19-06-2000 22:56									#121
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I have a few concerns about how technology will be handled, especially with regard to resources and capital. However, I haven't been able to find out exactly how capital will be handled so I can't put my thoughts in a concrete form.

How will the K term of the production function change, and how does this relate to the investment that results in an increase in A?

	19-06-2000 23:36									#122
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Richard:

K changes each turn:
Decreased due to depreciation ~5%
Increased when people or govt buy more K
Cost is about 1CC per point of K
People will invest mostly in more cost-effective improvements in K
(See sections 5 & 6 of the spreadsheet)

The amount of new K purchased in a given sector is the Kbought term in the Anew forumula.

	13-12-2000 01:42									#123
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I can't remember whether it was on this particular forum, but I was cruising thru another non-civ game about communism in a medievil setting. Anyway somehow that reminded me of how we are implimenting communism in this game. I have one problem. Mark has suggested that if the tax rate is 0% then it is like the government takes only what it absolutely needs to fund its programs, if the tax rate is higher it takes extra money from them. The problem is, what if in order to ease tensions of the working class I decide to give them extra money at the exspense of some programs but still have them implemented, ie just underfunded, naturally that would make a negative tax rate, but think about that. Since we don't have exact models for each type of government this can cause problems with other types of goverments such as capatalistic forms...

	13-12-2000 05:49									#124
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Hi LGJ:

I don't quite get your point. First of all its a 'social net tax rate' or something I was talking about, not the tax rate per se. That social net tax rate could indeed be negative for some social classes, or even everyone if the govt wants to increase debt to fund it.

Can you rephrase your point so I can understand what your issue is? Then I'll take another stab at it.

	14-12-2000 02:49									#125
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Well I'm concerned that with a negative tax rate for anything, there can really be no maximum like with a posative tax rate, ie you can't tax more than 100% of everything, but you can give people back more than 100% in negative tax rate then because you can go into debt from the money you might have saved up from earlier years.

	14-12-2000 06:12									#126
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Hmmmm...

I don't really see -100% tax rates as anything that is likely to happen. It would bankrupt the govt. Really fast. Lets see if its still an issue when we actually have it to play. If it is, then we can rule it out by fiat.

	14-12-2000 06:24									#127
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Well, you can always just put a cap on it such as -50% or -100%... Or, you could leave it openended, and the player would just have major problems if they were foolish enough to put it at like -1000%...
Just one of my 2 cents.

	14-12-2000 06:29									#128
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Well, you can always just put a cap on it such as -50% or -100%... Or, you could leave it openended, and the player would just have major problems if they were foolish enough to put it at like -1000%...
Just one of my 2 cents.

	16-12-2000 06:46									#129
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Er, Ok. That was weird. THe posts weren't showing up at all, then I have 3.
Strange (Any sorry about the multi posts)

	16-12-2000 07:20									#130
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Bizarre, and the dates are screwed up, which is the thing that surprises me most. I will kill one of the three posts, just to keep things simple . But I want to keep two with different dates just for the novelty of it!

If you hit the submit button more than once, don't do that . Sometimes it takes a while (several minutes) for the post to show up even though its in. If you want to see if its gotten there, log onto the main clash forum window first, and see if your post registers there before resubmitting. At least that's what works for me when things are crawling on the site.

	16-12-2000 11:19									#131
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Dates don't look screwed up to me =)
But if you want to keep a double post, feel free, heh.
Hmm... so I'm a setteler? heh.

