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John-SJ
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Silicon Valley, USA
Aug 1999
time: 21:13
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I'm still going through the Econ model, trying to wrap my mind around the whole thing, which, for me at least, is no small task. So, in order to help me organize what goes on within the econ model, I'm trying to sketch out the basics of an object model as well. That way, I have places to put actions or interactions as I come across them.
So, another question. I understand that a province will have a capital, a city. I am assuming that a city founded in a region sufficiently far from an existing province marks the birth of a new province. OK, but within a province there are map squares, and within the squares, sites. If enough sites are worked then the buildup of population density may lead to the creation of a new city. So, the question is, do sites within a map square have unique geographic locations? Or are there just a number of sites in a square, and when enough are worked a city is formed? Oh, and that reminds me, just how many sites are there in a square anyway? Is this number fixed from square to square? Is it fixed over time?
John-SJ
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Mark_Everson
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Canton, MI
Jan 1970
time: 00:13
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John:
Several things are already coded up already for the province stuff. I will send you the code. Don't use it to build anything yet because I am changing things around right now, and things may change in the next several days. But you can look at it for some answers. The old econ model is used, but the province setup will probably still be the same. Except, as I mentioned in the email, econ and prov are tied too closely together in the old model (which is bad OOP). Province is not Part of econ, just heavily related to it. So a prov Should have an econ object of some sort, but the prov is bigger than that in terms of objects...
Province's capital cities can be in name only sometimes. Like when a new area is settled and you need a place to be capital for the prov. So there is no threshold to being a city that is the capital of a prov. The capital is just Designated by player or AI. However if it is in a lousy location, or the province is a dump, it won't grow very big. Some provinces will have 'rural' squares that are bigger than other provs capitals...
Sites within the squares have no locations. They are just a number that can change with technology, and possibly other things. Exact numbers of sites are TBD. Something like 10 farm sites for a decent agricultural square at the beginning of the game. Allowing about 10k people to be self-sufficient there.
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Krenske
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I believe this is the topic I should be in. The older topic was redirected to here.
Anyway I wish to make a point regarding the provincial sizing model in the Eco Dev Web page. Can I suggest that provinces be sized by the maximum movement technology for roads and rivers. I suggest this because rail and shipping are industrial size concerns and do not principally concern the populous as a whole especially in its view of itself. By the time these great improvers of movement appear the provincial boundaries will be roughly set in the minds of national administrators and in the minds of the population as a whole.
The average transportation net of the province can from then add a production benefit. So initially there would be an impetous to allow the provinces to grow to their "best" size for individual travel. Once this point is reached the provinces really finish growing.
Possibly the intorduction of some socio political idea or tech will allow for regionalisation. Which would allow 5-8 provinces to join into super provinces. For example the British Isles would actually be 5-6 provinces until the introduction of regionalisation. At which point it becomes a single administrative region due to improvements in Rail, Sea and communication technologies.
In most Civ maps the british isles is truely to small to support more than 1 or 2 cities. Possibly a better example is the many states of eastern europe or Germany. Each of the individual princedoms etc would count as a province until regionalisation when the Rumanian provinces join to be Rumania etc. Germany ends up with 3 regions with 20 odd original provinces.
This combines the best of the provincial system with the ability to further decrease micromanagement at about the stage of the game at the point where it is becoming the game killer. These Regions could support multiple unit construction queues to make up for the loss of provincial construction queues.
Just my thoughts on provinces (The idea of which I like a lot.)
Paul Krenske.
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roquijad
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Santiago
Nov 1999
time: 05:13
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Mark:
I've read you econ model in more detail and I've some particular comments. As I told you before, the general idea seems alright to me and this is just fine-tunning:
1) quote from the model: The number of units of a special that can be used in a province's economy is 5% of that sector's production.
why? why a % of current production? what are you trying to model with that?
2) Your model is essentialy a free-market econ. How are you planning to adjust it to reflect socialist/communist economies?
3) Developing a site (irrigation, FE) should be cost increasing, that is, to go from production 5 to 6 should be cheaper than going from 6 to 7.... don't you think?
4) Are you still looking for a way to introduce cities into the province scheme as you mention in the model text? You probably remeber a couple of emails I sent you regarding formation of cities and if it's still undefined I'd like to give it a thought.
5) quote from the model: Things like roads and railways will probably be mostly built by the people themselves.
Another quote in the same line: The people will also build some fortification-type items (City walls / forts / castles) themselves if the central authority is weak and they feel they need them.
