Economic Development Model - Opinions Please?

[Mark_Everson]

LGJ:

Gotta disagree. If the supply of gold (or silver) increases you can get inflation anyway. Or the ever-popular standard of debasing the coinage! There have been instances of inflation just about since the invention of money IMO...

[Youngsun]

I'd like to make some suggestions on current "merchant model".

It is a splendid idea that a merchant has an independent AI. I wanna see a merchant growing as time goes by and by industrial age, merchants will be upgraded to corporations

Corporations should be allowed to do many things that merchants could not.
1.Each corporation should have its own characteristics and management style just like other civs' characteristics(Expansionist~perfectionist)
2.They also should have their own factory(if they are manufacturing firms), service outlet(if they are service-oriented firms)or mine(resource-selling firms)
3.Coporations should compete each other like other civs do.
4.Corporations can conduct their own research
(Which is important for market economy civs to be tech-leading nations)
5.Corporations can brach out city by city as their business progress.
6.Corporations can be specialised in one area of business(Ford,IBM,etc)or many kind of business(Japanses keiretsu-Mitsubishi).
7.Number of corporations should be limited to reduce our CPU's burden(Some will be out of business.Some will prosper.Some will start)
8.Corporations will have thier own corporate HQ(usually in capital city of its civ which it belongs)
9.There should be a ranking of world corporations like Top 5 corporation,etc and its owning civs.
10.Two or more corporations can be combined(Merging & Annexation)
11.Corporations that have branches in many other civs will be upgraded to MNE(Multi National Enterprise)

I stongly believe that there are not only nations exist as a considerable entity today. Some corporations have bigger volume of trade than other smaller nations and they deserve to be appear in Civ game as they do in the history.

I believe that the game model will have government type and economy type separated like Alpha-Centauri. so there can be nations like China which has no Democracy but Capitalism.

But this kind of nations should be penalized by putting some human rights element otherwise everyone will play this type of government/economy(No senate interferance with thriving economy)

Planned economy civs should not have more than one corporation(state-runned) while market economy civs may have unlimited number of corporation.

Corporation element will add one more flavour in this game-ECONOMIC CONQUEST!

Traditional civ games had only military conquest or building something huge which particulary I don't like as an ultimate goal of the game but with corporation element,we will have economic conquest for the players who like prosperity rather then bloodlust.

Just imagine that your huge corporations ruthlessly smashing one of your rival civ's corporations!

Since they are all controlled by AI we can not controll them but watch them grow or perish. We may provide some fund as subsidiary or reduce tax level to protect our own corporation against enemy civ's corporations.(There is also "tariff" to help this action).

Manufacturing firms will buy resources from mineral firms and sell finished goods to public or service-oriented firms. Service-oriented firms will sell thier service to public,manufacturing firms,etc.
Mineral firms can sell to public directly,too(Dutch-Shell:Fuel selling)

If anyone has more ideas on this. please feel free to add or criticise. I'm sure there are so many ideas waiting to be discovered on this area. Sorry for so ill-structured way of expression.(I could not write neat and tidy as I typed as I thought roughly today).

Thanks
[This message has been edited by Youngsun (edited January 27, 2000).]

[Mark_Everson]

Youngsun:

I think your general point, that merchants should over time transform into corporations, is Very valid and that we should do it. Corporations should indeed have more capabilities than simple merchants.

That said, I think your ideas go too far versus what's practical to do in Clash. I think we can better address which if any of your enhancements we should try when we actually get the game into the modern era.

Econ and Govt. won't be as rigidly separate as in AC. A nominal market economy is IMO much more susceptible to damage by corruption in a totalitarian regieme than in a democracy (a real functioning one...).

I don't really agree with your point about economic conquest. IMO Only if the home country of the corporation is willing to back up that corp.'s rights with Armed Force is economic conquest really possible. Otherwise comanies are always only one coup away from having all their posessions in a given country nationalized.

[Youngsun]

Dear Mark

First of all, I wish my best hope for your project and all your hard working will be paid off someday.

I'm sure it is inevitable to have corruption when there is market economy under totalitarian regime or even in democratic one.

I think that we should approach to the matter in terms of productivity. I believe that even if there are a lot of waste caused by corruption, the total output of production (market economy)will excede that of planned economy(strict communism) when both economy has same level of tech,edu,infra,etc. We all know that the increase of productivity mainly comes from will to produce more not a party motto,etc.

That's why some countries like Mexico which is highly corrupted are still better off than most former eastern bloc countries in terms of economy. What about a country like Singapore which has no Democratic government(closed to dictatorship)while her economy is thriving? All these countries share one thing "Market economy".