Anyway, after reading through most of the economy model (quite a long one) I've come up with (suprisingly few) comments:
You seem to have a lot of the economy and infrastructure run automatically... I don't know how much talk of this has gone around yet (probably lots), but anyway, A) How much the people do on their own should vary GREATLY depending on government and religion. B) Make sure theres at least some level of options available for more governmental control... at the lowest level, a player moved slider determines how much control they decide they want to control (IE for a while they can let the people run/work by themselves if they want to, or have most of the control run by the player)... the amount you can change would of course depend on the government or religion...
This relates back to many aspects of the game -- I like the idea of having the user choose how much micromanagement they want to use... But I would suggest that as more of a finalizing feature, and in the early demos (to get more "playable" material) you just have a general mid-level setting for most of the game.
At the same time, you have to be careful not to get too complicated... but I guess I'll see what it looks like when Demo 5 comes out.
There should be certain govermant mandates avaiable depnding on what goverment type you have... On a totalatarian kind of govt., for instance, you might be able to demand that your people only have 1 child per family, or something similar... this kind of control would obviously reduce happiness (which in turn would reduce production) but they might be useful in some circumstances (people still growing rampantly when theres hardly and food, etc)
Kinda babbled on a bit about topics you've likely already discusses... hope it made sense.

On another note, I find it kind of interesting that you want an ultra realistc type game but want a geneneral abstract idea of infrastructure... although it sounds like it should work fine...

There doesn't seem to be any infrastructure devoted to various other building type structures such as walls and other fortifications... should this be added or is that included in another section?

But overall, I don't really see any big holes in the economy model, it seems sound and good, and I won't have many mroe comments on it until Demo 5.

	17-12-2000 01:30									#133
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Hi Twinge:

Richard has covered most of your questions/comments, so I'll only add a few things. The plan already is basically the same as what your list of things you "should" be able to do is. You should probably read the government section next, and also the thread on interaction between government and econ if you want further information on this stuff. The only real distinction I would make with what you say, is that the player can't arbitrarily seize a huge amount of control over the economy without risking a power struggle or revolution. So, just as in the real world, if you have a lot of power it's easy to liberalize the economy, but without a lot of power exerting a lot of control over the economy should be difficult or impossible.

On the infrastructure model being abstract, and at that goes against "realistic", I just have to disagree with you. It's much more realistic than the cheesy sort of model there is in civ or RTS games. IMO the only real difference between what we do and what they do is that in our case you don't have to make a huge commitment in a single area to get the benefit. In civ you either have a factory or you don't, and the difference in effect on production is enormous... So although our model is somewhat abstract, I think it's more realistic than anything else out there, while still not requiring a huge amount of micromanagement from the player.

Things like fortresses have only been thinly discussed. But I think handling them is fairly straightforward given the infrastructure model. If you have any ideas on the area, now is a good time to get them in!

	17-12-2000 02:15									#134
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Well, as I said, I thoguht you had likely discussed some of it, but I had some ideas that there was a chance you might not of discusses that I didn't want to forget, and I wasn't quite ready to read through tons of other stuff after reading through the economy model =)

quote: When we say "automatically" we mean "without player intervention." The actions of your people are most definitely included in that "automatically." Depending on government and religion, your people will automatically take certain actions like building cathedrals and stockmarkets.

Thats not exactly what I was reffering to. I was thinking along the lines of the people wanting to do less on their own if mosty of their actions are controlled by a despotism or totalatarian govt. (But that's pretty much answered in the next response you answered anyway)

quote: I would make with what you say, is that the player can't arbitrarily seize a huge amount of control over the economy without risking a power struggle or revolution.

Well how I see it, this again depends greatly on religion and goverment. In midevil times, rulers sometimes did tell the people what to do with almost all parts of their lives at times, and the people would rarely, if ever, rebel. While it should be an option on all levels, it should be much less so when the government or religion already doesn't promte free living, etc. (Of course, if your military isnt too strong, among other things, it is still possible, IE scotts rebeling against england, and such)

quote: So although our model is somewhat abstract, I think it's more realistic than anything else out there, while still not requiring a huge amount of micromanagement from the player.

While I have no beef with your infrastructure model, I still think having actual buildings would be more realistic, as long as they were designed better than older Strat. Titles. Not to say this needs to be changed, It was just a side comment.

