26-07-2000 15:22									#31
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F_Smith:

Don't you feel part of this team? It really hurts me when I see in your posts that you refer to the team as YOU ALL. Since you are actively coding for Clash, you hardly qualify as an external observer. You belong, de facto, to US ALL.

As for using the spreadsheets, you're definitely right from a programmer's point of view, but unfortunately not all of us are programmers. The spreadsheet is the closest I can get to coding (Unless you want me to try coding in FORTRAN of which I had a semester course in my faculty.). It's this or developping a model on pen and paper for the most of us I'm afraid, so comparatively the spreadsheet is by far the best way to go. The interconnections model was tormenting me since March, but from the time I started on the spreadsheet, it was ready in 4-5 days and the progress done then was enormous. Of course it's layout is different than the way it'll be coded, but it's something to begin with. And at least it helps do some theorise - test - revise loops on at least some formulas which will be quite mature for the coding phase. This is the best a non-programmer can do; if it's not enough, I'm pretty much useless (As if I didn't know that from the beginning! ).

You see, I can be as much of a crybaby as you can.

To the point now: OK, even if there have/could have been such economic x behavioral groups in history, can we portray them in any non-abstract way in Clash? I said I didn't want to count priests/warriors/scientists/taxmen/elvii or whatever. I don't want the RC f.e. to have neither a demographic share, nor an income, nor any of the data we will have to store for the economic classes and I have a reason why I don't:

quote: ...but these are not the result of economic role but of a hierarchy. Poor priests do not essentially do something different than rich priests, they all provide only Ethics; neither Labor, nor Kapital. Consequently their income can only derive by the value the specific contribution (f.e. Ethics) is given by the society... ...because of difference in the RC's contribution to society, the class cannot be divided along economic role lines and so it cannot be divided politically... ...And if we do not like the abstraction and we want to count priests, taxmen, scientists and elvii, then we'd better find a way to evaluate their contributions to society and add them into the market system. THAT would be novel!

	26-07-2000 20:08									#32
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We all agree that a spreadsheet isn't as good as working code. Like Axi says its a way we can push models forward without programming. Will a spreadsheet find all potential problems with a model? Of course not. But it will frequently find lots that will allow design to go forward. I found several problems when putting together the econ spreadsheet. Based on that, Laurent now has the model mostly coded up, and it will go into testing fairly soon.

quote: Originally posted by F_Smith on 07-25-2000 04:19 PM Serious assumptions have also cause serious misunderstandings. The idea that pop and econ data would not be stored at the mapsquare level (a game impossibility)...

	26-07-2000 23:42									#33
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Axi:

Of course I'm not a member of the design team. Every time I try to contribute there's mass panic, which only calms down when I make it clear that you don't have to use any of my contributions. Then ya'll go on as before, as if I hadn't said a thing.

And the time put into the spreadsheet could have/should have been put into developing code. You are far from useless in that regard -- that's why I've been so desperate to get feedback on the tool to test your designs. Mark is a programmer, and could have built a tool to test and develop these models in a few weekends. I have been offering for over a year. Other programmers have offered. Ya'll have ignored our offers of help, and chosen spreadsheets, not been forced into them.

Regarding the splitting of social and economic classes -- poor priests in fact do act quite differently than rich priests, and do in fact provide a very different Ethical point of view. The code I've written allows them to, altho it doesn't force them to.

* * *

Mark:

I'm still of the opinion that instead of all this spreadsheet work, you and the rest of us coders should have been involved with developing the game models via 'builder' tools.

Also, the old code *does* track pop and culture info at the mapsquare level even down to % of pop in each Mapsquare per culture. It's the only way it *can* be done.

The *only* things I have objected to is poor OO design and 'too much talk, not enough testing'.

The data model code I put up with the object builder stored the same info in less memory than your old code. It's faster to write, accessed gamedata faster, and allows for smaller saves because it's all in a single 'wrapper' class (GameData). A saved game will be a serialized GameData object save as binary data, and a massive world will take between 2 to 3 meg

The data I've included so far uses about 1 meg of memory.

