Economics, and Free Market forces. 'free' buildings

I love the idea in concept. I am not going to argue your ideas on the results of free markets because we could get into a huge thread derailing conversation, and we would have to get Adam Smith involved and it would just get ugly.

It would all depend on implementation. It would be interesting to see varying degrees of planned economies vs market economies and various levels of mixed economies. My experience, though, is that implementations tend to reveal the political leanings of the game developer more than really showing the advantages or disadvantages of each, I think in a game you can't get away from that.

ya, I know, it really starts to get political.  and i wouldn't argue the direct effects either,  the Idea is simply that such a system should have Immideate rewards (build stuff for you for free) long term costs (the building never functions perfectly, or functions at a cost every time you use it, stables), and should additionally come with long term risks if you over use it (lots of money you don't control, side effects there of,)  


Of course you could Tax the snot of of everything, or argue that a finacially perfect system wouldn't have downsides, Or even have a faction which is immune to downsides.  

All i was suggesting is A way of handling the +ives and - ives.

Elemental might be set in the wrong time period for this sort of thing. If we're talking the Middle Ages, banking was very very limited. Transport networks were too poor to support any significant free market: early experiments in removing tariffs and restrictions on movement and sale of goods, for example, lead to hoarding, famine and rioting. Most trades happened outside what would today be the taxable economy, through barter and obligation rather than currency. The fundamental unit of wealth was not skill or ability to labour, but ownership of land.

So I think the flavour would be wrong. In terms of the game mechanic, I would welcome efforts to avoid spending increasing amounts of time on colony management as the game goes on. As for the effectiveness of late colonies, I think I'd prefer for the settlement phase to end somehow.

Good idea for GalCiv, not Elemental.

I agree. If sophisticated economics could have developed before the Renaissance and beginnings of imperialsim, it had about a thousand years to do so...yet it didn't. Good thought for a later-set game, though.

Similarly, in the Middle Ages there were no dragons or channellers, the world hadn't just suffered an apocalyptic event that left all lands infertile save those which the few survivors capable of channeling magic could invest their magical essence in to revive, and, most importantly, there was no semblance (or acceptance) of anything resembling magic. My point is that there are means available to the denizens of the Elemental world not available to the average medieval peasant or merchant.

I hope that transportation networks will be improved from the historically-accurate norm to the point of feasibility for this game, since the complete inability to move large quantities of goods from one city to another with relatively high frequency (which I think is what you're getting at as one of the free-market requirements that are missing) would probably be annoying to most people, and, at least in my opinion, not contribute enough strategic value to be worth it.

I'm also fairly sure that Stardock won't end up implementing a barter-based economy. At least I hope so; I'd hate to have to negotiate the cost of building my new fort in terms of fish heads and beads.

And since we can assume the existence of fixed currency and decent transportation, I see no reason why something like the 'free market' idea should be vetoed on grounds of gameworld consistency.

I, too, would like to avoid spending increasing amounts of time on colony management. I always hated the late game economic management even in games like MoO2 and MoM, not to mention games like Space Empires IV/V and their absurd complexity. However, I personally wouldn't feel that the 'flavor' of said free market system would be wrong. I actually think it would be really cool (granted, of course, a competent enough AI market).

I'm pretty sure that the devs mentioned somewhere that the game was designed so as not to become a patchwork quilt of cities in the late game - which probably means slower settlement that goes on for longer, FWIW.

Maybe this could be an event, but in a modified form more appropiate to the times, like a lord building such a thing in his lands  (would require high loyalty and high talent perhaps on a governor)

Maybe later on the game you get better settlers who start towns off with more buildings?

I agree with some of the ocmments that this idea is better suited to Gal Civ than a medieval/fantasy setting. But some of the real worlld examples don;t really hold tru, because we are talking about development of these concepts for the first time. In Elemental's post cataclysm world, it would be assumed that most of these did exist pre-cataclysm, and it is possible that the concepts had been passed down, but as putting food on the table (or slab of rock, being clothed and sheltered has kind of been a priority since the cataclysm and some of the more esoteric ideas haven't really had the opportunity to be reintroduced. So with towns and settlements springing up, I see no reason that some pretty advanced concepts couldn't spring up.

