Economics/Trade thread 1.2, hosted by: Harel

[Diodorus Sicilus]

Zorloc:
In your example, Tin + Copper would be Resources.
Resources would be map/terrain icons, or implicit in certain advances. For instance, if your Civ has Domestication and you're in temperate or high latitude climate, you can assume sheep and goats and you get the Resource Wool.
Turning Resources into 'Primary' (L1?) Manufactured Goods requires the application of Labor + Skill. The Skill is represented by an Advance, such as Bronze Working. Add an Application of Bronze Weapons to that, or perhaps make that Application implicit (depends on how detailed and extensive we want the Tech Tree to be) and the Primary Good can be turned into a Finished Good (L2?) like Swords, Shields, or Plowshares...

I thoroughly agree, the Finished Goods are or should be the source of the big trade bucks. To use an example I used elsewhere in these Threads already, Holland and England financed their commercial and diplomatic expansion in the 15th to 17th centuries on the wool cloth trade: turning Resource:Wool into Cloth using Factories (non-steam powered, but still impressive concentrations of Labor) to make and sell it cheaper than anyone else. That was the epitome of the L1 Manufactured Good bringing in the big bucks.
Later in the Industrial Revolution's beginning, England could crank out iron manufactured goods like stoves, weapons, etc or printed cloth in cheap quantities: L2 goods that commanded enough money that she singlehandedly financed the rest of the Europe fighting Napoleon for 20 years!
In the modern era, though, the Even Bigger Bucks all come from Complex Finished Goods: consumer electronics, automobiles, (Requiring, say, resource: Iron & Coal, multiple Advances like Production Line, Electronics, Automobile, and Trained Labor) and Service Goods (L3?) which require no resources at all, just intensive and well-trained Labor and Advances: Software, Information, and (Electronic) Entertainment.
This indicates that perhaps we can divide Trade and Trade Income Levels into 4 categories:
Resources price based on scarcity and need only, available from Terrain Icons or some basic Advances (Domestication, etc)
Goods Resources converted directly into products with relatively simple Labor: Bronze, Cloth, Wrought Iron
Products Resources and Goods converted with Labor enhanced by knowledge (Advances): Bronze Swords, Iron Cannon, Clothing, Automobiles, Consumer Electronics
Services Highly trained Labor coupled with Advances (specialized know-how) to produce items required for Special Effects: Software to make computers work, Entertainment to keep populations Happy, Information to make economies (stock markets) run, etc.
Each successive 'layer' of Trade items would be worth a jump in price: possibly 2 Resource for 1 Good, 2 Goods for 1 Product, 2 Products for 1 service, or some variant of those numbers...

[Maniac]

Harel !
I just saw you are the new thread master of Economics/Trade! What do you think about the little trade route suggestion I made to Colon on the Government/SE thread ? Should I post it here?

[Maniac]

ember : wonderful idea to split resources and labor.
Gregurabi : bad idea there are already enough specialists

Social Engineering Industry wouldn't increase shield output, but labor output (they work harder).
Also instead of just having a bunch of gold pieces that are your treasury you have a list of resources that your country has in stock.

The feudalist economy system would decrease Industry(=Labor), because in that system there wasn't a lot of internal trade. Every village had to rely on itself, seriously decreasing labor.

Every terrain tile shouldn't just produce 1 Shield, but 1 Tin, 1Copper, 1 Oil,...
Some terrain types would have to be mined before you can reach the resources. eg:Hills and Mountains.

Trade wouldn't just be pretending "I give you 5 Salt and you give me 3 Copper. It would be " I give you every turn 5 Salt units to add to your Salt 'treasury' and you give me 3 Copper units to add to my Copper treasury.
your civ would get a +3Trade bonus and the other civ a +5trade bonus.
The city producing most of your civ's salt would get the trade bonus.
If my civ is in desparate need for Salt, the trade route would be more profitable for the other.
if you would get out of Salt(your treasury is empty), you would get serious happiness or health problems.

Every trade commodity should have another effect if you run out of it.

Units, buildings and Wonders should require some labor 'shields' and some Iron out of the national Iron treasury. For example 40 labor and 20 Iron. if you run out of iron you can't make legions.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by M@ni@c (edited July 22, 1999).]</font>

[dinoman2]

Hmmm.... One point everyone is missing. Do governments control trade in this world? I think not. Corporations do. Your government could control trade in the early game, but later on in the game it should be taken over by the AI corporations. Other than this, I agree with the division of resources and labor, and the the resource trade.

