ECONOMICS/TRADE ( vers 1.3 ) HOSTED BY: HAREL

[Ecce Homo]

Copper, bronze and iron could all work as generic metal concerning building materials. As technology advances, the production methods should produce increasingly more metal, maybe according to this model:

Copper: copper deposit
Bronze: copper and tin deposits+labour.
Iron: iron deposit+fuel+labour
Steel: iron deposit+fuel+labour
Alloyed Steel: iron and alloy deposits+fuel+labour

Copper and tin would still be traded after the bronze age, but only as luxury goods.

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The best ideas are those that can be improved.
Ecce Homo

[Maniac]

Don't mind the Culture SE factor when making an immigration model. I'm trying to match the ideas of the Religion thread with those on the SE thread.

Culture will be adapted and it won't affect immigration anymore. Purely determined by Happiness of city/world (, and emigration also determined by Nationalism).

Will post more details later on the SE thread.

[don Don]

Ecce, that's why I said on 8/3

Bauxite, for example, becomes a substitute for iron in the post-industrial economy. Copper is initially a "substitute" for iron, which isn't discovered until later. Just treat both as minor sources of the generalized "iron."

The second aspect, the difference between iron and steel, is really a matter of designing a new type of furnace for refining the metal from ore. It's still just iron as a resource, we're using it better.

Changing the resource type may be an unnecessary complication. Since the tiles are likely to be large (~100 miles) rather than small we can assume that small iron deposits could be located in the same tile. Also, bronze may not be used for swords after iron is developed, but common tools would only be made of iron as larger sources are discovered.

If anything, the discovery of ironworking should make new resources appear. They would be bigger than the little resources that represented copper, lead, and tin necessary for bronze.

Similarly, oil should not be known (except for trivial sites where oil oozed to the surface) until later when profitable uses make somebody think its worth developing a drilling technique.

[Theben]

ember,
I have a similar proposal for growth. It is based mostly on happiness.

Happiness affects everything. It is probably the single most important SE choice. If you've played MOO2, think of the morale bonus given to citizens. Happiness gives a bonus/penalty to pop growth, labor production, trade, how much your citizens will support your foreign/domestic actions in diplomacy, research, etc. For this reason the bonus/penalty should be 1/2 of regular SE choices, about 2% per +1 happiness modifier.

Growth is affected positively by:
happiness
Food surplus
Certain techs-medicine, sanitation, public health, etc. Note that some of these techs add to both happiness (better quality of life) and growth (live longer lives, which also allows more time for having kids)
Certain buildings-Granaries, aqueducts, sewers, hospitals
Possibly fundementalism or a animist/poltheistic religion that stresses pop growth
Random events
(Most SE choices affect happiness, not growth)


Negatives:
negative happiness mods-Rebellion, units dying, SE choices, etc.
Lack of food
Certain techs, notably contraception (which may incidentally increase happiness)
Plagues
Random events
Pollution, including nuke pollution

I had no ideas for villages; yours is good. Immigration & emmigration should be assumed in the rise & decline of your population.

don Don,
While having some resources necessary for construction is okay (or have contruction penalty), I think it should be assumed that wherever a major civ arises it has plenty of quality wood & quarry nearby. Otherwise it would have some serious penalties to overcome. Unless you had some other ideas for balance (start with extra techs, on fertile continent by yourself)?
Or is this for trading commodities only?
Also not having oil, uranium be important until modern times is a good idea.

Gordon, I like your's (and ember's) ideas (posted 8/2).