I must disagree. You should remember (since you look like a guy who knows economics) that certain things are called public/common goods (I'm not aware of the correct translation from spanish) since they have some properties of their own not shared with a normal good. The fundamental difference between a normal good and a public one is "nobody is willing to produce it by its own, but if it's produced, a benefit is achieved". So this is a type of good that is convenient to produce, but nobody wants to do it. Why? Because another important property of it is that it's difficult for the owner to avoid others to benefit from it (he can't charge them for use) and his only use doesn't pay the cost of production. This may sound very tricky, but public goods are much more common that one may think. An example: a lighthouse. If you have a boat you may need a lighthouse, but it's too expensive to build for your use only. The rest boat owners also need it, and you may think of building it and then charging'em for use, but the problem is u can't force them to pay once the lighthouse is built and they'll get the benefit of it anyway, which led economists to name it the "free-rider problem". Since the LH is really needed, the best way to solve the problem is gathering the boat owners together and coordinating them in order to build the LH then becaming a property of society (the boat society in this case) (so "public" good). You can find a lot of public goods in real world: roads, parks, on-street artworks, citywalls and even the nation's army. It's true that in modern times (late 20th century) some ways of dealing with the public good dilemma were invented (particularly in road construction, where access to highways are more controllable), but in most of our history this was not present.
We also have to recognize that for some historians and sociologists, the process of forming a nation (a civ) had to do exactly with this issue. The principle behind it is that families alone could'nt accomplish things that are only attainable through organization (thus the formation of a govt). All "great projects" in history, from simple roads in real ancient times to the apollo program in 20th century and including military safety come from the govt and not from the people's direct investment.
So, in Clash, I think you should identify public goods such as roads and citywalls and avoid people investing in them. Not only because it's more realistic, but because we have in the same game the precise agent who has to deal with this... the ruler (player)!! Anyway, this conclusion goes in the same way as one of Diodorus Sicilus critics about how much people spend in infrastructure (June 30 post), but he took it as a problem of poverty (a peasant couldn't spend money on roads).
Rodrigo
PS: A long post again... sorry 
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roquijad
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Santiago
Nov 1999
time: 05:13
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One other thing:
Regarding trade, as I said to Shimmin, it's important not to limit trade to commodities surplus, since trade can be seeked only for purposes of variety. If you've apples (but you don't have a surplus of it) and I have oranges (no surplus either) we can find such a trade that benefits both because we can get more variety in our goods (that increases our wellbeing) and differences on tastes also count.
Other very good example is current undeveloped southeast asian economies. Probably the PC you're using now was made there, but they didn't export it to you because they had a surplus of it. In fact, probably most of the population don't have a PC there. They made this product mainly to export it. This happens because once trade is possible, the actual price for the good is determined by all possible buyers (beyond your nation) and since americans/europeans can afford PCs, it makes it possible for one poor country to produce something they'll never consume. In game terms this means that trade of specials shouldn't be determined by local surplus or demmand, but in a global fashion.
Rodrigo
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Mark_Everson
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Canton, MI
Jan 1970
time: 00:13
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Hi Rodrigo:
Most of the stuff you're talking about was in a previous model, then I yanked it out because it was getting too complicated. I'm just concerned about the trade-offs between relatively simple models that are easily understood by the player, and much more complex ones that become more like a black box as we add more things to them. I'm not certain that any of your suggestions Won't be in the final model, but I think we need to get further along in terms of actually having a model up in the game before we will know. The question is how many people are turned off by not being able to understand the small-scale functioning of the economy with relatively little effort. I Think there won't maybe many people who are worried about this stuff in the actual game since there will be so many other fun things to do. But we'll just have to see.
I can defend the individual positions on any of the things you didn't like in detail, but I suspect we would just get into a long rambling discussion about each. If, after you read my response, there is anything that Really bothers you, let me know what it is. I'll try to respond in detail on that issue. On to the things I really do want to hear your opinions on...
The way I envisioned centrally planned and socialist economies working in the game is pretty simple at this point. There are two big principles involved.
1.when the government takes stuff away as taxes and then returns it to the people, the people only credit the amount returned at 80% or so of its face value from a consumer happiness perspective. The basic idea is that what the government wants them to have is not always exactly what They want to have. However, if the government distributes the benefits so as to reduce inequality or things like that there will clearly be a possibility of overall social benefits. The details of such a model could involve a lot of work, and I'd like to hear your thoughts on this sort of thing.