I'm not saying market economy is good thing and planned economy is bad. Sure, market economy has lots of weakness and problems in terms of wealth distribution and increasing gap between the rich and poor. That's why a lot of Western countries add some planned economy element to their market economy to gain advantages from both of them.

The point is that a game can not effectively represent the whole reality out there(it's just too complicated) It will be good enough to have a game that is closed to the reality.
That's why everything had to be simplified to fit in previous civ-games such as Democracy eliminates corruption,etc.<-for some, it is so frustrating.

That's why so many people wanna see later version or new game of civ-style games improved in all aspects(more closed to reality but not necesarily respresenting it)
I hope that "Clash" can achieve this.

And about "Economic conquest".
I maybe used too strong word for it. Economic dominance will be much better. Of course, you're right about that we need strong military to back up our economy. However,with the might of military, declaring a war is one thing and it is used for just security for trade is another.

During the colonial era, we might use our military to get some colonies for economic purpose(true economic conquest!)

Most modern nations focus more on economy than the other affairs. Only few nations heavily invest on their military for whatever purposes(religion,ideology,greed,etc)while other nations just keep adequate forces for defense(effective deterrence).But this kind of eco-military structure can only be assured when there is super strong military nation which is not interested on military conquest but international security for its and her allies' economic dominance.(US and her allies?)

The bottom line is whenever I play Civ-style game, I never destroy a single civ(unless I forced to do) while keeping my overall superiory(just in lower play level).That makes me feel good but in this way I can't finish the game unless I wait or building spaceship,etc. and there is always diplomatic isolation follows as other civs begins to gang up against me unless I sacrifice my overall supeiority(giving all tech,money,etc)

How can this problem be solved?
Well, enhanced diplomacy and AI will do the job for the isolation problem.

I'd like to see that economic dominance(maybe 50~80% of World trade) will be reflected in the game.

Thanks

[Mark_Everson]

Youngsun:

I think we are basically seeing things the same way. I would also hope that we can implement most of the stuff you talk about. The planning is a good part of the way there, but we just need to see if it works out practically in the game and is fun...

[Mark_Everson]

Big Question for Everyone...

Actually, the big question is only for those who have some familiarity with the model so you'll know what I'm talking about. If you're not aware of the distinction between how regular economic production sites, and infrastructure sites work in the "current" model, then you need to look at the Econ model on the web site first before commenting.

In starting to actually work out the implementation for Demo 5 the previous way that I had been planning to do improvement of economic sites struck me as a little cumbersome. Also, handling economic production sites like farms and mines differently from infrastructure (schools and health-care...) will steepen the learning curve for the player with no obvious benefit. Also, it occurred to me that handling things on a square-by-square basis would result in an awful lot of information that had to be passed during Multiplayer that again didn't have much benefit. So, here is the new proposal that I would like people to think about.

Improvement of farms, resource gathering, production etc. would be handled just like the other infrastructure classes. The only big exception is that the production sites would have a mechanism to keep track of them on a per-square basis in some special circumstances. (here I'm using production generically to talk about farms and all the other sites that actually produce things) So in normal operation, there would be just one number indicating how developed the say, farm sites, in the province are. The basic assumption is that the development is spread evenly over the "occupied" sites. The exact details are TBD, since things like some squares in a province being irrigable, while others are not, provides a small problem which I think we can take care of. The cases where I think things need to be kept track of on a per-square basis for awhile, are when new provinces are formed, or provinces are rearranged, or particular squares are damaged through pillaging or strategic bombing etc.

In the case where the economic sites are developed "unevenly", those that are below the others would get priority in the building of the new sites, until evenness is restored. This is basically what I do in the old economic system, and it works reasonably well. Now for those of you who like micromanagement, this system really doesn't eliminate it in the case of economic production sites. The reason is that the player can still arbitrarily emphasize or deemphasize building in a particular square through orders or financial inducements. All that this will consist of is rescaling what is considered "even" with respect to that particular square.

Obviously this proposal is very short on details at the moment. I wanted to run the general idea past people and see what others think. I think the uniformity of only having one basic way that infrastructure works in the game is the big plus toward doing it this way.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Mark:

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In the case where the economic sites are developed "unevenly", those that are below the others would get priority in the building of the new sites, until evenness is restored. This is basically what I do in the old economic system, and it works reasonably well. Now for those of you who like micromanagement, this system really doesn't eliminate it in the case of economic production sites. The reason is that the player can still arbitrarily emphasize or deemphasize building in a particular square through orders or financial inducements. All that this will consist of is rescaling what is considered "even" with respect to that particular square.
----
You got to carefull with that also though cuz there are just some places that are better/worse off that the rest. I doubt ever if the Siberian Penesula would be economically as important as the rest of Russia as far as infrastructure goes. In China the coastal area is the only real place where there will prob ever be great economic infrastructure because 2/3-3/4 of the Chinese population lives there.