Gregurabi,
To solve some of your concerns on 8/3, one thing I suggested (others too I believe) in the SE threads is that free-market economies wouldn't have much control over their production, but would get a large ECONOMY bonus, while planned/communal econs would have total or near total control over theirs. This means that only a percent goes to you the player (in FM) trade generated: money goes to private sector, research is partially controlled by you, production as well. BUT you get more trade overall. Also allow multiple builds in a city at one time. Thus, the citizens pay for the buildings they use (almost everything non-military, although you may have to pay if they don't have enough), research non-military techs, and produce more of "their" buildings, trade routes, public works (if used), etc. You only get what you tax for money. You may in emergencies (war) "buy" back these items: research can be changed to military research, you can buy back production to build new units &/or military-style TI's and buildings. Planned/communal economies get all the money/research/production, but less overall. They may assign it wherever they wish, but must pay for everything. Other economies would fall somewhere in-between.
As for "building a church in every city", we are talking about a huge area of land, with a major metropolitan center. It should be building at least one of everything.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Theben (edited August 09, 1999).]</font>
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Theben (edited August 10, 1999).]</font>

[mzilikazi]

Someone on the sidgames site suggested that Civs ought to be able to lend and borrow money between each other. I reproduce my reply here...

"I love the idea of lending and borrowing money from another Civ - it opens up massive new possibilities, and replicates the "power" in the real world today of trading nations like Switzerland or Japan. Imagine a rival wanting to rush build a wonder - you have the cash and can charge exorbitant rates to enable them... how much do they really want to rush build it? Of course, the AI will do the same to you when you are hard up... I love it. Exorbitant rate chargers might attract some negative reputation due to resentment. And what would happen in a war? Would the debt be cancelled - perhaps only if the debtor nation 'won' the war. Wars could actually be started by creditor nations (perhaps paying mercenaries?) to make defaulting debtors restart servicing their loans. Default would be an option - but would be a major diplomatic incident. It would make gold much more important in the dynamics of the game."

[Maniac]

That option exists already in SMAC, so it will certainly be in Civ3.

[don Don]

Egypt had to import timber (of any substantial size); they did have plenty of quarry stone.

Mesopotamia had neither quarry stone nor heavy timber. Even their city walls were made of brick. They just made them 100+ feet thick!

Timber was a big trade item in those days.

[Theben]

Current rules allow for players to "create" forest in normal terraforming, and no one has suggested any limiting factors for foresting, let alone other normal terraforming abilities. So timber would never be a trade item/production limitation as it stands now. You'll have to develop this more to implement it. IMHO.

[ember]

Seems to me that the more complicated a resource model that gets used, the more regionalisation we need to have to compensate for micormanagment.

A system of labour split from resources, and that divided into, metals, fuels and buildign materials, would be a huge burden if the production system is as it is now. If you only have 4-8 regions to manage, instead of 20-60 cities, things are more reasonable.

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

[Diodorus Sicilus]

Timber was a major item of trade from ancient (1500BC and earlier) Egyptian through Roman times, and always for the same reason: only certain timber was suitable for ship building, and it did not grow everywhere. In modern terms, only 'old growth' forests with very tall, very straight timber could be used for keels, masts, and other necessities of the navy.
Which brings up the major factor in trade goods: many of them are limiting factors or requirements for other things we want to do in the game. You cannot build pre-iron ships without suitable timber. You cannot make bronze without tin and copper, or power vehicles, aircraft, and ships with oil and gasoline unless you have petroleum. Until very, very recently, gold and silver were required for finance, because all money was based firmly on those precious metals.
Therefore, two things have to happen in the revised game IMHO:
1. Trade has to be available very early - tin and copper were traded before 2000BC to make bronze, and traded from as far as Cornwall, England to the Mediterranean. One possibility is to have trade available as 'barter' from the start to get needed resources, but with no income until currency or coinage or some other Advance is discovered.
2. Trade goods have to be related specifically to other activities. Some specific examples, taken from history (and some of which already commented on in previous posts):
petroleum = allows development of Greek Fire for 'fire triremes' or enhancements to ships, is modern requirement not only for fuels for internal combustion, automobile, aircraft, and all modern ships, but also raw material for many chemicals, dyes, perfumery, and other modern manufactured Trade Goods.
gold/silver = allows governments to buy all sorts of things, including, in ancient Athens, financing an entire fleet of 200 Triremes! Also provides for major population shifts: look at results of 'gold rushes' in western US, Australia, South Africa, etc in 19th century.
timber = for ship building as mentioned above, was a major strategic concern of any naval power: 18th century France financed 'reforestation' projects to support the navy, and England made a major financial and trade effort to keep on Scandinavia's good side after chopping down her own forests and losing the American colonies (New England's forests were a major strategic asset!). Incidentally, the current ability to replant major forests in CivII should be limited to modern times: Weyerhauser can rebuild a pretty fair lumber source in 20 years, but that's a result of modern genetic research, and still doesn't get you mast timber: that takes much longer even today, and would be a century+ long project earlier.
horses = were not available all over the world in 4000BC! Before you can build any mounted unit, you need to obtain them, so here's another terrain icon to add, along with Elephants, even less widely distributed throughout history.

