Economic Model II

[LDiCesare]

Gary, I have an element (not unit) Engineer (basically useful for building field defenses) which would logically be able to build roads, so you could consider it if you need a real unit rather than just its category.

[Simon Loverix]

Do resource sites (normal or associated with specials) deplete?

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Simon:

Special and resource sites will deplete. New sites will also be discovered with new technology. But neither happens for now in the code. There was some discussion on the forums of this, but its scattered. One location I could find easily with search is this post .

[Simon Loverix]

I was thinking of using something like a floating point or double variable to store the amount of waste in a square, so when an appropriate level of recycling is reached, you can round it down and add it to the production sites.
Producing would add to waste (aside from generating pollution = environmental damage). This waste would decrease each turn (disappearing and being converted to pollution). It gives also a base for calculating historical damage that still makes peoples sick etc.
Wood supply simply must be included with the regular production sites. It's directly derived from BM, so it for the player it's a choice: food or resource sites. This restriction may be eased when he discovers biological fuels.
Does this sound good?

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Simon:

I think that using waste as production sites is probably not the best way to handle recycling. My guess is that if we want to explicitly treat recycling it could be an infrastructure class. That infra would turn waste harmless, but not give add'l production. The way you would model extra production through recycling is to build Production kapital and also infrastructure simultaneously. This seems much simpler to me, and works better within the econ system.

Wood supply simply must be included with the regular production sites. It's directly derived from BM, so it for the player it's a choice: food or resource sites. This restriction may be eased when he discovers biological fuels.

I agree.

[Mark_Everson]

I've added a new econ feature for D6, which Should be out in a few days.

The player can now arbitrarily set the economy to either pure Traditional or Market.

In a pure Market economy new workers go where they will be paid most, and new capital investments are made where they give the most return. (Return is as in return-on-investment, ROI)

Traditional, as in traditional society, means that everyone does what their parents did. When new workers or capital investments are made in a Traditional economy they are made proportional to existing distribution among the sectors. This tends to result in slower growth and more imbalanced prices than a Market economy. Government orders and investments are much more important for growth in a Traditional economy.

For now the setting in the Econ Orders menu of the "Economy Type" is done at player whim. It Will Not be that way in the future. This is just a quickie demo for now. In the future the player will be able to influence the evolution of the economy type, and it will also have tie-ins with the rate of technology change, and possibly social stability. (The notion on social stability being that Traditional-oriented societies are more stable because of respect for position etc.)

Also in the future economies will not be Purely Market or Traditional but usually somewhere in the continuum between these extreme types.

[Richard Bruns]

Sounds good. Is there any advantage to traditional economy, or is it like Despotism in civ2?

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Richard:

There are some posibilities for positive aspects of Traditional economies. But they are mostly marginal, and I don't have time to go into them now. However, I did pose the question of advantages for Traditional Societies just now in the Social Model thread, so you may want to check it out.

[Mark_Everson]

In the thread From CIV3 to Clash Rodrigo made the following statements that I wanted to respond to here...

Trade
IMO trade is simply too important to be wrongly modeled. Complete empires IRL were built on trade. And in Civ3 and in other strategy games I've seen, trade is wrongly modeled. Either because its modeling is too simplistic or because it's too complex.

I don't know how our economic model is handling trade right now, but this is what I personally would like to see: defining specific resources like salt, silk, etc and make civs trade them is, for my taste, optional. If they make players take strategic decisions involving possible wars or things like that, then cool. But if they seem hard to model or add little excitement, then I won't be sad to let them out. What is key for me is modeling what we might call "bulk" or "general" trade. That is, the exchange of all sorts of goods, from oranges to TVs, internally in each civ or between civs.

Before we get to bulk trade, the trade in different goods will IMO be vibrant, and will create things like pressure for war to get provinces rich in critical commodities. You can read up on Specials aand Merchants on the Economy web page and links on that page.

In each province there's internal bulk trade, simply because some guys have orange plantations while others have apple ones, so they can (and IRL they do) exchange production and increase their "utility function" (increase economic welfare) due to differences in people's preferences. Bulk trade needs a very abstract modeling, where the only interesting variable is overall tech level. The more techs you have, the greater diversity of goods (people produce TVs if they have the appropriate techs, which adds diversity to what was already possible to produce) and the greater the number of possible exchanges.

