Economic Development Model - Opinions Please?

[Richard Bruns]

I have a few concerns about how technology will be handled, especially with regard to resources and capital. However, I haven't been able to find out exactly how capital will be handled so I can't put my thoughts in a concrete form.

How will the K term of the production function change, and how does this relate to the investment that results in an increase in A?

[Mark_Everson]

Richard:

K changes each turn:
Decreased due to depreciation ~5%
Increased when people or govt buy more K
Cost is about 1CC per point of K
People will invest mostly in more cost-effective improvements in K
(See sections 5 & 6 of the spreadsheet)

The amount of new K purchased in a given sector is the Kbought term in the Anew forumula.

[Lord God Jinnai]

I can't remember whether it was on this particular forum, but I was cruising thru another non-civ game about communism in a medievil setting. Anyway somehow that reminded me of how we are implimenting communism in this game. I have one problem. Mark has suggested that if the tax rate is 0% then it is like the government takes only what it absolutely needs to fund its programs, if the tax rate is higher it takes extra money from them. The problem is, what if in order to ease tensions of the working class I decide to give them extra money at the exspense of some programs but still have them implemented, ie just underfunded, naturally that would make a negative tax rate, but think about that. Since we don't have exact models for each type of government this can cause problems with other types of goverments such as capatalistic forms...

[Mark_Everson]

Hi LGJ:

I don't quite get your point. First of all its a 'social net tax rate' or something I was talking about, not the tax rate per se. That social net tax rate could indeed be negative for some social classes, or even everyone if the govt wants to increase debt to fund it.

Can you rephrase your point so I can understand what your issue is? Then I'll take another stab at it.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Well I'm concerned that with a negative tax rate for anything, there can really be no maximum like with a posative tax rate, ie you can't tax more than 100% of everything, but you can give people back more than 100% in negative tax rate then because you can go into debt from the money you might have saved up from earlier years.

[Mark_Everson]

Hmmmm...

I don't really see -100% tax rates as anything that is likely to happen. It would bankrupt the govt. Really fast. Lets see if its still an issue when we actually have it to play. If it is, then we can rule it out by fiat.

[Twinge]

Well, you can always just put a cap on it such as -50% or -100%... Or, you could leave it openended, and the player would just have major problems if they were foolish enough to put it at like -1000%...
Just one of my 2 cents.

[Twinge]

Well, you can always just put a cap on it such as -50% or -100%... Or, you could leave it openended, and the player would just have major problems if they were foolish enough to put it at like -1000%...
Just one of my 2 cents.

[Twinge]

Er, Ok. That was weird. THe posts weren't showing up at all, then I have 3.
Strange (Any sorry about the multi posts)

[Mark_Everson]

Bizarre, and the dates are screwed up, which is the thing that surprises me most. I will kill one of the three posts, just to keep things simple . But I want to keep two with different dates just for the novelty of it!

If you hit the submit button more than once, don't do that . Sometimes it takes a while (several minutes) for the post to show up even though its in. If you want to see if its gotten there, log onto the main clash forum window first, and see if your post registers there before resubmitting. At least that's what works for me when things are crawling on the site.

[Twinge]

Dates don't look screwed up to me =)
But if you want to keep a double post, feel free, heh.
Hmm... so I'm a setteler? heh.

Anyway, after reading through most of the economy model (quite a long one) I've come up with (suprisingly few) comments:
You seem to have a lot of the economy and infrastructure run automatically... I don't know how much talk of this has gone around yet (probably lots), but anyway, A) How much the people do on their own should vary GREATLY depending on government and religion. B) Make sure theres at least some level of options available for more governmental control... at the lowest level, a player moved slider determines how much control they decide they want to control (IE for a while they can let the people run/work by themselves if they want to, or have most of the control run by the player)... the amount you can change would of course depend on the government or religion...
This relates back to many aspects of the game -- I like the idea of having the user choose how much micromanagement they want to use... But I would suggest that as more of a finalizing feature, and in the early demos (to get more "playable" material) you just have a general mid-level setting for most of the game.
At the same time, you have to be careful not to get too complicated... but I guess I'll see what it looks like when Demo 5 comes out.
There should be certain govermant mandates avaiable depnding on what goverment type you have... On a totalatarian kind of govt., for instance, you might be able to demand that your people only have 1 child per family, or something similar... this kind of control would obviously reduce happiness (which in turn would reduce production) but they might be useful in some circumstances (people still growing rampantly when theres hardly and food, etc)
Kinda babbled on a bit about topics you've likely already discusses... hope it made sense.

On another note, I find it kind of interesting that you want an ultra realistc type game but want a geneneral abstract idea of infrastructure... although it sounds like it should work fine...

There doesn't seem to be any infrastructure devoted to various other building type structures such as walls and other fortifications... should this be added or is that included in another section?

But overall, I don't really see any big holes in the economy model, it seems sound and good, and I won't have many mroe comments on it until Demo 5.

[Richard Bruns]

quote: Originally posted by Twinge You seem to have a lot of the economy and infrastructure run automatically... I don't know how much talk of this has gone around yet (probably lots), but anyway, A) How much the people do on their own should vary GREATLY depending on government and religion.

