Working out a new Economy GUI for Demo 7+

[Mars Chelios]

Hey guys Mars Chelios here. Been looking at the econ model and ideas for its gui and I thought of something I had done for a Neural Network Simulator gui and thougt it might be applicable.

Click here to view idea for gui.

Basically clicking on elements int the tree brings up new components to the right, allowing a large amount of info to be displayed under a small area, which I think works well here considering the amount of info to be displayed. The gui would probably be bigger for Clash and each panel would contain more info.

Anyway thats my thought, I know its not much but let me know what you think!

[Mark_Everson]

Hey Mars, I think that's a pretty good suggestion! So when you fire up the GUI the root would be selected and could show the overview info that we have discussed above. Then, as you say, when you open the Military branch you could get the more-detailed unit buy and other info that Gar showed in his demo at the lower right IIRC. Sounds practical to me, lets see what others think.

BTW, welcome to the Clash Forum .

[LDiCesare]

Mars just showed what I said earlier (look at the first post here):

We could do it in a windows-explorer-like way, one tree/view to browse categories (military, mines, others) in left part and details on the category in the right part.

I like it but it is less fun to look at than Gar's proposal. It's probably easier to code, though.

[Mars Chelios]

Oh I don't know, I think we can make it look a little less Windows and more gamelike (eye-candy anyone?). Java allows you to define the way the trees are drawn and the dynamic panels would not have to look so cut and dry. Im going to work out a dummy example of this, so keep posted.

[Gary Thomas]

I really feel that we need to have much more of the game infrastructure in place before worrying about a Clash look and feel.

When we do move to Clash's own individual appearance, it is important that it be done in a unified fashion, and globally. So, for that purpose we would need a new Java package, and all code calls for visual elements should be through that package, rather than being spread around all the different models. The advantages of doing it in a uniform way are overwhelming.

On the other hand, we urgently need so many more things done...

On the other other hand, if a coder wants to attack this issue, provided the result is easily modifed, so we can try different effects (skins, anyone?), I have no problems with it.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

While playtesters are checking out D7, I thought it would be good to bring this topic up again. What do we need for an improved econ gui? Does the direction we were going in a while back seem right? What does everyone think? A new econ GUI is a high priority, so what do you think we need to do with it?

[Gary Thomas]

Mark said somewhere that capital is spelled, conventionally, in the German fashion. I have asked two of my friends, one a retired bank economist, and the other an economics professor, as well as recalling from my own major in economics. None of us have ever heard of this convention. Has anybody got a reference for this incredibly irritating and unnecessary convention?

Cheers

[Lord God Jinnai]

Mark said somewhere that capital is spelled, conventionally, in the German fashion. I have asked two of my friends, one a retired bank economist, and the other an economics professor, as well as recalling from my own major in economics. None of us have ever heard of this convention. Has anybody got a reference for this incredibly irritating and unnecessary convention?

Yes its spelled in the German fashion.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Gary Thomas
Mark said somewhere that capital is spelled, conventionally, in the German fashion. I have asked two of my friends, one a retired bank economist, and the other an economics professor, as well as recalling from my own major in economics. None of us have ever heard of this convention. Has anybody got a reference for this incredibly irritating and unnecessary convention?

Hi Gary:

First of all, I agreed to change it previously, so I'm not sure exactly why you're winging on about this. I found several references on the web covering production functions, and most of those used K in the production function for capital. That's all there was to it! Kapital is not conventionally used for capital in ordinary economic usage. But, as I said, at least in limited production function stuff on the web, it was used that way more often than not.

[Gary Thomas]

Yes its spelled in the German fashion.

That is an unsupported assertion, not a reference.

First of all, I agreed to change it previously, so I'm not sure exactly why you're winging on about this.

Because I did not realize that you had agreed to change it.

I found several references on the web covering production functions, and most of those used K in the production function for capital. That's all there was to it!

Aha! the mysterious web. Anyway, I'm not really interested since you have agreed to use "capital".

Kapital is not conventionally used for capital in ordinary economic usage. But, as I said, at least in limited production function stuff on the web, it was used that way more often than not.

OK. I was concerned to make the GUI as widely understandable as possible. If two professional economists and me (one-time economics undergraduate) haven't encountered it it is not likely to be widely understood. This seems to be in the same category as an earlier discussion about using Fe to indicate iron deposits, or perhaps C₂H₅OH for wine.