I disagree in part. Bulk trade requires much more than just tech. Also needed is transportation infrastructure, and usually some sort of market/commercial infrastructure. Part of the takeoff in European economies before the industrial age was the existence of these contributors to enabling specialization of production and the benefits that come from trade in bulk goods. Tech Differences are another important enabler I might consider putting in there.

At an aggregate level, grouping provinces, you can simulate bulk trade between provinces and between civs. The A-B trade system, so typically used in games of this type, is IMO too restrictive and to model the simple, abstract bulk trade, simply grouping provinces could generate interesting results

Unless we're talking about an incredibly primitive society, in every province there'll be always merchants enhancing the distribution of goods from producers to consumers and earning some coins out of that. With this I'm saying that we don't need to model merchant agents as a "thing", but simply consider them part of the demographic composition of society. The more bulk and the more diversity of bulk, more merchants there'll be.

This isn't a detailed proposal for modeling trade. All I'm saying is IMO we must model the massive trades of general goods and don't restrict trade to strategic or specific goods. If we don't do this, I'm afraid we'll be missing a key source of economic welfare of civilizations.

Intra-provincial trade will be handled in some relatively simple fashion as a general evening of the most vital goods across the province. At least that is what I envision so far.

I had planned to model trade of bulk goods fairly abstractly. The way I had envisioned it is that cities (or maybe any square) would have a "market size" determined by tech level, and transportation and commercial infrastructure realities. (Also perhaps by level and distance of trade in specialty goods) As market size increases one would get arbitrary bonuses to production in Food, Manufactured Goods, and possibly Services to a lesser extent.

[roquijad]

Before we get to bulk trade, the trade in different goods will IMO be vibrant, and will create things like pressure for war to get provinces rich in critical commodities.

Great. As I said, if you can do it, cool.

I had planned to model trade of bulk goods fairly abstractly.

Great!!! That's all I was pushing for. What I didn't want was trade being:
1) modeled only for strategic/special resources.
2) modeled for a whole bunch of specific goods, where as a player you'd have to take care for each one of them (boring).

So I'm glad. Probably we disagree in some details on what's the best way to model bulk trade, but that's ok. I admit I'd like to participate in defining how bulk trade is modeled, but I'm afraid I can't commit myself to another "job". We'll just see.

Thanks for your answers, Mark.

[Mark_Everson]

Rodrigo, Glad to see you content

Hi Fosse, I thought I'd move this discussion here...

Originally posted by Fosse (Econ Gui thread)
I like the loan idea.... will the loans be coming from other civs or from some imaginary "bank?" Or from your own civ's private sector once the infrastructure is in place? A discussion for another time perhaps, but since you brought up the loans!!

The loan idea isn't well developed but loans should be able to come from other civs, merchants/corporations inside or outside your civ. I hadn't thought of it coming directly from your own civ's private sector, but that's probably even better than merchants. Yet one more way for the government to help the economy!

[Gary Thomas]

I am more or less waiting on including resources in the scenarios.

I have had some difficulty in understanding the resource system. As I understand it, it works as follows:

There are a limited number (four or so?) basic goods. All resources are transformed into one of these basic goods and thereafter treated as basic goods. In effect, anything except these basic goods is pure eye-candy.

Thus it isn't possible to have a requirement, in the tech tree, for aluminium to be available before you can build a satellite.

The only factors that resources (called by the rather unpleasant name &ltgoodsinfo&gt in the economics.xml file) can have are a name, a corresponding basic goods type and a conversion rate.

This system seems to me to be extremely limited in a number of ways, and nothing is lost from the game, under this system, by limiting all resources to the basic ones and not bothering about things like gold or tin.

I am uncertain whether the system is intended to allow the tech tree to check to see if a particular named resource is available. Certainly there is nothing like that in the code now.

I would suggest that a resource could have the following:

• it can potentially contibute to more than one basic goods type.
• its location is remembered in such a way that the tech tree can access it for tech requirements (with suitable extension of the tech specifications).
• it may have a maximum amount present (or be renewable).
• it may have a "difficulty of finding index".
• it may have an associated special ability which a unit must have to be able to find the resource ("prospecting" for example).
• and, most importantly, an image name - if there is no image name, there is no icon displayed, though the data will show in the detail frame.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Gary:

Thanks for bringing up some of the issues on the details of how specials function. It's an important set of issues to get right for long-term success of the game since it drives merchant activity and economic strength of civs.