I really do object to ya'll making coding decisions like that without testing. You simply cannot assume off the top of your head that it will work X way, and use X amount of memory. You *must* test. All assumptions will be wrong, in my experience.

I thought I did the magic with the social and govt code. It's smaller, runs faster and was written in a week, and allowed flexibility that was so powerful ya'll didn't even consider it possible beforehand (and didn't know what to do with it when it was offered).

My reward for this work was that I seem to be a major annoyance to those who wish to continue talking about things without my insane insistance on testing them.

You appear to prefer the approach you used for the tech model, which has had a simple datamodel builder in development (a weekend's worth of coding) for what, 6 months now? Not debugged, no feedback from others yet to determine if it's even what everyone wants. No 'implementation'/controller code. Just a simple data model, being done completely behind closed doors. Not 'open' dev at all. NO teamwork. That is *not* the kind of dev group I want to work with.

Man, am I mistaken?

Because I thought I *had* proved my point in code. I gave you results. The builder gui needs work, but the game code is there. It works. It's smaller than what you had. It's fast. If I haven't proven it to you, then what will it take? You saw me disagree with the tech builder approach. Then you saw me do a model much more complex in a week, instead of their 6+ months (and counting). That didn't prove anything?

I feel about hopeless, and ready to give up coding for ya'll again, Mark. I did so on the tech model, quietly. This time I'm trying to mention specifically what and why.

Maybe I shouldn't, I don't know. Should I just hush up and let ya'll do your thing? Because ya'll are, indeed, intelligent people. You'll probably finish this, eventually. Maybe you don't need or want my ideas about rapid development.

Are my skills out of place here?

	27-07-2000 01:39									#34
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F_Smith:

First of all, I'm glad you talked rather than just took off. I think there is still a good basis for us to work together, and hope we can patch this up. I am at work, and can't address the multitude of issues you brought up right now. Also, I haven't been able to run your demo for the last several weeks between my own schedule and the server being down. So please give me a chance to see what you have done over the last few weeks before I comment on what you may or may not have proven .

I think your skills are Very valuable to the project. Your dedication, skill, and ability to get things done is clear. I'm sorry we haven't bought any of your big ideas in terms of design. But should I say I think some idea is great, even though I don't like it? I think it may be that you envision an even more detailed game than what the rest of us are trying to make...

Anyway, I hope we can work this out. I will address some of your detailed points above after I've had a chance to check out your demo.

	27-07-2000 19:36									#36
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Mark:

Am I after more detail than ya'll had planned for? I don't think so, according to the model writeups.

In researching the 'econ' model the other day, trying to figure out what to add to a square, I came across:

quote: Although the province is the most important economic unit in Clash, a lot happens in individual map squares, which I will focus on first. A map square in Clash is pretty large, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) on a side. So even at relatively primitive levels of technology it can support a population of order tens of thousands of people.

And

quote: Production capacity in a sector takes place on "sites", with a limited number of potential sites per map square. (A map square is about 3500 square miles) For example the Food sector requires "sites" of arable land to build capacity. Food, Resource, and Special sites are limited. Production and service sector sites are unlimited.

These clearly require both pop info and production sites data (including # of people working on each site) must be tracked at the mapsquare level, and then aggregated by province for use by the player.

I'm just building what ya'll designed in the models, I thought. I do not understand. When did this change?

	27-07-2000 20:27									#37
	Remove this text

Hey F_Smith:

You've got the econ stuff right. The current plan is to have sites and population at the map square level. We never determined whether to allocate population to each sector in each square, or whether we would just calculate that when (only very occasionally) it was needed. A simple calculation involving average workers per site at the province level, and the pop in the square would give the right number.

But at least as of now, all the production actually happens on the province level. So in some sense its irrelevant where the workers are. (But we would place them in the sensible places anyway.) This is another of those tradeoffs to reduce clocks. We could potentially go to production at the square level if we have the clocks to do it. But running the whole econ model at the square level would IMO take too much time and Way too much memory. (This is part of the 10MB I claimed above since I anticipated you would want to go this way based on the 'Culture Wars' )

IMO, as opposed to the social/govt case, handling things on a per square basis could potentially improve the model quite a bit. So I am game to discuss the tradeoffs of what exactly is done in each square in the econ model. I can't say I will come to different conclusions than in the social/govt case, but I'm receptive to making changes provided we can get enough bang for the buck!

