Demo 5 Comments and Bug Reports

[Richard Bruns]

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
Specifically there is a bit more food in the economy at start than what the people really want (they would prefer Services or Production more).

I don't remember anything in the game or instruction manual saying this. How is the player to know which sectors are in demand and which are not? The only way I can think of is to look at the wage rates and invest in the areas with the highest wages. This is fine for someone who knows economics, but it isn't very intuitive.

Another thing is that is is hard to change the percentage of kapital investment in different sectors without changing the total invested in kapital. It would be very nice if the player was allowed to set a certain percentage of tax receipts devoted to kapital investment, and then to set percantages of that number to the individual sectors. That way, changing the total devoted to kapital can be done easily, and the ratio of cash devoted to each sector will remain constant. For example, in the current demo, if I want to ramp up phalanx production, I have to manually change all of the kapital input sectors to a lower number, doing some mental math to make sure the new ratio is the same. I would like to be able to simply change one number: the total percentage devoted to infrastructure.

(If this rant sounds familiar, it's because I asked for the same type of thing in the tech editor.)

I understand that the raw numbers are there to allow debugging, but to the uninitiated they are confusing and don't give any good information. If we want public response to the demos, we should probably prioritize the creation of user-friendly front ends for the code we already have working.

Perhaps something like this (Pseudocode Alert):

SortDescending(wage rates)

Print(This is a list of what your people want, starting with the most demanded sector

For all wage rates Print:
Sector & Perentage allocated & Command Button (increase rate) & Command Button (decrease rate)

Yes, they have more money to invest in the things they want, building a stronger economy. But you aren't seeing the full effect yet, since they only invest 5% of non-food surplus in kapital for right now.

Where does the rest of the surplus go?

It seems that the best way to make the economy stronger is to simply stop taxing. It seems that taxing the people more and putting government cash into kapital is wasteful. Is this correct?

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Richard Bruns
I don't remember anything in the game or instruction manual saying this. How is the player to know which sectors are in demand and which are not? The only way I can think of is to look at the wage rates and invest in the areas with the highest wages. This is fine for someone who knows economics, but it isn't very intuitive.

I will put your points and my responses above in the Demo 5.1 Economy section. But if you use ROI at any reasonable level (say >=5%) no money ever gets wasted, because the system knows its a dog investment!

Another thing is that is is hard to change the percentage of kapital investment in different sectors without changing the total invested in kapital. It would be very nice if the player was allowed to set a certain percentage of tax receipts devoted to kapital investment, and then to set percantages of that number to the individual sectors. That way, changing the total devoted to kapital can be done easily, and the ratio of cash devoted to each sector will remain constant. For example, in the current demo, if I want to ramp up phalanx production, I have to manually change all of the kapital input sectors to a lower number, doing some mental math to make sure the new ratio is the same. I would like to be able to simply change one number: the total percentage devoted to infrastructure.

If this is a simple and intuitive way for everyone I may do it soon. But if it just turns out to be you, then it'll have to wait for a better GUI.

What do others think about Richard's idea. Is is sufficiently important to implement now?

I understand that the raw numbers are there to allow debugging, but to the uninitiated they are confusing and don't give any good information. If we want public response to the demos, we should probably prioritize the creation of user-friendly front ends for the code we already have working.

Certainly a valid point. I think I will just put the prices up somehow. Unfortunately with the Merchant stuff I'm putting in now, we now have 8 commodities so just putting it in with the sectors on the info frame will not do. I'll put need for prices into the bug/feature list also. But at the civ level it will be an Average price, meaning you can only use it as an indication.

Where does the rest of the surplus go?

It is spent on "consumer stuff", which does nothing right now.

It seems that the best way to make the economy stronger is to simply stop taxing. It seems that taxing the people more and putting government cash into kapital is wasteful. Is this correct?

It depends If you need to be ready to crank out military hardware fast on short notice, then boosing the production kapital is a good idea. Also just buying the military hardware will have a beneficial effect also. In addition, this is a free market setup with low taxes for now. To simulate a Command economy the player must be the one to guide the investment since the people aren't left the resources to do it themselves. Also when building up an underdeveloped area, where the people aren't interested in investing the government contribution to building kapital can be critical. But in probably 80% of cases you're right!

[Mark_Everson]

Demo 5.1 coming soon. Gary is doing the final debugging now. When it comes out I'll unhinge this thread from its place at the top and put the D5.1 one in its place.

[Mark_Everson]

Demo 5.1 became Demo 6, and the discussion has moved away from this thread. Here's a link the the Demo 6 Comments and Bug Reports.