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"Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will"
-Mikhail Bakunin

[Maniac]

dinoman, in SMAC there is a commerce bonus with high economy rates. Perhaps this is to represent free not-governmental trade.


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M@ni@c-SMAniaC
depends on what site I am.

[Theben]

Do governments control trade: hell yes they do. Maybe they don't always exercise that ability (hence bonuses for free-trade) but if the U.S. gov said "we're outlawing trade with China" what do you think the U.S. corps will do?

[Maniac]

That's called an embargo or trade sanctions. That also existed in SMAC. It should be allowed if you are in war with a civ or if that civ has committed an atrocity.

Trade routes should always follow the fastest possible way to their destination cities. Even if you pass a civ you haven't got good diplomacy with. It's still the merchants that decide which way the follow. So having a good road system increases passing traders. In the case of sea trade, ships tend to follow the coastline, so coastal cities get also passing trade route bonuses(ships need to resupply food and water and port near a city). Perhaps a new benefit of a harbor.

[Gordon the Whale]

Division of Labor and Resources is good, but why not make Labor simply equal the amount of resource your city can process in a turn? For instance, a Legion requires 10 bronze and 5 wood (randomly chosen). Tenochtitlan has a forest (call it 2 wood) and a mine (3 bronze nearby) so it could theoretically finish in 4 turns. However, if Tenochtitlan has an Industry of 3, there's no way it can do it in less than 5 turns, because it can only process 3 resources at a time. At the same time, if its industry is 15, and it has stockpiled (this should somehow be limited to not very much) 5 wood and 10 Bronze, it can make the legion in one turn. (BTW, a legion SHOULD take more than 15 total resources). Industry could come from the city square only, and be dependant partly on SE settings and partly on city size and improvements (factories, power plants, nanotech, etc.)

Has anyone here said anything about using roads/railroads as methods to transport goods? I'd suggested it at the Firaxis Forum, but no one has posted there for 2 weeks or so, so I'm assuming no one is reading them. Here's a limited repost:

Now, trade routes. I like the idea of regions, but except for micromanagement alleviation, what good would they do? I am the kind of person who woulds put all my cities in one region if I thought it would make me one resource richer each turn. I suppose each region could have a capital. The strength of the capital would depend upon the number of people in the region, and the combined proximity and strength of the capital would affect the corruption/waste in the cities of that region, as well as their loyalty to your nation. Thus, a small, tightly packed nation would want to be in one region, whereas the first city you build on a neighboring continent would likely start a new region, just to avoid corruption. Of course, regions could split off, but this probably belongs in a different thread.

In terms of resource trade, make it require a road. Any resource can be traded, but the maximum amount on a given trade route is inversely proportionate to the length of the route, with consideration of the terrain involved. Say that a trade route 5 squares long on a road (2 cities whose radii touch) would have a maximum trade of 20 resources each way. So city 1, which has a per turn wood surplus of 27, can send only 20 wood to city 2. City 2 has an per turn iron surplus of 14, so it can all be sent to city 1. With railroad, double the amount (so with railroads, city 1 can get rid of its entire surplus). For each amount of distance greater than this, deduct 2 trade from the maximum for roads and 1 for railroads. So with a road, you can't trade ANYthing at all between cities more than 15 squares away... With railroads, you can trade up to 45 squares, with diminishing returns all the way. The total amount could also depend upon technology (supertrains destroys the distance dependance, for instance) or city improvements (marketplace increases maximum incoming trade to 25).

Trade by sea would be possible only between cities with harbors, and would be dependant on the size of port (harbor, port, shipping center) and the distance. Say a base of 10 for a harbor, minus 1 for every two squares distant. The port might have a base trade of 25, and the shipping center 50. Navigation technologies could change the amount routes diminish over distance.

The trade could be managed automatically by the computer within given regions, sending surplusses from one city to the nearest city in the region that needed that resource. Cities could also build resource reserves to hold surplusses. For instance, a city with a Lumber reserve could stockpile up to 100 lumber. Alternatively, the regional capital could automatically stockpile whatever surplusses were sent to it... This is another good reason for dividing up your civilization into many regions.

The player could, of course, turn on and off the AI trade manager for each region. Trade between regions, however, would be managed entirely by the player. It would follow the same rules as routes within a region, but all trade would be between regional capitals. This is a good reason to have only a few regions.