I am going to post this in the demo 5 econ thread, and we can discuss the object model and clock cycles etc. there since we're getting really OT here...


Axi:

From way back... I think we need to determine agreement on things like PP before we evaluate the spreadsheet. I emailed Rodrigo to remind him we need him here to move forward. Probably Real Life has attacked him. Hopefully he can free up some time to participate in the discussion.

	28-07-2000 09:03									#38
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Mark:

Errr, I just posted in the vacations thread that I'm going to be generally unavailable for the whole month of August...

I think I have exhaustedly stated my views on the various issues at hand. For the govt model variables, my views are gennerally in accord with Rodrigo's. If there is anything more you'd like to ask me about my spreadsheet, please do so today or tomorrow; otherwise you're on your own.

------------------
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell

	09-08-2000 10:42									#39
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Hi All.

First, sorry for being away so long. I had problems with my internet access.

I'll try to catch up:

slavered vs enslaved: good! I'm always ready to learn some more english!
----------
Tax Rate: Alright. I'm convinced with the example of Axi's parents. It's not that weird having a tax rate for an employee of the State. Let's keep TR in all circumstances. I only don't want it to become a MAJOR variable defining how socialist/capitalist a regime is because I'd find it strange.
----------
Minorities: Yes, Mark, when minorities have full rights then there're no minorities really.
----------
Minorities: I see we're close to agreement. We can divide minorities in two: slaves and free. The slave share would be 100% if SL=2 and if the particular ethnic group has been chosen to be brutally enslaved or a fix share (say, like 20%) if SL=1.

The free share'd be in time divided in the three econ classes UC, LC and MC. The population shares for these three econ classes would be given imitating majorities values (for simplicity) modified by the level of discrimination using Ethnic Discrimination and Religious Discrimination. The modifier pushes more people into the LC the toughest discrimination is.
sounds good?
-----------
EP: After thinking about it for a while, I consider we don't need it. Unless Axi has a strong argument for keeping it, it should be waved good bye.
----------
Govt & Ruler: You're right, Mark. The political structure only gives a guideline and the ruler has control for more detailed variables constrained by that guideline.
----------
Govt & goods: Again right, Mark. At least partially. You're correct when you say the State gives goods like education to people even if they don't value them. I forgot about those. I wasn't refering to an ideal system, but the practical system implemented in communist countries, but for more common goods like shoes, etc. So I guess we were both right. Anyway, the important thing is we agree on measuring happiness through consumption and using an utility function.

Alright. Said that and having (I guess) solved the problems with ambiguous variables, I'd like to organize future conversations. The interactions between the two models cover, as far as I can see, the following topics:
1)Role of Tax Rate
2)Effect of PP
3)Effect of SP
4)Demographic shares for classes
5)Econ behavior for classes
6)Econ behavior for minorities
7)Govt's Investment agenda
8)Management of State-held econ activities

You'll have to excuse me, but I really would prefer to not get me too involved in the econ model and its calculations. So, once we agree on how each of the above 8 interactions should be implemented, I'll try to keep myself away from discussing the maths. No spreadsheets for me. Is that OK?

To analize each of the 8 points above, I suggest we assume first there's no govt intervention at all (PP=100%, SP=0%, TR=0%). Knowing how this totally crude free-market society would function, we then add govt variables one at a time to the system and define how they change things. Sounds good?

So, in this crude free market system we only have to define people's behavior (points 5 and 6).
Here's my point of view:
5) A (generic) class has some control of kapital and provides some amount of labor. Using that info and demographic info, we can compute PCI at the class level. Having the utility function, we can define how much each consumes and how much invests in each econ area. I believe that consumption and investment preferences should be given only from the utility function and PCI rather than from a pre-set profile.

