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samdejong
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So I was sitting in my macroeconomics class today and I had a blinding flash of insight into the Civ3 economic model. I don’t think I’m surprising anyone when I say that the economic model in Civ3 is woefully inadequate.
The first thing that I would like to address is the resource model that Civ3 uses. Cic3 lumps all types of production resources into one unit, the ‘shield.’ This ignores the fact that many different types of resources go into producing things. Simply because a city has hills nearby does not insure that it will have a good industrial base. In fact, a city would have to have a stone quarry near by in order to build buildings, an iron mine in order to forge weapons, and forests to build anything made of wood. Civ3 begins to address this with its special resources. However it does not go far enough. I would like to suggest that this model be developed. The crux of my idea is that almost all production; whether it is buildings, units, or wonders, have a resource requirement on it similar to what some units already have. In order for building to be produced one would have to have stone or wood resources. In addition to this requirement however, one should have to control of more than one unit of resource if the requirement is to be met. That is for some units, lets say the swordsman, the requirement is only one unit of iron, but for other units, lets say the armour, the requirement would be three iron and two oil. This kind of model would necessitate resources being made numerous and of a greater quantity. There would have to be more kinds of resources and more of those resources on the map. This type of model of production would increase the sophistication of the production aspect of the economic model in Civ3.
An impact that increasing the number and importance of resources would have is that it would increase the demand for these resources. Controlling or having access through trade to resources would become more important than it already is. By having only one resource in the game Civ3 cuts out a very important aspect of governance, trade of resources through a market. A market for a resource is simply when a buyer and seller come together with the intent of exchange, typically money for a good or service. In Civ3 there is only a very rudimentary form of this. It consists of when one civilization approaches another with the intent of trading say wine for ivory, or iron for oil. This whole system needs to be expanded on. By creating a model like the one described above one has already created both the supply and demand for goods, thus creating a market. All one needs to do is make an AI that is able to trade semi-intelligently. If one could do this then a real international marketplace for goods would take shape in the game. By making a model that uses resources in such a way as described and making an AI capable of trading these resources the economic sophistication of the economic model would be improved.
Another impact that such a model would have is that the shield resources that the game uses would be come meaningless. The model that Civ3 currently uses assumes that hills, when mined, will have greater production resources in them than say grasslands. Because the above described model focuses more on distinct resources such as iron, stone, and wood rather than the abstract idea of shields the idea that hills produce more than grassland is outdated. Therefore the current idea of a shield should be discarded. The unit of production on the city scale should represent labor that goes into production. To accomplish this I propose that a new type of specialist be made, the laborer. This specialist would be the sole source of shields. Each laborer would contribute say three shields of production, unaided by enhancing improvements such as factories. I feel that this would more accurately mirror reality. As the current game model has it the citizen who is farming a grassland square also contributes a shield to production. This would be almost to say that the worker is doing two things simultaneously, farming and building a legion, say. The model I propose would reflect the division of labor that production necessitates. The only problem that I can see is food. A small city cannot support a laborer specialist necessary for early production. The way around this is to give the city a few shields free; that is, without any laborers the city still has a base production of say four shields. By using the laborer specialist model in conjunction with the afore mentioned resource model production on the city scale would become more realistic.
The final, and most important suggestion that I would like to make is in regards to specialization and exchange. This idea is the heart of all economic sophistication and is totally lacking in Civ3. The idea is that if one person only produces what he or she has an advantage in and trades for things that he or she is disadvantaged in, then more amounts of goods can be produced thus leading to higher standards of living. This idea is totally lacking in Civ3 on the intra-civilization level. Each city is forcibly treated as an economically self-sufficient unit. If a city does not have enough food then there is no way to move food from a city with a surplus. This idea was present in civ2 however in the form of caravans who could transport food. If this were reintroduced and slightly expanded upon it would have a great impact on the game. It would have this impact because it would allow cities to specialize in, say, production. This city would use all of citizenry as the afore mentioned laborer specialists. It would have food imported from a second city that did little besides produce food. The production city could then use the units that it produced to defend them both. By allowing for transport of food the concept of specialization and exchange would be introduced and greatly increase the economic sophistication of the game.
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tenhole
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Ann Arbor, MI USA
Aug 1999
time: 05:25
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Those are some interesting ideas, Sam. Sounds to me like you might like the economic model in Sid Meier's Colonization quite a bit. Rather than abstracting down to shields and commerce, each tile produced one of eight commodities, but only one. So you put a laborer on a tile of, say, marsh and decide whether you want to work it for three food or two tobacco or two ore. You could also train laborers as experts, so an expert farmer could work the same square for six food (or two tobacco or two ore). Then the fun continued once you got the stuff into the colony. Say you were growing tobacco. You could sell it as is, or you could have another colonist working the tobacconists shop in town turning it into (much more lucrative) cigars. Same deal for production. You have to have somebody chopping down the wood in the city radius (or import it), and somebody else working the carpenter's shop to build anything in town.
By contrast, I don't know that I'd agree that Civilization's economic model is "woefully inadequate" so much as it is necessarily simplified. I say necessarily because un-abstracting everything that goes into a "shield" would magnify the micromanagement quotient greatly, resulting in a game that I don't think I'd want to play, though other people's opinions might vary.
Having said all that, though, I definitely agree that the concept of strategic recources is (great but) very underdeveloped. The fact that I can paint half the planet with railroads from one square of coal, for instance. I think it would be cool if there were more strategic resource squares, but how much you could do with them depended on how many of them you have access to. One square of coal lets you start one ironclad or three tiles of railroad (as an off the cuff example). You have access to two coal and you build six links of railroad, you have to wait until your next turn to start more. Same theory could be applied to luxury resources. One square of furs translating into a happy face in all 80 of my cities seems a little strange.
I also agree heartily that the food caravan is missed. It's quite unrealistic to require that every city produce enough food to support its population. While I don't miss the caravan unit in general, it would be nice to be able to bring food to industrial cities again.
Anyway, my random thoughts on the topic. Interesting post.
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MrBaggins
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The game was designed to be, and is, seriously abstracted. The more complex behavior you add to the model, the less possible it will be for the AI to cope.
Its a *BAD* idea to add an idea that the AI can't use, even if its the most sensible idea since sliced bread.
Personally, I can imagine abstracted resources though... and think limited special resources... for special cases, work well too.
MrBaggins
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samdejong
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quote:
Originally posted by Centauri18
Real-world economics are differenmt, I know - Econ. was always one of my favorite classes in high school - but remember, people, this is a game. |
Actually it was a college level course. My major is international affairs. While I know this is just a game I thought that it would be useful if it reflected more of reality. In truth I do not think these alterations are that radical; they still work within the existing framework of Civ3.
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MrBaggins
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* Assuming that the AI isn't crippled by them...
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Vercingettyrex
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Scotland
Nov 2001
time: 05:25
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Interesting thread. In the end it's a game and it can't go into too much detail or you would need a supercomputer to run it.
I really like the resources idea. It's what really makes CIV3. I would like to see it extended in the next game. I would also like banking and loans to be looked at. They're there but I think there are some doubts about how they work in practice. The resources thing needs to be kept simple, but there should be something underlying how it works. At the moment, it just seems sometimes as though the AI buys or sells according to whim.
Further you could argue that if you did move to a communist state for instance the economic model would have to change. The banks and markets you built as a Republic would have to have a different function in a Communist Republic.
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04-02-2003 02:21
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