2. When the economy is centrally planned, or is capitalistic, but being ruled by a dictator, increasing inefficiencies, due to corruption and shortsightedness inevitably creep into the economy. These are present in Any system in Clash, but are much worse in the above circumstances. I don't know exactly how we are going to model this, but the corruption and inefficiencies will take their toll on each step of economic activity. So, when taxes come in to the government, less money will be generated for amount of taxed income in a corrupt system. Also, when the government gives back to the people, another portion is lost to corruption. As a totalitarian system persists, the corruption and other penalties will just get worse and worse, eventually leveling out in a regime with much lower growth than would be present in a mixed system.
You also raised a criticism of the current model, about the "people" generally not building roads and bridges and other public goods. I agree completely, but what I obviously didn't state clearly enough is that the "people" also include local and regional governments. So the assumption is that the national government is the only thing that the player has more-or-less direct control of in the best of circumstances. So, in an extremely centralized state, the "people" will basically do nothing because all the resources are funnelled up to the top to be disbursed at the whim of the ruler/player. However, there can actually be progress in things like a feudal system. Because the player does not have much in the way of central control, the regional and local authorities have much more leeway to perform investments of their own like building castles, local roadways, etc. I hope after my explaining this critical fact that the system now makes a bit more sense to you. What specifically the people themselves, and also the local governments, invest in is determined partly by the orientation of the culture and other factors.
I am indeed very interested in hearing your thoughts on how cities might work in the Clash provincial system. There are to big issues that I would Really like the hear your thoughts about. The first is the interaction between the city and the province itself. This will be important for the local economy, intra-province migration, another factors. But remember, the IMO the provinces must be large or we will have a management nightmare. So I think agent and MIDI will economies will need to be "faked" within the system. Because, realistically, unless a mapsquare is on a coast, or navigable river, it would probably be largely economically independent for much of the game time span in reality.
The second thing I've been thinking about recently, is how to measure the market size of a province. This is critical, as I'm sure you know, because all the shiny factories in the world won't do you much good without markets that are sufficiently large to absorb the mass-produced goods. In short, what I was thinking about was using transportation costs and tariff barriers, among other things, to get a crude measure of the market size that any particular province has available to it. This would include both the market with in the province, for times when transportation isn't so good, and increasingly more the market beyond the province. The market size would then have an effect upon the production efficiency in the province. Please let me know what you think of this general idea, and if you have any specific suggestions.
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roquijad
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Santiago
Nov 1999
time: 05:13
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LGJ: Probably that case you name is correct for a modern LH having (I guess) radio communications that enable you to identify the coming boat and know if it has already paid. For past time (most of history) it is incorrect.
Anyway, I agree we shouldn't stop at every single thing trying to introduce everything into the model. I also know trade offs are present and, more important, the econ model MUST be simple. Some questions I made in my last post were only to better understand things and what's in your mind, mark, and not necessarily critics to the model (like when asking about the % of production used to determine how many specials are being processed). So, following your suggestion about concentrating in those things that REALLY bother me, let me just mention them by now. I'll get to a proposal for how to treat'em in a later time (later post):
1. The "public goods issue" could be solved as you stated it when considering "people" as people+local_govt. However, if you have a civ with a very centralized govt (not to confuse with centr. economy), all public spending comes from the central govt and roads and other public goods can only be built in a province if this central govt wants to. The people at the province may still invest in housing and non public goods, but not in public goods. For an uncentralized govt. public goods can be built by the central or local govt, which is the case in current econ model. So, the model now is able to simulate uncentralized govts only. To state it in other words, it's important to distinguish the level of centralism of an administration (LCA) and the lvl of centralism of economy (LCE). The later takes us into the discussion about how to model a centrally planned economy, but the former takes us into a discussion about how useful is to consider people at provinces as people+localgovts. If one considers LCA to be an important factor, the people+localgovt interpretation must be changed in order to make the model able to simulate centrally controled public funds. So, is it important? I think the LCA is very important and have had a major role in history ("typical" monarchy vs feudal govts, FE. Notice in both systems people invest in non public goods, like housing, but in the feudal system public goods are produced by the local govt at the province and they are produced by the king (player) in monarchy). This may be a discussion thread for its own and I'd like to see your opinions on it.
2. IMHO centrally planned economies should be treated differently to what you're thinking. However, the system I'm now considering may have just the same consequences as those instruments you plan to use, so we'll have to see...
3. I see the problem with the market size and its possible implications for specials trade. Give me some time to think it.
4. About cities-province interactions, this is something I really find interesting and I'm glad I have some space to develop an idea about it. If there's an old thread on the subject or some previous proposals for it, let me now.