6) As proposed earlier, minorities are separated in slaves and free. Slaves only eat. No consumption and no investment. Free minorities behave exactly like majorities assuming they're divided in classes with almost the same demographic shares as majorities, modified by Ethnic Discrimination and Religious Discrimination. The modifier tends to take people away from the UC and MC and enlarge LC.

As I always do, I insist about classes not being allowed to invest in public goods.

Opinions?

	09-08-2000 16:43									#40
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Welcome back Rodrigo! You'll have alot of stuff to read and comment, but first of all, go and check out F_Smith's Beast! It has progressed a bit, but without your contribution there may have been large faults that went unobserved. I am sure that you'll be more helpful than me.

I have already replied to Mark's suggestion of abolishing EP:

quote: 3) EP: Public ownership doesn't ness mean state control. A anarchist state f.e., would have common ownership but the control would be decentralised into local worker's and community councils. An economy with low EP will be generally left to function without intervention from the player, regardless if it is capitalist or socialist. EP is the most independant of all the policies and can be anything, regardless of SP and PP. As for the question if it can be replaced by Ruler.polpower, EP represents the extent of the executive power over a specific aspect of society (economy) while R.pp represents the player's share of the legislative power. EP is needed for maximum control over the economy without the need of so big control of the political scene. For the time being the use of EP (see the spreadsheet) is not compulsory (It defines a maximum range of player intervention, but doesn't oblige the player to use it). If the team feels this is not OK (Since economic planning means that the state makes all the decisions, even if these decisions are the same as the will of the people, the very fact that the state is responsible for them makes the situation quite different), we could give EP an effect more like the one SP has.

As for infrastructure, EP will probably work the same way: defining a window for direct player intervention. Although the ruler is surely the one who will mostly benefit from a high EP setting, EP cannot be identified with R.pp, since there are other classes that want EP more or less too (depending on their cultural attributes). I vote that it stays until the demo and, if we then observe that it is redundant, then we can replace it everywhere with R.pp, which should be quite easy.

Minorities: I have made a proposal, which went unnoticed back then: check #4 of my post of 25/7. I believe that the only way not to complicate things too much is to set equal demographics for all the "free" citizens of all EGs. We could also tweak the formulas a bit, in order to insert an XC (Exploited Class or SC:Slave Class) percentage even for the majorities populations (no pol.power for them though).

About your other comments, all I have to say is that I already have developped an implementation along these lines of thought in my spreadsheet. I feel that you are trying to reinvent the wheel here and that would be a waste of time. If you have to propose alternative implementations, you can do so, after you have examined my proposal and found something you don't like. I don't think that we have to begin from ground zero; we already have a proposed model, which we have to debug and improve.

To all: I am going away again today (Not to an island this time; I have a small country-house in a nearby resort) and I will probably be there until 28/8 tops (the day my September examinations period officially begins), so you will have to deal without me for a good stretch of time. It is bad timing that Rodrigo has shown up while I'm dropping off, but I do not feel that I have left anything unfinished. It is up to you now to make use of my contributions. I hope that when I return, all this stuff will be coded up in a demo. Optimistic, ain't I?

------------------
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell
[This message has been edited by axi (edited August 09, 2000).]

	10-08-2000 01:56									#41
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Hi Axi. I hope you see this post before leaving.

I did see your opinions and ideas in previous posts. I should have commented them clearly. Sorry for that.

About EP, the thing is control over economic activities is redundant for all State-held activities. The State does have control over that and the question is how it will manage it (point 8 in my list). By management I mean deciding what to produce and in what magnitude. This will probably be managed by the ruler with some guidelines from the govt setting. So, EP would make sense only for the private sector. And in that case, the State has essentially two strategies. The first is to affect markets trying to produce redistribution of wealth, in which case I believe it's covered by SP. The second is to affect it trying to regulate markets where the free-market approach has problems, like in presence of monopolies or externalities like polution. In this case there's no politics in it. It's just a matter of market efficiency and everybody wants it, so EP wouldn't be needed.

Of course Ruler's pol.power has nothing to do in these matters. Your example of anarchy doesn't help because anarchy means absence of govt, and therefore a discussion about econ govt policies has no sense.

I prefer to take EP out immediately if it appears to be useless.