Theres my response for now =)

	17-12-2000 08:44									#135
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I just thought of this while reading through the government model: There should be some sort of "god" mode eventually implemented. Basically in this mode you have control of things you wouldn't normally control (or normally control fully). You can change the views of your people automatically, decide where distasters go, see other ppl, etc. While not everyone likes this, I know a lot of people do and it would be another nice feature to have more people like more about the game =) It's another very late stage implementation, but an idea none-the-less.

quote: Hey, if they were all out to get you too, then you'd be paranoid too!!

	17-12-2000 09:32									#136
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The "god" mode is a good idea, especially for scenario making. Don't forget that a theocratic government with high popularity might have some of thise powers anyway.

	19-12-2000 10:30									#137
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Hi Twinge:

I agree with Richard that the "God Mode" could be interesting. It would also be useful for stress-testing the system during playtesting!
[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited December 19, 2000).]

	29-01-2001 03:51									#138
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Just a quick note for how something works in the Econ model...

How secondary production sectors are handled in the Econ model

First of all, a secondary sector is a sector that requires inputs from another sector to produce anything.

So the manufacturing sector (called Production) requires inputs of resources to make things, so it's a
secondary sector. I will use production, and its input resources as an example here.
These are the steps that a secondary sector uses to produce its stuff...

1. In the beginning of the turn during the production phase, the production sector uses
resources that it purchased the previous turn. That resource is used up, although it's possible
some could be stockpiled for the next turn.

2. When the trading phase is done the production sector buys as much of the newly made resource as it wants.
For now I just have it buying all that is available, since resources have no other value in the economy.

3. When income for the production sector is calculated the cost of the inputs just bought is taken into account.

I think this will work fine, although there are some possible glitches if the amount of resources changes radically from turn to turn.

	29-01-2001 06:25									#139
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Why don't we calculate it all in the same turn? Stuff doesn't just sit around for five years waiting to be used; the "primary" and "secondary" production really happen simultaneously. It seems that this kind of lag might hurt the mechanics and confuse or annoy the players. Lags like that in mathematical models tend to generate sinusoidal oscillations in output.

For example, assume that we are running a market economy and that an excess of coal is produced in turn 200. The price of coal would then drop a lot, so in turn 201 there is very little coal produced. This means that there will be a serious coal shortage in the trading phse of turn 201, so the secondary production phase in turn 202 will have very low output. So thanks to the lag, a coal glut has the potential to cause seroius shortages two turns down the line, and playerw might not know what the problem is. That could be quite frustrating.

Could we calculate the primary sector production first, then the trading phase, then the secondary producation? That way the amount of coal made will directly affect the amount that factories can be run that turn. I think players would be happier with that.

	29-01-2001 19:27									#140
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I kinda agree with Rich on this. Resources should be produced, traded and used up in the same turn. However one should be able to keep stores of F,R, and P (but maybe not S) with a certain amount of decay applied each turn.

This has a meaning when one foresees the loss of a big source of F or R next turn (f.e. invasion) or a bigger than usual rise in industrial capacity or an external trade deal. Otherwise, given the type of the production function we use, there is no reason to with hold resources.

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

	30-01-2001 10:59									#141
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If we're going to be able to stockpile, which i think we should, there also needs to be in addition to the decay cost a monitary cost for storing and maintaining the resources at the lowest pssible rate of decay. This is turn could use up some of those resources (building a wooden warehouse to store lumber) also. Building warehouses on the scale of a magnitude to overcome a massive shortage and/or long-term invasion would require enough money put into building those warehouses and other sites that it would also need to be tracked, perhaps taking away from a couple of agricultural sites in the agri. part of this model.

Also if we are storing resources we should also be able, or sometimes forced to, store excess products such as cars and the resouce needed to produce them, say steel.

Finally with reguard to the latter part, those older products shouldn't have as high value in future markets and the AI should generally tend to buy the newer products unless it needs to conserve money, thus making those older products worth even less next turn. Decay also should happen to these and the player/AI should have the option of spending money to convert the products back into resources for other uses, but at a cost and usually not with 100% of the original product.

	29-01-2001 23:17									#142
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Hi gents:

Thanks for the criticisms! I got more than I bargained for (Sorry LGJ I missed your comments in this post because I was writing while you posted...)