Originally posted by Gary Thomas
I have had some difficulty in understanding the resource system. As I understand it, it works as follows:

There are a limited number (four or so?) basic goods. All resources are transformed into one of these basic goods and thereafter treated as basic goods. In effect, anything except these basic goods is pure eye-candy.
(snip)
This system seems to me to be extremely limited in a number of ways, and nothing is lost from the game, under this system, by limiting all resources to the basic ones and not bothering about things like gold or tin.

The specials are not eye candy, and have a clear game function that mimics what happens in the real world IMO. Depending upon the amount of a special available substantial economic bonuses are available (thru conversion into the basic goods). However, the bonuses decrease rapidly with increasing amounts of the special, so huge surpluses of any special only give bonuses up to a certain level, and not beyond. That's because the conversion rate for specials is a function of how much of the special there is given the size of the economy. (It is wrong on the econ page, I changed the constant conversion rate long ago, but never updated the page with the change ) An economy with an adequate amount of a variety of specials can perform 2x or more better than an economy with a large amount of a single special. This is I believe the essence of what the real-world equivalent of specials do!

Thus it isn't possible to have a requirement, in the tech tree, for aluminium to be available before you can build a satellite.

I am uncertain whether the system is intended to allow the tech tree to check to see if a particular named resource is available. Certainly there is nothing like that in the code now.

Its correct that these things aren't in there yet. I am not convinced yet that we need them, although there are certainly individual items where strong cases can be made for requiring particular specials. A particular compelling case is in weaponry, where bronze is a Lot better than stone/wood/copper, and iron a lot better than bronze. I guess my position is that for flexibility purposes the system should include limitations on building things if a special isn't available in the civ. Whether these restrictions should be used extensively in the base game, I'm not so sure of. I believe that if aluminum didn't exist we'd still have satellites. Other, admittedly inferior, materials would be used out of necessity where Al is now the material of choice. People are generally very good about working around lacking resources, although there is a certain cost to the workarounds. We can figure out exactly how this is done in the game as things move forward.

I would suggest that a resource could have the following:

• it can potentially contibute to more than one basic goods type.
• its location is remembered in such a way that the tech tree can access it for tech requirements (with suitable extension of the tech specifications).
• it may have a maximum amount present (or be renewable).
• it may have a "difficulty of finding index".
• it may have an associated special ability which a unit must have to be able to find the resource ("prospecting" for example).
• and, most importantly, an image name - if there is no image name, there is no icon displayed, though the data will show in the detail frame.

I agree with most of these. On the second one, is it the location of a good source what you want to know, or the presence of a good in the economy? I can see cases where you need one, and cases where you need another. The "difficulty of finding" index is more a property of the sites themselves rather than the specials IMO. This effect would also be a bit complicated since difficulty of finding would depend on technology. I'm not sure about having a special ability being needed to find a resource since that seems to me to be a potential source of vast amounts of micromanagement. If we can figure a graceful way to do it I've got no objections

We can work out the details on these things in the next few months.

[Gary Thomas]

We can work out the details on these things in the next few months.

Actually we need the framework right now, so I can finish the Dawn 1 scenario. This seems to be the only thing missing. Since the resources need to be specified in the xml file, they need a class with their characteristics in them. This is why I made my little list of characteristics (to which I would also add a defense strength).

I will comment at greater length on your post after I fulfil my immanent date with the pub.

Cheers

[LDiCesare]

Rather than a special ability to find a special, a required tech (like in civ 3) seems better. You cannot find iron if you are still in the stone age, and noone looked for petrol/oil until modern times (unless it was used for naphta?).
I second Mark's point about aluminium being replaceable. You can always make do with something different from what you expected initially. Even for weapons, I think Aztecs and Incas didn't use metal weapons but stone, and they had quite evolved tactics. The only thing I would consider mandatory as a resource is big animals (horses, cattle), which lacked in America. That prevented lots of progress in terms of agriculture and warfare.