As for minorities, my proposal is in fact very much the same of what you say. I was trying to put it as a conclusion since the three of us seem to agree on how to proceed.

About the spreadsheet, I know there're several thoughts in there. I'm not overlooking your attempt, it's just that you never explained exactly what you were doing. We were left to discover your proposals digging in the spreadsheet equations, which is really boring and complicated. The first post in this thread (yours) does not describe in whole how you're managing the govt-econ interconnections and a lot must be understood from the spreadsheet alone. It'd be very helpful if you explain how the 8 points I mention are answered by your spreadsheet. Sad you're leaving...

Rodrigo

	10-08-2000 06:26									#42
	Full PM-box? Change here!

Hi Rodrigo (and Axi if you're still around):

I'm glad you made it back! It looks like we are pretty much in agreement on some of the main issues. Just to clarify a little bit, and make sure we are really in agreement I will make a couple of statements. If they match your understanding of the accommodations we have come to, then great. If not, just let me know and we will hash things out.

I think we might as well wait for Axi to return before we try to go much further than this. His notion of the junctions between the government and economic models is much more complicated than anything I was considering. So I will make some comments here, but I move that we just wait for Axi's return before going much further with this.

I also agree that we should get rid of economic planning. I think it is just too subtle our concept for an economic/government model like ours that most of necessity be somewhat simplistic.

Tax Rate: so I think we agree that the tax rate taxes income of all sorts. In contrast, private property of 0% would mean that this state owns all the capital and infrastructure. Does that sound right to you?

Slavery: your statements sound good. The only point I would make is that I kind of like F. Smith's suggestion that this move to a percentile scale like all the other things. I think the way we will present these things to the player will be mostly through sliders anyway... if you were to replace the 0-2 scale with one from 0- 100% where you divide the result by 50, it seems to me the outcome is pretty much the same. And I think we can agree that there are many shades of slavery that are possible and have existed throughout history.

The other issues at the top of your post (before the numbered list of the econ/government interactions) I basically agree with.

On your part below the numbered list, I basically agree with everything you say. I have one suggestion. I recall that you left the tax rate completely free from the political process because you couldn't think of a good way to symbolize the different classes thoughts on the matter of a proper tax rate. I just had one idea that might allow us to revisit this issue. Specifically, all the participants in government will already have a desired social policy level. Clearly to implement the social policies you need taxes. How about we assume that there is a certain minimum tax rate that generally people in a society will be willing to put up with that is something of order 10%. The desired tax rate that would, out of the government negotiation procedure would be 10% + SP. I think this captures the correct flavor in modern democracies that the people are willing to be taxed provided that the government is giving them a good return on their money. What do you think?

	13-08-2000 01:08									#43
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Hi Mark.

I see at least we two have a well settled agreement on most of the stuff. I think too we should wait for Axi. I'm going to mail him to let him know we're standing by.

EP: Yes, get rid of, once Axi agrees.
Tax Rate: Agreed.
Slavery: The range for this is something we've discussed before. I once accepted your suggestion of having a larger range representing different levels/types of slavery, but Axi said that one of the coolest things of slavery in game terms is that it can be abolished. And I agree. That's a discrete change in the variable hardly obtainable from a continous variable ranging 0-100%. So, I vote for discrete. We can express it in the 0-100% range anyway, where the political actors can take only discrete values like 0%, 25%, 50%, 100% and never something in between, but I believe it isn't ness.

As for your idea to create a way in which classes can choose a tax rate, I believe it is excellent. Let's do it!

	13-08-2000 06:05									#44
	Increase the size of your Attachments

Again, on slavery, just like other things, just because you abolish it in principle doesn't mean you can enforce it and the statistics should reflect that, just as they would religion.

	16-08-2000 19:13									#45
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Okay, okay, here I am!