I understand the points, and agree with their validity. I admit I was a little woried about stability even when I wrote out my draft of the Secondary Production model. OTOH Real economies do show these types of behaviors at times, so I don't think my original model is completely screwed up .

But to do what you guys want to do, things would need to be Very sophisticated.

Produce Others - Trade - Produce Secondaries would need to have a Lot of intelligence behind it, and also an additional trade phase after Produce secondaries to work. You'd need the second trade phase to be able to trade for Manufactured Goods themselves. And how do you trade resources for mfg. goods in your scheme Richard? By the time the cars are made the steel is probably gonna be all used up! In each trade phase you would also need a very good prediction of the final amount of each good the economy will produce, or you might make trades that weren't in your (or the peoples' best interests). So IMO this would require very good AI to make it work.

The difficulties above are why I decided provisionally to do it the way I discussed. Although it may have stability problems, It allows for sensible trading using everything the economy produces at one time, making it relatively simple. Personally I think if needed it would be fairly easy to put a patch of some sort on the stability problems.

And for the case that you suggest Axi, as long as we can limit 'ringing' after an abrupt transition, the only problem resulting from a change in overall supply level as a step function would be a transient in production amounts that doesn't have the right shape. I guess I'm just not that concerned about very minor glitches like that.

Perhaps a good solution that resolves all problems here does exist, but I don't think we've found it yet... We certainly have a long time to think about it before it needs to be solved. In the interim I've put a very trivial moving-average type filter on resource prices to help limit oscillations due to price shocks. I'm frankly not sure if this will help once trade starts being done...


[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited January 29, 2001).]

	30-01-2001 03:09									#143
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IMO only practice with the economic game itself can prove any of this right or wrong. So Mark, please, as your coding progresses, please keep making posts such as this, describing the way you do things.

I also feel that too much detail (like in LGJ's post) is unnecessary and not-in-the-plans, am I right? Let's not forget the scale of the game and the fact that economic decisions will be olny a small part of what the player will be facing during a game turn. Simulating a real economy in it's every little detail is not what we want.

To explain myself: We are talking about an economy run in F/R/P/S. Special production types (that is, infraclasses) are not accounted for in their production, which means that they do not need specialised productive capacity for their sake, so we don't have "car factories", but "factories" in general.

Furthermore, while writing the infrastructure model, troubled myself with the accounting problem that the amounts of FPS produced and demanded by a certain province/civ are different, although their total value is the same. I had then said that this is what merchant activity is based on and that merchants would profit fron the difference in prices between two economies. Of course that would mean a need for balancing the sums of these quantities on a global scale and, if this is impossible, readjust prices and recalculate demand (I am referring to my discussion of supply based and demand based economies, in the infrastructure model).

IIRC, Mark's response to that is that, in that case, we should disregard balance in FPS and only take care of the monetary balance. Is that still the way the econ model is dealing with stuff?

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George Orwell

	30-01-2001 03:47									#144
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Yep Axi, thats what I'm going with at the moment! Gotta run, or I'd say more. But I basically agree with your statements, and stated impressions.

[edit]
I don't think I have much to add after all Axi. I will try to get this stuff out ASAP so people can actually mess with it themselves.

LGJ:
On the warhouses issue, or granary vs the food you put in it, I was just discussing it like last week in Axi's infra thread. I'll quote it here:

quote: One other issue while I'm thinking about it. Some kinds of infra, as we're handling it, should really be what I think of as 2-stage. FE in the case of food storage the two stages are 1. build storage and 2. fill it with food. Because surplus food itself does no good unless you have an appropriate place to store it. Before I just combined some storage building in with food in the hope that it would average out, and not be too annoying . Does this two-stage infra strike you as a reasonable thing to include, or too detailed? It is especially important for building say battleships where you need 1. shipyard facilities before you can 2. build the ship. While we could finess the distinction in food, for military builds I think the 2-stage is fairly important. In summary, 2-stage is more complicated for the player and AI, but more realistic. Whatcha think?