I'm just saying that although in general your right that lesser developed places can get developed moreso to compete with the other well-to-do places, there are so many modifiers to this such as population, climate, geography, trade, etc. That it doesn't usually happen that way.

[Krenske]

Mark,
These evenly developed sites are within the province are they not?

So you could have well developed sites in your core provinces and much less developed sites in your outer provinces. If this is the case that should satisfy LGJ.

[Mark_Everson]

LGJ:

Yep, I have to be careful as you say. I don't think these issues will be hard to get around. But I agree they have to be kept in mind, especially if we get Really Big provinces in the modern age.

Krenske:

You are right in general, but as I said above, when you get to the modern age provinces could be really huge, leading to the problems LGJ is talking about.

Both of you:

Thanks for looking over the model, and your comments

[Henrique Duarte]

Mark

I would like to ask you if you have been working on the province model. I have read what is posted on the subject and I don´t have a clear idea of how the computer generates the provinces. Are you thinking of something similar to a "concentrations map pattern" to generate the provinces (ex. square A belongs to province of square B, where reference value Bx>than x values of other neighbouring squares of square A?).
I ask you this because as it as been said here somewhere, one of the major factors to be considered is accessibility (comunications capacity). If the province generation takes into carefull consideration this factor, you can use provinces themselves for all types of game mechanics calculations (for sound military AI :-), maximum empire size - no more thna x provinces allowed, population growth variations due to province internal migration - >accessibility=> more imigration...etc etc)

Anyway being familiar to geochemical anomaly maps analyses and other similar stuff, I have some reasonable ideas of how to do the number crunching of this issue. Still if you have already done it there is no use in pressing the issue.

[Mark_Everson]

Henrique:

I'm still working out the details for province formation. However, I don't think we can use provinces for the additional things that you mention. The reason is that I want to make it very flexible how many squares can be in a province, and not rigorously handle the correct communications and transportation infrastructure and capabilities details. The reason for this is simple. I think it would involve a lot of micromanagement for the player. If you make it too realistic, every time you put in a new road you might have to change your province size. That way lies madness IMO. Anyway, that's all I have to say at the moment...

[Henrique Duarte]

Mark

IMO province limits should be computer generated - the only thing the player can do to change province size is developing infrastructures like roads and such, knowing that such development would allways be benefitial despite the organizational changes that such infrastructures produce.
This is way I don´t understand the micromanagement hell you speak about. Still this can be because I either am not grasping the full consequences of this approach or because I am not being able to explain my idea to you.

[Mark_Everson]

Henrique:

The main problem is that in many cases the same square could sensibly belong to two or more provinces. If we make small advantages like a newly constructed road matter, there is a dynamic promoting micromangement. If the change is automatically done by the computer then the player will endlessly suffer through provinces being rearranged 'under them'.

I don't think either of the two things above is good!

[Henrique Duarte]

Mark

I think I am finaly grasping your point...it dawned on me that the way you are building the economic model isn´t very compatible with a permanently dinamic province, thus making the player "suffer" the constant changes in its provinces as he adds new infrastructure.
I will have to read again the econ. model, because, from what I remember, on a rational approach the way you are thinking to implement the model is, probably, the best and most reasonable one, yet one doubt reamains.

Provinces will suffer almost permanent changes specially in acient and medieval times, because of things like frontier warfare, diplomatic tradeoffs etc. This was why it never occurred to me that the player would "suffer" from constant pronvince change because of new infrastructures. In fact I saw it as a natural and rather faithfull and intrisic aspect of the simulation being built by the game.

[Henrique Duarte]

Econ model citation:
"To capture the importance of cities as production centers during this period, concentrations of productive capacity will get a bonus. For a really big city around 1900 my guess is the production bonus should be of order 25%."

IMO the production concentration in cities is due to two major factors -
resource accessibility
Cities are normally the center of comunications networks making them ideally located to install production centers which required quick access to resources and routes to export goods.
workforce accessibility
Production centers require large large permanent (if possible underpayed) workforces, making urban centers the best locations to find cheap employment.

My suggestion is to give production bonus to cities according to their population density and comunications network quality. With proper number tweaking this should produce reasonable results in terms of progression of the importance of cities from pre-modern to modern times.