Tax Rate: I think we should wait until infrastructure is included and the riots model is implemented. Only then will we know exactly if we need to extent government control over tax rate. I feel that any class will be willing to pay as many taxes as it is needed to pay for the services it gets in return. If a class gets systematically "exploited" (f.e. if the LC pays taxes that go into armaments or if the UC pays taxes that go to social security), then it should demonstrate economic discontent(even if their income is rising); it could even rebel (taxes were the pretext for the American Revolution, weren't they?). If a class benefits from taxes it doesn't pay (f.e. the MC in my first example or the LC in the second), then it should support the ruler. Should it also actively support a higher tax rate? Again I say we should wait and see.

quote: Tax Rate: so I think we agree that the tax rate taxes income of all sorts. In contrast, private property of 0% would mean that this state owns all the capital and infrastructure. Does that sound right to you?

Yes, that's what I had in mind.

Slavery: I also agree with myself The range should remain as is.

EP: When I first came up with EP, I wrote:

quote: - Economic Planning (EP): (0-100%) This will define how much of a command economy we have, or how much the state will be able to control investments, trade, production, the prices of commodities and the labor market. It must not be confused with PP: An ancient despotic rule will have both EP and PP low. Pharaonic Egypt would have somewhat more EP. The Byzantine Empire would have both high PP and EP. ... EP must not be confused with PP chiefly because low EP will mean lower control over all of economy, both private and public.

Excuse me for shouting, but I have to make clear that:state ownership doesn't ness mean state control. An ancient monarch may own all the land, but the people are left to do whatever they want with it, as long as they pay their taxes. The same happens with the common ownership practiced in an anarchist (f.e. Catalonia 1936) or communist (f.e. Paris Commune 1870) state during the transitional stage (before state is practically abolished): the economy is more or less auto-organised. Personally, I always considered the private and the public part of the economy to be identical, except for the entity that is entitled to the profits.

Anyway, if I understand correctly, you weren't even thinking of replacing EP with R.pp. Well, the govtecon model needs some way to control the extent of direct player intervention in key socioeconomic areas such as: Working Hours, Product Distribution, Investment in Kapital, Redistribution and, later on, investment in various infrastructure classes. If EP won't do, then what?

The spreadsheet: Rodrigo feels lost in it and I don't blame him. Maybe I should have written a more detailed text about it, but there is really nothing special to it, it's all just bookkeeping (some of it redundant), which should be obvious. The points which are not obvious I tried to explain in my posts. After all the discussion here and the updates that we are bound to make to the govt model, I will try to recompose the spreadsheet and, if I can, I will incorporate the econ model and take a first shot at modelling infrastructure. All this of course will have to wait until I finish my vacations.

A quick reference to the 8 points mentioned by Rodrigo:

1)Role of Tax Rate: For the time being, it is arbitrarily imposed by the state upon the whole of production, both public and private. It is one of the two sources of income for the state; the other is Public Profits

2)Effect of PP: It has no other effect than to determine what part of the Kapital (and hence of the Profits) belong to the UC and the MC. Obviously it affects the demographic size of these classes and, sometimes, the UC income.

3)Effect of SP: It regulates Working Hours, Wages and the level of exploitation of the Underclass (relative to the LC), it effects Product Distribution in favor of Labor and it controls Redistribution. It is also planned to set minimum investment in certain infrastructure classes.

4)Demographic shares for classes: The (not so perfect) implemetation I have made is analysed in one of my previous posts.

5)Econ behavior for classes: The economic role of each class conforms to the definition of it's economic contributions. This should be expanded to include ownership of sites. The investment profile (in kapital) currently depends only on income and it isn't class specific. The actual investment of privates also depends on player intervention and on Private Property.

6)Econ behavior for minorities: Minorities, or, as we have agreed, the portion which is under exploitation provide only labor. They generally work more (in population and in Working Hours) and they are paid less. The cannot invest in kapital and they cannot move to other classes. Otherwise, their behavior should be the same as everybody else's: dependent of the income.

7)Govt's Investment agenda: Investment in kapital is currently tied to that of the private sector through PP. Investment in infrastructure should be differentiated, according to the private/public character of the infrastructure class. The actual implementation is TBD.

8)Management of State-held econ activities: They should not be different from the private ones. The private and public sectors are treated equally. If we don't want that, then there are alot of things we have to change, but I have previously stated the reasons why I don't want things to go that way.