In short, I'm just scratching the surface here. There are a lot of ways in which trade goods and terrain icons both have to be more precisely related to building units, finances, and advances in the game. As an aside, many of the resources would be generated on the map from the beginning of the game, but not visible to the player until discovered/needed. As stated in another post, most petroleum deposits were not even looked for until petroleum became valuable in the 19th century, and coal was a minor resource until the 18th century, and so not exploited or searched out.

[Theben]

Didorus Sicilus,
The Athenian League...he, he, he...as I remember each member had a choice to contribute money or ships. Everyone but Athens gave money, while they used the money to build ships. When someone wanted to leave the league Athens would send the fleet...

Anyway, about horses as a trade/resource, I disagree that they were a rare resource. Horses originated in the Americas, then migrated to Asia. We know they were in western Europe circa 5000 b.c. by cave paintings, which means that they were likely still in Asia; obviously they were in the Middle East by 1500 b.c. Had horses not been hunted to extinction in the Americas they'd have been quite common and I see no reason why Civ3 must follow history this closely. Indeed, to help civs start out on equal footing (not for historical reasons, but for game purposes) they should remain common. Not having horses is far too great a detriment.

[Maniac]

Hi, I was thinking yesterday about migration of peoples. After a while, I came up with this. I posted it in more than one thread –sorry if it annoys you- cause it covers a lot of areas.

Colonization/Migration

“How to simulate the migration of the �barbarian’ people at the end of the Roman Empire?” I asked myself. Cause they were in Civ2 terms some kind of settlers with a big attack and defense.
There should be a unit that represents some migrating people. Good, simply 4-2-1, settlers, one could say. But that would be an expensive unit. But the fact is that migration was unorganized and didn’t require 40 shields. It was instantaneous. In fact, there was never an organized migration of 10000 people, or just 10000 people saying “let’s found another city”.
So I began thinking about something else…

In Civ3 the Terrain Improver/Former could be deleted, well, now I suggest the City Founder unit would also loose much of it’s use until late in the game when planned colonization exists.
I am against automatic city building by the AI as some people suggest. What I suggest is you can point a tile where people may found a city. It may be any square 1) on a continent where there is already a city of yours and 2) not next to another city. All the rest is automatic with a migration system. People will move to that spot gradually if conditions are good.

