPEC. If you don't have oil, tanks
don't move and planes don't fly; so make sure you have enough to get you
through a war - don't be stuck like Germany or Japan in WWII. Iron ore/steel
production with different nations trying to corner the market or dumping it
on other countries to kill their industries (Japan was accused of this). If
you don't have steel, then you don't make tanks or factories. If you don't
have uranium to make plutonium, then you don't make nukes, try getting it in
trade or on the black market. Not every nation on this planet is blessed
with an abundance of goods. Countries like Japan have to rely on the exports
of other countries to stay alive." ( Fugi the great )
"Please, please, Please no comodities as in Colonization. This system is ok
with a very few "centers", but putting a system with detailed commodities in
a many-centers (cities here) game like civ produces mind-numbing amounts of
micromanagement. I intentionally would stop expanding in Colonization (even
though I would have liked to strategically) because the micromanagement
burden became rapidly intolerable after about 10 cities." ( Mark_everson )
"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." ( Eggman )
"If you have several Production Improvements (Barracks, Armories, or
Logistics Depots for military units, Mills, Factories, Robotic Plants for
equipment, Shipyards for ships, etc) you can build one New Thing for each
such improvement OR you can combine several such to build one thing faster.
Each Improvement would add to the cities total Manufacturing Points, which
could be divided or applied as wished.This would also allow/cause you to
concentrate the production of certain cities: you would tend to have, as
countries' did historically, a Steel City that cranked out all the heavy
stuff (artillery, tanks, etc), a University Town whose points all went into
Schools, Science Parks, Universities - Research, and perhaps an Artistic
City (Athens?) in which the points went into Happiness/Cultural improvements
that affect the entire civilization's Happiness/Contenment ratings."
Diodorus Sicilus )
"What do you think of putting these materials into a generic form--fuel,
metals, maybe two more? Also, in every "age", where each of these generic
goods are concentrated would change, to reflect the evolution from wood to
coal to oil to nuclear power." ( Flavor Dave )

D. List of thanks:

Special thanks: Pythagoras

Eggman, Ecce Homo, Harel, Bulrathi, Bab5tm, Korn469, Lancer, Matthew, Don don, Mark_everson, Trachymr, Mindlace, CapTVK, Stefu, Fugi the Great, Itokugawa, JamesJKirk, VaderTwo, EnochF, Croxis, Delcuze, Kerris, DanS, Didorus Sicilus, NotLikeTea, Flavor Dave, Hans2, Colon, Bubba, Druid, Prefect, Isle, Utrecht, Jele2

<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by Harel (edited June 20, 1999).]</font>

[Flavor Dave]

Korn--what I was missing is that you're talking about late in the game, when your city is producing 62 shields or whatever. Yes, that's a *good* idea, but it should only be enabled with the development of a tech like refining (power plants.) Till then, micromanage.

You left out the best quote--"If you want realism, play two turns and then die of old age."

[Diodorus Sicilus]

Eggman: thanx for the suggestion on Minimum Pop to use an Improvement; that works much better in a Civ context than a minimum pop to build it,
Colonization being one of the myriad games I've never had time to play, I missed the pop limit solution in it.

[Bigcivfan]

A possibility would be to use the model like COLONIZATION for the city menu on CivIII. You could build a ship if you have a citizen in the shipyards building one. You could build a unit, if you have a citizen in the barracks training and the approriate resources. A size 10 city would have 10 available workers, to be allocated where ever you see fit.

[NotLikeTea]

nah.. I don't want to see this.

I've always assumed that the workers in the fields are population that is not otherwise occupied. Afterall, you can have all your pop working on farms, but still support Barracks, a Temple, and a Library. I think it's safe to assume that all these buildings are always fully occupied.

Though, I do like the idea of buildings going idle when the pop drope. I just don't want to have to manage workers manually.

[Pythagoras]

Please forgive me I work 60 hour work weeks, and I aid MarkG on the SMAC site. PITY ME!! I jumped into something that took more time than I expected, and I wanted the Civ community to get someone's best job than my half ass job.

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

[Harel]

Hello everyone. I am the new thread master of Economics/Trade section.

I am now closing this thread. See you all in the next thread!

THREAD CLOSED, THREAD CLOSED, THREAD CLOSED.