Rodrigo
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Mark_Everson
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Canton, MI
Jan 1970
time: 00:13
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Rodrigo:
My apologies that this is taken so long. I will try to address each of the concerns in the post above if I can. Let me know what still bothers you after I'm done. At some point I'll try to back track and give you a few-sentence description on the other points that bugged you later ;-)
I think we have the public versus private goods issue well in hand. That's not to say that the modeling of it so far is perfect, so I'll tell you what we've got and see what you think. Specifically I'm talking about governmental centralization of economic resources, as opposed to a centrally-planned economy. I don't know if you recall from my model for the government that I wrote up way back when, but there was an explicit number for how much power each of the central, provincial, and square-level governments have. Essentially, taxes levied are distributed to the levels of government depending on their power. It's that simple! I'll give a couple of examples. Suppose we have a highly centralized government with the political power divided something like 80:10:10 in the same order as above. So then 10% of the taxes would go to the square-level government. Between the cultural effects, and who has the power in the government, there will be a formula for how this 10% is invested, or even squandered. I have a few very simple starts at this in Excel spreadsheet if you'd like me to send them to you. So in our example above, the player will get 80% of the nominal tax revenues to play with on behalf of the central government. Let suppose the situation were reversed. If we were in, for instance, a very weak feudal monarchy the geographic power might be distributed 10:30: 60. In this case 60% of the taxes would go to the local governments, since they can't rely on the central government to protect them, they probably would invest a lot in building local fortifications, such as castles. Those inclined in the mercantile direction might sink more of this money into marketplaces and such. As you can see, and the de-centralized government, the player gets very little money to play with. But this is as it should be. Anyway, I think you get the idea. Let me know what you think of it.
As to how to handle a centrally planned economy, I like to hear what you have to say about it. I'm certainly not completely happy with the way I'm doing it now, but I think it's basically serviceable.
As to the interactions between a city and the surrounding province there hasn't been much discussion of late. The nearest thing to this topic that I can put my finger on, is on the old bulletin board. The relevant thread is http://www.sitepowerup.com/mb/view....103694&Reply=5 . I hope that's of some help to you. If not, please just post a brief summary of your ideas on the topic, and potential ways we might go, and we can take it from there.
This thread also has a lot on city/province interactions interspersed here and there...
[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited December 22, 1999).]
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axi
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Athens Greece
Sep 1999
time: 07:13
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What I would never would like to see in the final Clash game is the kind of prejudice against certain social and economical systems that civ2 and ctp are guilty of.
I agnowledge of course that it is extremely hard to be fair towards systems that we are not familiar with and that we always tend to make arbitrary generalisations and classifications, according to our own historical and political conscience. By saying that the Japanese are by nature militaristic, or that the English are experts in naval techs, or that communist spies are more experienced, or that free market economies are less corrupt than planned ones, we only reflect the way things were in a specific time and place, or we THINK they were, or we WISH they were.
Mark Everson's economic model reflects just that, since it is specifically tailored to represent the inner workings of a decentralised free market economy, like that of the USA. It is a very good model indeed, but when it is called to simulate the function of any centralised or planned economy, there comes the need to take arbitrary decisions, such as the "80% payback of socialistic redistribution of wealth" or the "citizens+local govt infrastructure enterpreneurship" or the "totalitarian corruption penalty". But how the hell are we going to call this game CLASH of Civilisations, when all players will be compelled by necessity to shape their societies in the same manner, resulting in the clashing civs to have only superficial differences?
What we need is a model where diversity will not be penalised, where history is free to pick her way through altenative realities, where many widely differentiated sociioeconomic systems will be equally stable and will have an equal chance of success.
------------------
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell
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roquijad
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Santiago
Nov 1999
time: 05:13
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I think what Axi is saying is extremely important, not only for the econ model, but for the Clash project. It's certainly very hard trying to see history objectively and avoid our own views of what's best and what's not.
I believe we must be very careful constructing models that can actually simulate world history but also give it some "space" for other outcomes to be possible. I see the econ, social and govt models realy sensitive to this type of problems and avoiding US-like nations the only type of civs that can actually do better should be a must.
Rodrigo
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Mark_Everson
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Canton, MI
Jan 1970
time: 00:13
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Hi axi: (and Rodrigo too)
Thanks for wading through at least a chunk of the model. Of course, many of the details are still up for debate, and were chosen sort of arbitrarily. However, the particular items that you chose to criticize are I think things that Enforce game balance, rather than tilt it. Here's my reasoning.