I think there isn’t a migration system yet, except one based on happiness. I would let it play a much larger part in the game.
The automatic migration system would try to find a balance between labor and resources in a city.
This is to represent unemployment. If there is more labor(people) than resources(work) there is unemployment. And no work means that people migrate to parts where there is more work to do.
If there are more resources(work) than labor(people) there is work available and people migrate to other already existing cities with more resources or they will move to a spot you chose as a new city.
So cities built in large grasslands tracks will not be big cities since there would be large emigration out of the agricultural area without work.
Small cities will always have more resources than labor since they always have N+1 worked squares, where N is the size of the city. But to both solve the ICS problem AND the possible problem that large cities would not be possible since ALL the people would go to new cities, I came up with this.
The city square normally produces the amount of food if the square is irrigated, the amount of minerals with a limit of at least one and one trade if a road would normally produce trade.
I would add the following. If a city reaches two population, it gets for free 20 labor and 20 trade (don’t forget I use the x10 system). If a city reaches size 3, it produces an extra 30 labor and 30 trade in the city square. And so on… The extra bonuses are because in Civ2 a city with size 1 had 10000 people, a city with size 2 30000 and 3 60000… So of course the second population �unit’ produces double as much as the first, the thirth triple… or otherwise told the second pop unit produces 20 labor, the thirth 30. And of course a large city means more trade for the same reason; there are more people.
This would solve the ICS problem, since large cities are MUCH bigger production and trade centers as many small ones. I hope I have persuaded guys who would want to reduce the city square production to 0 food, shields and trade. I think my solution solves the ICS problem better since 0-0-0 city square production makes small cities produce too less trade and resources in the beginning and therefore seriously reduces migration to the newly built city.
And because the extra labor is balanced with the extra trade, automatic migration out of a city because there is a large population (much labor in my system) and too less resources compared with the population is impossible. So migration would be totally dependent of the resources of the surrounding terrain, as in reality.
This will represent more accurately the flow of people and the growth of cities in history. In CivX that was represented totally wrong with excess food since most big cities now and in the old days were mostly the big trade cities and some/most of them are were in half desert like terrain.
That would mean a lot more trade, so the game economical system could need some rebalancing. But don’t forget that people have suggested much more uses for gold eg troop support, religion, and if you read on, I suggest gold I also needed for colonization/migration.
So, let me define resources. Although in the Economy/Trade thread it is usually referred to as the replacement of shields, for this case I also count trade as resources.
So the biggest cities will be as in reality the economical cities.
But if you would some trade cities on a Civ2 map, they would have a lack of food eg Palmyra, Petra, Bokhara… So there is need for a general �food box’ for the entire empire. I don’t know sure, but I thought it existed in CTP. After all the food is �collected’, it becomes distributed over the empire as needed. Perhaps the efficiency of food transport (your SE Corruption/Bureaucracy rate)would also have to do something with how well food is distributed.
For example in a Federal structure with a Bureaucracy bonus food transport would be better than in the Confederate structure. Or if the above isn’t accepted, I insist that food trade routes are automatic and unlimited, so you don’t have to build a 50 shield caravan.

But of course the state has to say something too in migration. However before people are willing to move, they have to be paid a lot. So if you would want to speed up the growth of new cities or if you would want to move people to a food producing area with no other resources (eg a large Grassland track) you would have to pay them. I suggest per population unit 400 (x10!) gold (the price of a settlers in shields).

Population also x10?

I have a suggestion. It isn’t necessary for my migration model to work, but it would make it more precise since migration per 10000 is kinda rude and sudden. If population is also multiplied by 10, the migration model could be more precise. Migration could be more slowly, which is better.
Then you would have to pay only 40 gold for one pop unit.
Popx10 would make it impossible to have a population box as in all civlike games.
I suggest a simple box with the following information.
Happy : 20
Content : 70 + -
Unhappy : 10
Taxmen : 0 + -
Scientists : 0 +-
Entertainers : 0 + -
Rest : 0
So you would have a simple box showing the amount of people that have which happiness level or job.
The +’s and –’s are to switch eg a normal content citizen to an entertainer. For example if you would want to switch a content citizen (you can only make content citizens a special citizen (= taxmen, scientists, entertainers) and only happy citizens special if there aren’t any content ones. Unhappy people you could never makes special) to an entertainer, you click the minus of content. Then there appears automatically 1 (or perhaps 10?) in the Rest. Then click the +.of entertainer.