Trade blockades on land would be easy. Position a unit on a road and use the block trade command. This could cripple a civilization, especially a colonial one with resources and industry in different places... Cut the supply, and there's no more production. If food is one of the resources being traded, you can do even more damage, by causing famine and food riots in the industialized interior. You could make pirate units that not only stopped the trade, but diverted it to you (with much loss, of course). There could be two kinds, brigands, who are visible and can fight, and "inside operatives" or whatever you call them, who, along with their effects, are invisible. They would be like leeches.

Trade blockades and piracy in the ocean would be more difficult, but easier to detect, since there would be no "operatives." I guess the best way would be to use the "block/steal trade" command, which would block all trade in the ships sight radius. After one turn of blocking, trade routes would automatically move to avoid the blocking ship, if possible. This can be overcome by blocking narrow passages, large blockades using multiple ships, or blockading near one port or the other.

[Gordon the Whale]

As for manufactured trade items. Making the goods isn't the problem, really, it would be a slightly more detailed version of Capitalization, which wouldn't work in a resource-based rather than shield-based ecomony anyways. The problem is with what to do once you've made things. The main opinion I've seen is "You sell them." To who? Your own people, where they give money and happiness? Other civilizations? If other civilizations, why do they buy them? Do they give you money or return different goods? If this were a system like in Civ2, only where you make the "supply" items rather than having them randomly assigned, it could be interesting. You would need to seperate city production into 2 areas, actual production and trade production. The Trade Production could be a list, where you allocate a certain amount of industry to each trade item. The Actual Production would be a queue, with Units/Wonders/City Improvements built sequentially. (There is NO point in being able to build multiple Units/Wonders/CI's at the same time. If anyone doesn't understand why, ask me and I'll explain.)

But that explains the Supply... Where does Demand come from? Is it still randomly assigned, as in Civ2? Is it inherent in building Units/Wonders/CIs? (a micromanagement nightmare) Is it necessary for growth? All 3? None? As for micromanagement, an AI could probably handle it, although you might end up with an efficiency loss... (Anything handled by the AI should be optionally human controlled, for all of us nitpickers who have no problem spending 2 months on a game of Civ.) I suppose here's my question, with a scenario: In a game of Civ, I'm the English, and I've discovered Industrialization and built a Factory in London, which was a size 7 city. We'll say that the base industry/person is 2, so a size 7 city is 14 Industry. Discovering Industrialization gives a 25% bonus, so that's 17, and the Factory gives +50%, so that's 24. Now, I'm spending most of that on cannons, which require Wood and Iron. However, London only brings in 5 Wood and 12 Iron per turn, so I have an excess of 7 Industry. So I set up a trade route with the Americans (was that who it was?) in which they send me 7 Cotton and 7 Gold per turn, and I send back 7 Clothes. (Since Cotton can be converted to clothes at a cost of 1 Industry.) That is a great system, but why did the Americans agree to this deal? What are they getting out of it? Clothes? If I was the Americans, and I'd converted my fields to cotton fields, reducing my food production, wouldn't I feel jipped? (How the heck do you spell that word?) So the problem is, why do the Americans need clothes? Will it make their people happy? Are clothes necessary for growth? ESPECIALLY if there's going to be multiplayer support, trades like that have to happen both ways, and be profitable to both sides.

Incidentally, I think micromanagement could be reduced by, instead of having to go work out a deal with the Americans, I'd been able to push a button in London which said "Manufacture Trade Goods," Which would have prompted the AI to compare my stockpiled raw materials with the demanded Trade Goods around the world, and then compare the supplied raw materials around the world with demanded Trade Goods if I didn't have any useful raw materials, then set up a trade route with the necessary civilizations. There could be general flags that could be set, like "Don't buy <anything> from the <Germans>" or "Don't sell <guns> to the <Chinese>." It could be done quite easily, powerfully, and with a minimum of necessary micromanagement, if there were a good rationale for why the Americans wanted the clothes.