	17-08-2000 09:04									#46
	Increase the size of your Attachments

Axi:

Welcome Back! Sorry you feel lousy, but we will take you in whatever shape available .

Your ideas on tax rate seem to be what I had in the beginning. There is a tax rate, and an 'effective tax rate' that includes what the govt gives back. Is there further distinction between your post and my original that I'm missing? I know you don't like it if what the govt gives back is not valued as highly by the people as what they could buy themselves. That is just a philosophical difference between us that won't be resolved here, or likely ever.

EP:
In my view the government can exercise whatever level of EP that is desired If it can pay for it directly through a subsidy. You want the price of housing to be low, say X per unit, then the govt will make up the difference if the price. So I view EP as redundant in this simple model where there aren't really many rules and regulations explicitly handled. This is clearly a simplification of what happens in the real world. But that's the nature of a game... This abstraction can handle everything you talk about except perhaps working hours, since it would be Very expensive to pay for all those hours people might work during.

Please do not take a 'first shot' at the infrastructure model, since it is already a fair fraction developed! See the econ page on the web site under infrastructure IIRC.

I don't understand your meaning in (8). Can you rephrase what you are meaning?

	16-08-2000 22:04									#47
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Hi Mark!

Whatever I will try to do on infrastructure, it will be based on what already exists in the econ model thread and webpage, so don't worry about that. I only want to model government intervention, which is the missing part.

EP: You say that the player can have as much economic planning as he wants, if he has the money to pay for it. You overlook the fact that it is not the player who will does the planning, but the govt, which represents much more power centres than just the player. They must have some kind of EP agenda, shouldn't they? Well EP is the best way to represent that. EP will be chiefly meant to limit the extent of player intervention; we don't want the player to be omnipotent, do we?

As for subsidies, they are not the only way of "pushing" a certain infrastructure class. Housing f.e. can be subsidised, but it also can be constructed and given away by the state, so can education, temples, armaments, etc. I have a feeling though that in Clash, as you say, such things might not matter. In the real world, the difference is fundamental, but in Clash, exactly because of point #8 above, there might not be a difference after all. I'll have to think some more about this.

I feel that the answers to such problems can be given only during or after coding (Or, maybe they could show up in a spreadsheet version. Who knows?). Right now the discussion in the govt model thread is the most vital and I await your comments there.

	17-08-2000 01:33									#48
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I think that the EP variable should be included in the game. As a definition of the state of the economy and a limit of the player's power, it is an important factor.

	17-08-2000 02:41									#49
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Well with EP at any level, except the 2 extremes, you'd still haveto worry about the fact that people tend to want to regulate the societies differntly. One country wants to give its citizens free soap while the other wants to give them free towels, but neither side wants to give both, nor simply lowering prices on both a little, so how would EP then affect that?

Also i am with mark in that EP doesn't need to be in there? To answer your question how will it be handled to make the ruler nonomnipitant? Simple, use the existing goverment, social and eventually character models to modify what the player wants. So the player wants grain to be free for everyone? Well he can try that and put that in his policy, but others who control the power might not like that idea.

The only thing you'd haveto worry about is the other groups arbitrarly socializing a capatalistic market without your notification and other "incentives" of theirs.

	17-08-2000 12:23									#50
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I'll just concentrate my attack in EP:

Why EP had all mixed up with ruler's freedom of action? EP, SP and PP were originally meant (or was it just me?) to give the shape of the economy. They have nothing to do with how powerful the ruler is.

My understanding is the political structure, plus SP and PP, determine a guideline for a spending agenda, like defining lower and upper limits for investments in military, health, etc. Within those ranges (which would be large if R.pp is high and vise versa), the ruler sets the values he wants. No EP is necessary for this.

In the monarchy example above, you say EP is low because the king doesn't control what's produced. If he were controling it, but not with a redistributive intention, then what is he controling it for? Other than forcing a higher production of military stuff, I can't imagine any other thing.

	18-08-2000 07:05									#51
	Increase Your PM Length

I think that the planning attributes should control the player's power. If we assume the player is the government and the model says that there is zero planning, then how can the player implement policies? It does not make sense to me. I think that if the player wants to manage something, then they should increase the planning attribute. If players could easily plan when the planning value is very low, the game would seem a bit incoherent IMO.