Suppose there is no penalty for being a totalitarian ruler as opposed to a democratic one. The government model puts all kinds of constraints on the activities of a democratic ruler. There are very few constraints on the actions of a totalitarian ruler. If there were no penalty for being a totalitarian ruler and then All Players Would Be Driven to Be Totalitarian. Why on Earth would I accept all those restraints if there is nothing to gain? Also, it may be brainwashing from my upbringing, but I do believe that humans whose powers are not limited almost inevitably become corrupted by the experience. Although democratic systems do experience significant amounts of corruption, I don't feel these come anywhere near what one experiences in a totalitarian system. So I think the corruption affect that you cite is both a valid game balance mechanism, and in some way reflects reality.
The same is true for the 80% penalty for benefits returned to the people by the government. A market economy also severely constrains the player in the ways that they can guide the economy. In a command economy many of these restrictions are no longer present. For if not for a penalty on benefits returned to the people by the government, or some other compensating factor, all players would want to have command economies also. The penalty attempts to compensate for that. I admit it may be too large, it also may be too small. We will have to wait for playtesting.
At least from your comments, it seems to me that you want me to lift all these restrictions. At least as the model is now, I think that will ultimately drive all players to wish to be totalitarian rulers of command economies. I don't know what your political philosophy says, but I think the track record over the last century is that countries run on such principles do fairly poorly.
However, I'm always open to suggestions. If you'd like to make an alternative proposal for how the model can be tweaked to better represent nonmarket or totalitarian systems, go ahead and propose a modified system.
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roquijad
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Santiago
Nov 1999
time: 05:13
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I think what Axi was saying in its very core (and the thing I support from his post) is that we have to avoid simplistic mechanisms to make "communism bad and democracy good" or that sort of thing. It means we have to find what variables should exist within models that make certain types of govt or economies worse or better rather than giving a pre-set bonus for a type of economy/govt. A simple example: Mexico has a democracy but it has an important level of corruption, at least much more than western european contries or US/Canadian democracies. So, it's not "democracy" what makes a govt. more or less corrupt as in civ2, but something else. What makes a civ more corrupt? That's the type of thing we should be focusing in that particular example. As for communism, in history we've seen only despotic communism govts, but this wasn't Marx's first idea. One can imagine that it'd be possible to have a "democratic communism" and it'd be nice Clash models could be able to simulate that.
So, I don't want to take a position now about "the 80% penalty" rule or any current detail, but to encourage you all to find the very reasons that make a govt form or economic system better or worse. Including those reasons through adecuate variables in models will make Clash behave more true-to-life and then make it more interesting.
I'm initating a new topic thread at the forum to help people discuss those "real reasons" that make govt/econ systems better or worse. Hopefuly that dicussion will help each model developer.
Rodrigo
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Henrique Duarte
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Portugal
Jan 2000
time: 05:13
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Hi there
my first visit to this forum :-)
I havenīt seen anyone discussing the animal breeding, usbandry (I really donīt know how to write this in english) paper in civs.
Know this might be a bit foolish at first, but the thing is domestication is a fundamental part of civilization advance, right along agriculture.
One of the biggest issues is availability of domesticable animals in your continental (or island) mass. This is big both economically and military.
you can think off the appearence of horses in America, kangaroos in Australia
Cortez in MesoAmerica etc, etc, etc
By the way...it would be a neat feature to add to the diplomatic/spy/raiding actions - getting domestication knowledge along with the animals...or just the animals.
In a absurd situation you can allow for domestication of more exotic animals. Just leave the possibility open for strong research on the domestication rynos (imagine that ryno legion charging down the valley :-)
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LOGO
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Honolulu, Hawaii, United States
Aug 1999
time: 05:13
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Mark:
Inflation
I don't think I'm very satified with your use of inflation in your model (forgive me I haven't read the entire thing yet) all you seem to say is how much the per capita income increases. Well are you talking about inflation or an increase in the middle class? Inflation is somewhat complicated so I don't know if we should have it in the model, yet it IS one of the most important parts of our present day economy, besides it's not that hard to set interest rates. Though if you were going to use it I'd think you'd want a charactor as a Alan Greenspan for your country. Anyway if your going to talk about the increase in per capita income you should talk about it without inflation, it's alot less confusing that way.
By the way, I like your province idea, I think you should totally through out the city system, the only time you'd have a city is when the population is high in that place, a capital would atomaticaly become a city, all the cities would rely on only it's own square for food at first then after a few tech increases they could have support from other surplus squares, then everywhere in the province and someday everywhere in the nation, and if you pass free trade everywhere in the world (super over simplified on the the free trade thing odviosly) I've long hated the city system in Civ. II as incredibly unrealistic to any time.
By the way you did a great job on the economy, I like that it's more complex yet more self sufficiant, also I think most of a player's head aches should come from the enomy (just like now) although some the stuff in there could be tweaked a little 
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13-09-1999 05:54
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