Manufactured goods could also be needed for Units and CI's. For instance, a Phalanx requires, rather than Bronze and Wood, just Spears and Shields. The Spears take 1 Bronze and 1 Wood each, and the Shields take 2 Bronze each. Bronze, as we all know, takes 1 Tin and 1 Copper. So if the actual cost of the Phalanx is 2 Shields and 2 Spears, I have to spend 2 Wood, 6 Tin, and 6 Copper to make it. So why bother with making the cost 2 Spears and 2 Shields, when it could just be 2 Wood, 6 Tin, and 6 Copper? Industry. The industrial cost of 2 Spears and 2 Shields is 4... Plus 2 per spear (4 more) plus 2 per shield (4 more). Oh, and then there's that bronze... 2 Industry each, that's 12 more. So the Industry cost is 24, whereas the total resources consumed is only 14. It's effectively a way to make units take more Industry when they're harder to make. Also, say there's an improvement called a Bronze Smelter that makes Bronze cost half as much Industry to make... That reduces the industry to make a Phalanx by 8, that's 25%. Well worth it. But the upkeep is 3 Gold... Ack! I can't afford one of those in every city. So I build one in one Trondheim (I'm the Vikings, now), and all the other cities send Copper and Tin to Trondheim, which sends back Bronze. Or, I can smelt Bronze for other civilizations and sell it. Or I can set the AI to "Build Necessary Resources" and it will automatically send Copper and Tin to foundries, etc. I'll still have to build the foundry, though, unless my Build Queue is also on Auto. Assuming that you can turn on the AI and make all of it go behind the scenes, I think that would be a fine way to run production. There could be a way to toggle the display of unit costs between a list of the raw materials required and a tree showing each actual requirement and it's subcomponents.

Would anyone turn off the AI and do it themselves? Good question. But even if they don't, there are still a couple of good points:

1)Lots of natural resources that are needed for expansion.

2)Industrial centers become useful to outlying cities by making parts. (If somewhere else is sending the Spears and Shields, a Phalanx is only 4 industry... that means a size 2 city can make one every turn.)

3)Likewise, trade routes can be cut, with drastic military repercussions... No more 1 phalanx per turn out there on the frontier once they can't get supplies from Rome.


Does anyone have any ideas about how to make Trade Goods worthwhile?

[loinburger]

Gordon: Shall respond to your ideas soon, once I get off work. Like them, though.


A separate issue: Paths, Roads, Railroads, Maglevs (no, I'm not bringing up the whole movement mess from Terrain Improvements ). I have posted the following idea on the TI thread, but it appears that it probably belongs here instead.

Roads give you trade in Civ I & II, fine, and Railroads increase resource production in a square. Why this is as I see it: Roads increase trade because invisible caravans can move along them, and Railroads increase production because you can bring muck back to your cities faster. I don't like this because it forces you to go building railroads and roads everywhere, and if the TI threads consensus that railroads should be "owned" goes through this would mean that an advancing army would NEVER get to your city. Not to mention the fact that Railroad networks look, IMO, ugly.

The solution is that a Path/Road/Railroad/Maglev will provide a trade bonus to a city SO LONG AS IT IS CONNECTED TO A FRIENDLY CITY! Friendly cities could be your own cities, other Civ's cities with whom you have trade agreements (I agree that there should be different levels of trade pacts ranging from Embargo to Favored Trade, which would likewise help diplomacy between the trading nations) or Barbarian cities/villages/wilderness with which you have not yet made war. One suggestion which has been made in another thread is that "villages" or other population centers will occasionally crop up in your city radius--these are people living in your city, still paying city taxes and using the city's resources etc., but who have their own living space. This living space could then be pillaged by an invading army, significantly reducing your population. Roads and railroads could connect these villages to the main city, but otherwise there would be no need to build a road/railroad in every city square.

As for the Railroad production bonus: if M@ni@c's idea is used and everything in Civ is multiplied by 10 (plains will make 10 food instead of 1, but each citizen will eat 20 food instead of 2), then the incrememtal tech advances could increase food/shields(or commodities)/trade in each city square by a few points each time, i.e. Railroad would increase everything by +10%, Bessemer Steel would increase by another +10%, Mass Transit would incrase by ANOTHER +10%, etc.

Am I talking crazy? If I am let me know and I'll elaborate.

[ember]

Gordon: That pretty much is the difinition of labor.

I personnaly feel that requiring you to produce sepratly shileds and swords and trade goods and ship them around is a BAD idea. The micro load would double because of that. At least if you have to do it on a city scale. If you do it on a regional level it could be manageable...

With regions Goods getting shipped around is implicit. The idea is that in a region with 5 cities, 3000 troops get trained in rome, 1500 in Naples and 500 in each of the other three cities. THey then assemble in syracuse to form a standard 6000 man legion (aprox historical size) OR Shields form viconium and spear heads from rome are made from bronze smelted in naples and matched with troops in pompeii. Even for structures lots of the work is done other places, or workers are sent temporarilly to these cities.