	18-08-2000 15:48									#52
	Got spare money?

I'll second that Mr Bruns!

Look Guys, I don't think that we can do any progress here simply by theorising. Only trying to create the needed functions for player control over the economy will show us if we need EP or not. Some basic formulae I have already made in my spreadsheet, using EP and I plan to use it with infrastructure too. Maybe we should dicuss these formulae one by one, to serve us as examples (even if they won't be what we will eventually have).

F.e. Working Hours for the LC are computed as follows:
WH(LC)=12-8*SP+EP*(4*WHs-2)

Where SP and EP are from the govt model and WHs is a slider ranging 0-1, set directly by the player. This formula can return anything between 2 and 14 hours (per day). As you can see, EP is used to control the extent of player intervention, which is maximum -2/+2 hours. Now, how could this be done otherwise?

	18-08-2000 22:38									#53
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I'm starting to think about fleshing out the econ code in my beast, so I'm starting to look this stuff over.

At first glance, the first suggestion I'd like to make -- the 'slider' for setting working hours can *not* sensibly be ranged from 0 to 1. It *must* have the actual hours in it's range (4 - 20, or whatever).

Consider the Player's choices,

"Set Working Hours: (0 or 1)"

is *not* intuitive.

	19-08-2000 02:53									#54
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I thought that for this type of interface there would be sliders. I assumed that a slider gets recognised from the system as a number between 0 and 1. Of course the slider will be graded, but the numbers you will see on either end of the slider (the limits, in WH) will vary, according to EP and the 12-8*SP factor. If the interface wants another range for the WHs, the formula will be thus modified, it's no big deal.

	19-08-2000 07:33									#55
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Well don't do EP now, atleast till we agree whether to have it or not.

	21-08-2000 02:11									#56
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Axi:
So you're using EP to control the level of ruler intervention (ruler as an individual, that is)... This means EP has not the role of defining a type of economic system, but to define the level of despotism in the economic field. I don't see a need for this. We can use the overall level of despotism (ruler_pol.power) for things like that.

In that equation of yours (that I don't necessarily agree with) I'd use ruler's pol.power instead of EP if what you wanted was to model ruler's power over WH.

I find weird having a variable for "economic despotic level" which can be different to the level of despotism in other areas like politics.

	09-09-2000 22:35									#57
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I didn't know where to post this, so I put it in my own thread. Besides bumping the thread up, I think it is somewhat related.

I'm sorry to have dissappeared from the forum the last couple of days, but I wasn't really into discussing. I made a mini-upgrade to my PC (just bought more memory and a 20 gig HD), but this has caused me some trouble with my CD-ROM unit, which isn't recognised by the system 2/3 of the time. So I spend half my time trying to solve the problem (Btw, do you have any ideas about it, besides downloading the CDROM drivers or reinstalling Windows 98?) and half playing games and rearranging things in my new disc space.

My attempt on modelling infrastructure is pretty much finished, but I am (was) giving some thought on some issues that still do not please me. I also have to write a description in text. When it's all done (I don't know when, since I have to study from time to time too, I'm a student after all ), I will post a new topic, and send the stuff to Mark, Chris Wilkinson (Our new webmaster! It's about time we had an update on the web) and anybody else that might be interested (I'm sure that many of you will be).

------------------
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell

	10-09-2000 00:26									#58
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

I have a few comments and questions about the working hours:

Maximum working hours should be defined seperately by race. We shouldn't hard code them and make them the same for everybody. FE andriods could probably work 24 hours a day while humans cannot be made to work over 18 hours a day. This number should probably be defined in the Race Creation process in the population model, and of course the work hours of the different races would have to be tracked seperately.

Is the model already tracking seperate work hours for different ethnic groups or classes? I think that including this would be a good way to help model social inequalities.

The day might not always be 24 hours. Space colonists somewhere might adapt to a different day length. We might want to add this flexibility.

What does the model do about the times before clocks were invented? In many cases, people worked from sunup to sundown, no matter how long the day was.