On a related subject, there is a degree of variability in the way some parts of the economics model are named.

"services" seems reasonably consistent, but "food" and "farms" seem to mean the same thing, as do "resources" and "production".

My suggestions are as follows:

• Use "food site", since a hunting area is a food site but not a farm This paves the way for fishing grounds.
• Use "manufacturing" rather than resources (food and population are resources) or production (food and services are produced)
• Retain "services".

Cheers

[LDiCesare]

Auto orders / AI orders

Here is a suggestion I make for lowering MM.
The ability to automate orders. OK everyone knows that this is usually crap in most games and we seem to be far from having any thing like an AI which could handle this. Not so. Military supplies are already automated. What I suggest is to allow the player to not automate them by using a checkbox or something, which would show the value the AI would put there if it was allowed to (both in cash and percentage, see Richard's comment in D7 comments thread). That way, the player can demobilize/lower military supplies cost if they want instead of it being updated every turn. This also paves the way for a possible upgrade/heal order, which could have a checkbox heal wounded armies/don't heal them, which would in turn ask the military how much they want and pat that if the correct option is checked.
There are currently no other orders that are adapted during the game by the AI, but there should be. In particular, it seems possible to script an event to change econ orders for a civ. Doing that in Delenda would allow the automatic building of cohorts when they are discovered, for instance. It could also provide some kind of moddbale econ AI.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Gary Thomas
On a related subject, there is a degree of variability in the way some parts of the economics model are named.

"services" seems reasonably consistent, but "food" and "farms" seem to mean the same thing, as do "resources" and "production".

My suggestions are as follows:

• Use "food site", since a hunting area is a food site but not a farm This paves the way for fishing grounds.
• Use "manufacturing" rather than resources (food and population are resources) or production (food and services are produced)
• Retain "services".

Hi Gary:

The reason for the food/farms distinction is that fishing is a very different activity from farming. Both fishing and farming produce food, but the efficiency of those areas depends on different techs. If we were to make a generic food production sector then what techs determine its efficiency? I envisioned fishing as influenced by boat technology levels whereas farming isn't. This is the reason I have leaned toward handling fishing distinct from farming. The exact way to handle fishing, be it a whole other sector of the economy (seems to be overkill) or making fish a Special like tin, or making fishing fleets a type of local infrastructure that can go out and gather fish, is TBD. I am currently leaning toward the latter.

I can use manufacturing for the production sector. I can't use manufacturing for both the former production and resources sectors because they are two distinct things. The resources sector produces manufacturing inputs like lumber. I'm game for a more descriptive term than resources to describe this to avoid confusion.

Hey Laurent, I agree basically with your suggestions. Maybe we should have the discussion in the econ GUI thread? Anyway, I have to run to work, so I'll have to think about details later.

[LDiCesare]

Maybe we should have the discussion in the econ GUI thread?

Isn't this an econ gui thread? Let me see... Working out a new Economy GUI for Demo 7+. Did you forget to take some coffee Mark or is there another relevant thread? I thought we were demo 7+ by now too.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by LDiCesare

Isn't this an econ gui thread? Let me see... Working out a new Economy GUI for Demo 7+. Did you forget to take some coffee Mark or is there another relevant thread? I thought we were demo 7+ by now too.

LOL! Yep, I REALLY blew that one! For some reason I'd thought what I was reading was the general econ thread. Obviously more caffeine was required...

[Mark_Everson]

Just to push the discussion further on what the next step in econ gui should be...

From Gary by email:

[I want to] separate the four categories of expenditure into
different guis: Building units (or possibly other one off items such as
buildings), Infrastructure (spending on education and so forth), Research
(expenditure on technology) and Maintenance (army supplies and, later,
administration costs). Each of these will usually be addressed at different
times and for different reasons in the game. I also want to make sure that
the player really knows when they are overspending.

My response was:

Needing to go to different guis to change different types of econ orders seems cumbersome to me. Research investment is not meant to be a permanent part of econ (except for education and similar things). Eventually there should just be a separate tech gui that handles that.

I certainly agree that the player needs to know what will actually be built. However the best way to do that with the current econ code isn't apparent to me at the moment. Its not as simple as it could be with something like a conventional Civ3 simple econ model. The most straighforward way would be to make a copy of the economies involved and actually simulate the purchases, but that is likely too expensive in terms of clocks to be a really good solution.

What are the other big gripes about the current econ interface? That way we'll know what are the most important issues to cover first.