Regions would allow cities to speciallize more. Have a major trade/industrial centre (chicago) with mining communities feeding resources and agricultural cities feeding the whole thing. Ag cities would tend to have farming improvments (like silos, and railyards) and all citizens work the land. Mining cities are similiar, except they have smelters and Hydro dams. Manufacturing / trade centers would have very few or no citizens work the land.

A feel that only food / resources should be produced from the terrain (trade only on special resources). Trade and industry are produced by citizens. Specialists would produce much more trade and industry than citizenbs working the fields. This would give a much stronger insentive to build a few major centres instead of the currently mostly cookie-cutter cities.

For this to work each pop point might consume 1 (or 10) food, but they represent less people...

"supply" TI's could represent villages linked to cities / regions, but outside of the city radius.
Each would have a pop point in it (to create it), and would ship it's food and resources back. If they were pillaged the citizens would die (the disadvantage), but they don't count towards pop size for aquaduct or unhappiness purposes.

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"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by ember (edited July 28, 1999).]</font>

[ember]

An extensionof my previos idea

Villages, all size 1, farm and mine. (size 2 might give a 50-75% increase, for late game). These goods are all automatically sent to a nearby host city. The city only gathers resources from it's square, but all the extra population is in the form of labourers, traders, and scientists.

Cities are hadled mostly as now except theat they do not directly gather goods. The terrain the city is on would effect grwoth and trade (rivers are a big bonus)
Villages are TI's. Vilage improvments are also TI's. adding advanced farms, or silos, or a bettermines are all TI's.
By this model, a farmer would have to support ~twice as many pop as in CIV2.
All Food and natural resouces are 'made' in terrain squares.
All industry and trade are 'made' in cities, by citizens.


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"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[Gordon the Whale]

ember: That's what I thought, but someone had posted somewhere that labor and resources would compliment eachother, rather than limit eachother... Like you could put more labor in, but not more resources, and get it done faster. I wanted to make sure that wasn't what you were talking about.

As for micromanagement, a complicated economy like that would certainly have to be done by the computer at almost all times, unless you are really hardcore. REALLY hardcore. But if it were to be used at all, it would have to make a difference, rather than just being a CPU intensive justification for the way things already worked... You're right, it's probably not a very useful idea.

[Gordon the Whale]

The village idea is awesome. How would they be built? If you've got to build a settler, etc, it would suck, hard. But if it was a function inside the city, you'd have to do it each time the city grew... Maybe you could give it a queue and the ability to put it on autoexpand, and it would be great.

As for several kinds of village... Farming, Mining,and Logging are the obvious first choices. The farming village could still produce resources, and the mining village could still produce food, but the amount would be limited... For instance, the basic, size 1 farming village can produce up to 50 food (enough to support 5 standard civ people people) and 20 resources. The Mining village could produce the opposite, 50 resources and 20 food. Then the Logging village (possibly just what happens when you put a farming village on a forest) can get 30 food and 40 resources, or whatever. You can direct growth onto a square that already has a village to increase its size, which adds a little more to it's maximum production, but doesn't double it. eg The size 2 farming village can handle 80 Food and 30 Resources. That might also allow hybrid villages... Put a mining village on top of a farming village and get something that can make 60 food and 60 resources, for those Wet Grassy Plains with Oil deposits... When it reaches size 4, make it into a city of it's own, with the 4th person being an attendant village. Doesn't need to be that complex, though, it could just be village is village, village = production from square.

Here's another intersting variant: Only let villages be built on adjacent squares. That is, adjacent to the city or adjacent to one of the other villages. After all, it doesn't really make sense for a size 1 city to be pulling in resources from 300 km away, does it?
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Gordon the Whale (edited July 29, 1999).]</font>

[Gordon the Whale]

Alright, me, three posts in a row.

I like the trade/road suggestion. Villages should also produce trade, though. Not a lot, but some. Sheer number of people makes a difference in how much money a civilization has, after all. Likewise, the number of people in the city square should increase it's trade production. In a x10 world, say a village produces 3 trade and each person in the city square produces 5.

This doesn't get you an amount of trade comparable to what you'd get in Civ2, so to compensate, make the trade between cities/barbarian villages higher. Calculate it by adding up the total population trade of cities on the road network, making adjustments for distance, type of road (road, railroad, monorail) level of trade treaty for trade with other civ's cities, social engineering settings, etc. (is this too much work for the processor? maybe, and it needs a good pathfinder. figure several hundred cities on the road network by late game.) Do the same thing for ocean cities with a harbor, using the ocean as the road network.