Recuitment

Doing pop x10 would also make a recruitment system possible, since if you keep the normal pop system, the mobilization of even one pop unit would mean a lot of Riflemen units = unbalancing and unrealistic. If it’s used, then you should not build Musketeers or Riflemen, but Muskets, Spears, Bows or Rifles. They could be stored and don’t require support. Then, in times of war, people could be mobilized, = one population unit disappears from the cities. You could mobilize people as far as you have guns, spears or any weapon in stock. Of course, if the units are killed, they can’t return to the normal city population after the war. This would simulate the loss of population in wars. However conscripted units would have the worst possible morale/experience. If you have Draft or Civil Duty as your SE Army choice, the experience could be a bit higher.

Settlers/Unit Workshop

Settlers should still exist, but they shouldn’t have the same use. First of all, you shouldn’t able to build them for reasons I have already explained. You could only get them if you click the “Migrate” button. Then your city would disband and in that process all buildings in the city would of course also be disbanded. Per 10 population units in the popx10 system, you should get one settlers. You should also be able to give the settlers any weapons you have in stock, eg spears, guns… basically creating something like armed nomads, as Diodorus wants to represents with his Tribe/Nomad ideas he presented several times in the Civilizations thread I think. That Settlers units would follow the same rules as Diodorus presented in his Nomad posts.
So the German population migration can be represented. If horses can also be built on the same way as spears and guns, you could even simulate people like the Huns or Mongols.
What I am suggesting is that in a city every item can be built: shields, chain mail, swords, guns, horses, or in later areas tanks. Then in the unit workshop you could create your army with the available weapons. So in a city you only built equipment, but to form a real army, you have to mobilize a population unit.
That means in peace time you can maintain a small army and in war recruit more units in a short time.
As I said before, mobilized units would have a bad experience/morale level.
To give them better experience, they should stay 3 turns in a city with a Barracks and then they would get 2 experience upgrades. Later in the game there could be a similar building, called Military Academy.

Oversea Colonization

Colonization oversea should require a unit I think. Some Sea Unit looking like a boat of Colombus. It should have a large movement range. And it should be able to move on land. If it moves on land it founds a coastal city. That way you expand oversea. More realistic.

Upgrading units

Upgrading units would be simplier. Just move them in a city, go to the unit workshop and change the item, you would want to change. Upgrading reduces the experience level with one.

Population Growth

As you might have guessed, I totally disagree food production has anything to do with pop growth. Food only is needed to feed the people.
Came up with the following. Not worked out in details, since I am no social historian.
But everybody can guess that population growth is dependent of two factors : the # children a family has and how long people live.
The # of children would be dependent on how many food there are produced since in earlier times children were assumed as working forces(child labor). So the more children a farmer has, the easier for him, the more free working forces he has and the less people he has to employ and pay.
So pop growth still has to do something with food, but indirectly. It should also be affected by your SE Growth or Urbanization factor. The eg Socialism Value would increase the number of children.

With the techology advance of Industrialization also the # of shields/resources would affect your pop growth. Means that suddenly two factors affect pop growth. That could simulate the fast pop growth around the same time of the Industrial Revolution.

The second thing affecting pop growth is how long people live. That should be affected by some techs like Medicine. In general the life expectancy would increase over time if medicine betters. It should also be determined by your SE Environment factor. Living in a polluted country should decrease your life expectancy.

Wow, are you still reading this? As you have read, what I am suggesting solves some problems like ICS plus it also includes some ideas of others like recruitment, nomads, migration…
It could be a real improvement for Civ3.

Goodbye
M@ni@c

[Maniac]

A few remarks on my own post.
I should reduce the trade bonus for large cities to 1/2. Means (x10) :
size 1 : 10 labor
size 2 : 30 labor, +10 extra trade
size 3 : 60 labor, +25 extra trade
size 4 : 100 labor, +45 extra trade
...
And I don't know how CTP Public Works works, perhaps it's better than this, but I suggest that with labor that you have too much, you can build Terrain Improvements.
So PW points = excess labor points. Means another benefit of large cities.

Harel, Bell has a section that will quote the entire post of you. Will you do that too? Cause Firaxis will understand better what I am suggesting if they see it all together, my recruitment, ICS, migration ideas.