When we say "automatically" we mean "without player intervention." The actions of your people are most definitely included in that "automatically." Depending on government and religion, your people will automatically take certain actions like building cathedrals and stockmarkets.

quote: Originally posted by Twinge B) Make sure theres at least some level of options available for more governmental control... at the lowest level, a player moved slider determines how much control they decide they want to control (IE for a while they can let the people run/work by themselves if they want to, or have most of the control run by the player)... the amount you can change would of course depend on the government or religion...

This is already planned. The government type you choose and the bureaucracy you create within the game determines how much you can micromanage things. A socialist country with a huge bureaucracy will allow (and probably force) the player to micromanage a lot. A capitalist, federal style government with a small federal bureaucracy would allow and invite very little economic micromanagement.

But the religion affecting social micromanagement is something we hadn't thought of. It makes sense that if you control a state religion that everyone follows, you have a greater opportunity to control social matters. Good idea!

quote: Originally posted by Twinge There should be certain govermant mandates avaiable depnding on what goverment type you have... On a totalatarian kind of govt., for instance, you might be able to demand that your people only have 1 child per family, or something similar... this kind of control would obviously reduce happiness (which in turn would reduce production) but they might be useful in some circumstances (people still growing rampantly when theres hardly and food, etc)

Another good idea. I'll see about working this into the population model, which is currently fairly deterministic. Before, the player didn't affect this model directly, but now they will be able to.

quote: Originally posted by Twinge On another note, I find it kind of interesting that you want an ultra realistc type game but want a geneneral abstract idea of infrastructure... although it sounds like it should work fine...

In the real world, economists model infrastructure in abstract terms like this. We are trying to base things on theories and modeling used by professionals, whenever possible.

quote: Originally posted by Twinge There doesn't seem to be any infrastructure devoted to various other building type structures such as walls and other fortifications... should this be added or is that included in another section?

I don't know if this was meant to be handled in the economy or the military model. It would make sense to make it an infraclass.

Thanks for posting, Twinge. New ideas and critiques are always helpful.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Twinge:

Richard has covered most of your questions/comments, so I'll only add a few things. The plan already is basically the same as what your list of things you "should" be able to do is. You should probably read the government section next, and also the thread on interaction between government and econ if you want further information on this stuff. The only real distinction I would make with what you say, is that the player can't arbitrarily seize a huge amount of control over the economy without risking a power struggle or revolution. So, just as in the real world, if you have a lot of power it's easy to liberalize the economy, but without a lot of power exerting a lot of control over the economy should be difficult or impossible.

On the infrastructure model being abstract, and at that goes against "realistic", I just have to disagree with you. It's much more realistic than the cheesy sort of model there is in civ or RTS games. IMO the only real difference between what we do and what they do is that in our case you don't have to make a huge commitment in a single area to get the benefit. In civ you either have a factory or you don't, and the difference in effect on production is enormous... So although our model is somewhat abstract, I think it's more realistic than anything else out there, while still not requiring a huge amount of micromanagement from the player.

Things like fortresses have only been thinly discussed. But I think handling them is fairly straightforward given the infrastructure model. If you have any ideas on the area, now is a good time to get them in!

[Twinge]

Well, as I said, I thoguht you had likely discussed some of it, but I had some ideas that there was a chance you might not of discusses that I didn't want to forget, and I wasn't quite ready to read through tons of other stuff after reading through the economy model =)

quote: When we say "automatically" we mean "without player intervention." The actions of your people are most definitely included in that "automatically." Depending on government and religion, your people will automatically take certain actions like building cathedrals and stockmarkets.

Thats not exactly what I was reffering to. I was thinking along the lines of the people wanting to do less on their own if mosty of their actions are controlled by a despotism or totalatarian govt. (But that's pretty much answered in the next response you answered anyway)

quote: I would make with what you say, is that the player can't arbitrarily seize a huge amount of control over the economy without risking a power struggle or revolution.

Well how I see it, this again depends greatly on religion and goverment. In midevil times, rulers sometimes did tell the people what to do with almost all parts of their lives at times, and the people would rarely, if ever, rebel. While it should be an option on all levels, it should be much less so when the government or religion already doesn't promte free living, etc. (Of course, if your military isnt too strong, among other things, it is still possible, IE scotts rebeling against england, and such)

quote: So although our model is somewhat abstract, I think it's more realistic than anything else out there, while still not requiring a huge amount of micromanagement from the player.

While I have no beef with your infrastructure model, I still think having actual buildings would be more realistic, as long as they were designed better than older Strat. Titles. Not to say this needs to be changed, It was just a side comment.

Theres my response for now =)

[Twinge]

I just thought of this while reading through the government model: There should be some sort of "god" mode eventually implemented. Basically in this mode you have control of things you wouldn't normally control (or normally control fully). You can change the views of your people automatically, decide where distasters go, see other ppl, etc. While not everyone likes this, I know a lot of people do and it would be another nice feature to have more people like more about the game =) It's another very late stage implementation, but an idea none-the-less.

quote: Hey, if they were all out to get you too, then you'd be paranoid too!!

[This message has been edited by Twinge (edited December 17, 2000).]

Edit: Took out stuff re-posted in Gov't model
[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited December 19, 2000).]