[ember]

M@ni@c:

A few points.
Hitorically all major cities are on major rivers or the ocean. Or both.

The village system allows you to have early cities only on these squares and have all the food and resources brought in from the inland and fishing villages.

Happyness can be seen as how much people want to live in a city... In this case it is the biggest factor in immegration/emmigration. Up unitl recently unemployment has not been an issue. Everyone could have some work, even if that was as a labourer or in the fields.

A river/costal city square would give a bonsu to trade and a bonsu to growth, making these very attractive spots for cities.
No food or resources are gathered from theses squares so the resouce formula is N + M, where N is the labour/trade from N city pop, and M is the food/resources from M village pop.

One unit of labour does not neccisarily 'work one unit of resources' It depends on what you are building.
Ancient units are an even mix, modern units require more labour than ancient.
NAval units require more resources than land.
Improvments require lot's of resources.
Spy's, etc. require only labour.

I have proposed 'fractional pop points'.
These would allow a city to grow and recruit as you describe, but keep the simplicity of having less than 200 specialists to keep track of...

I believe that a straight recruitment system is needlesly complicated, but if you build units as normal and if the unit is killed have a certain amount of pop removed from it's home city. The nation as a whole should provide for the support, but the home city would take the pop hit. Max units suppoted = 2-5 x pop. Play balance decides this.

To upraged units I agree, move them in a city, say upgrade, x gold and y turns later They are the next class of unit better.



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

[Maniac]

Yes indeed oceans and rivers are a good place for cities.
Why?
Cause they're a good means of transport.
What can be transported?
Things that can be traded.

So cities weren't just built near oceans cause that meant a nice view. No, they were built cause oceans is good for transport ergo good for trade.
However there aren't everywhere on the world rivers and oceans. For example to go to China you have to pass through dry terrain.
So there came important trade cities not built near oceans, eg Petra, Palmyra and Bokhara.

So it's not the neighbourhood of water that makes cities good trade cities. It's the neighbourhood of trade routes.

Telling that all coastal squares give a trade and growth bonus is wrong and inaccurate.
First of all, then you're assuming that EVERY coastal city is good in trade. Dead wrong!
Second, then you're assuming that all inland cities are worse in trade. Dead wrong!

It's just too simplified to give every coastal city a bonus.

I suggested something wĂ Ă Ă Ă y back that now can be re-used.
All trade routes are visible on the map. Of course to limit the amount of information on the map it could be toggled off, Shift [T]rade eg.

The trade route runs from the origin city to the destination city along the fastest possible way. Means if ocean is faster than over land, there's a trade route along the coast (traders don't dare to sail in open sea). That way coastal cities could have profit and trade.
Same if the shortest way is over land.
Of course rivers fasten the speed of travel, so cities built near rivers are more likely to receive trade routes.
Roads also fastens travel time, so if you build a good road system in your empire, your economy will profit.
For every trade route that passes a city square of you, you get one (or ten if x10 used) extra trade.
So if a trade route would enter your city radius SouthWest and leaves the radius North East while entering your city square, you get 5 extra trade icons.
If it would enter South West, go to the city square and than goes straight Nord to leave the city radius, it would mean 4 extra trade.
Of course several trade routes can follow the same way and can go to the same squares.
So if there are cities where very much trade routes pass, it would get a huge amount of trade.
That way eg Palmyra, Petra and Bokhara would be great trade cities since all the trade routes to the east pass there.

So, as in reality, not only the origin and destination cities would get a trade bonus, also all the cities between them lying in the neighbourhood of the trade route.

This is a very easy system.
There is nothing really new to program.
The game can already seek the fastest way for a unit to go to a place, so it can certainly find the fastest way for trade routes.
The only new thing Firaxis would have to program is : +1 trade to every square where a trade route passes.
VoilĂ , I have just said how to make trade in Civ3 as realistic as possible.

M@ni@c