I am not suggesting steampunk or advanced technologies - but some basic ideas about markets, banking, etc I don't see why not and it needn't ruin the medieval feel of the world.

I don't think the game needs this mechanic. It's inconsistent with the generally medieval (ie. fuedal, rather than capitalist) fantasy setting. It also has the potential to lead to the 'game playing itself' vibe that I get when playing MOO3 -- or even worse, against you, as when playing a democracy in any of the Civ games.

Perhaps if it were confined to a special event ('Citizen Moneybags offers to pay for part of the construction of your new barracks') it wouldn't be so bad.

I also like the "free market" concept applied to research. Not spell research but a lot of the mundane tech I think it would be cool for it to be a lot more of a bottom up approach.

i.e. you direct tech research in very general, large areas. From time to time one of your citizens has an idea (would be cool to have a little "light bulb" or candle since medieval animate above a citizens head.) Basically you get a dialog that one of your citizens has had an idea on how to "improve housing" (or tame bears, etc) and should they pursue the idea Y/N? and of course if yes you would need to fund the research etc. Now maybe it is a tech that you don't care that much about having, but you would get bonus research for this type of thing because your citizen that came up with the idea, this is his passion...so do you go with the free market approach and get a tech that you hadn't initially set as a priority but get the bonus research due to this guys passion? Or do you say no and take a firmer hand in channeling research in the area that you want (but get lower ROI because everyone is working on YOUR dream not THEIRS)

I've always felt that the more a game like this can give the individual citizens the semblance of having a life of their own, the more engrossing and fascinating the game becomes. It actually presents more choices and your civilization gains a life of its own. Depending on how heavy handed you are (or willing to be an invisible hand) your civ might develop along completely different lines than you initially planned. And there would be +tives and -tives to both approaches.

Good points, and I definitely never would want it to get to where the people were playing "against" you. I would like it to be more of a choice between having complete control and standard research, or letting researchers follow their own path and getting better performance from them. But the choice of whether to do that or not would be ultimately yours.

Sounds like a lot of people in this thread didn't attend a class on economic history. There's plenty of evidence for advanced financial techniques even during the early Medieval period -- after all, Genoa really got going as a financial center in the 12th century, and the Mediccis and Fuggers got their start not long after. Now, before you're all "but dat was local or some such I am ignorant wah", these folks were using letters of credit and double entry book keeping -- modern practices -- as well as insurance and currency exchanges. 

My own expertise relates to the 80 Years War, and the enormous number of private contractors who enabled the Spanish to supply and outfit their troops, but the techniques in use then were established centuries prior.

For instance, Carolignians gave official rights to market towns -- fairs where letters of credit were exchanged for specie -- in the 9th century, and there are plenty of primary source documents relating to insurance from the Achaemenid empire in the 6th and 5th centuries BC. And heck, the first joint stock companies originated in the 13th century, with the Swedish mining company Stora (or if you disagree with the available evidence for that, the Muscovy Company of 1555).

Much of early modern history relied on the ability of banking consortiums or families to provide the credit and specie necessary to supply, outfit, and pay soldiers, administrators, and builders. Just because it doesn't take pride of place in Hollywood movies doesn't mean banking only came to be with the advent of the internet.

Warning! thread derail ahead! Disregard this post if you want to continue discussing the OP. I just had to address this post.

1st, not that it makes no nevermind, but most of your examples are towards the end of the middle ages.

And I just wanted to note how banking came into being it's really kind of funny actually, how much Christianity had to do with it.

See the Christians had laws against charging interest on loans. With some pretty severe penalties attached. And they also wouldn't let Jews into a lot of their guilds for crafting and making stuff. (This from some history studying I was doing today...)

So the church created a problem of credit scarcity (because seriously who wants to lend money at 0% interest) and they also caused all these Jews not to be able to get regular jobs because they were barred from most if not all of the guilds. So the only way the Jew can make money is by lending at interest (which he can do since he is not under Christian law) and now people scream because Jews run the world because they control all the banking and finance. Kind of funny the unintended consequences that happen.

That's in no small part because political science and economics were once a 'single' academic discipline, called political economy, and that parent discipline was a direct, and rebellious, offspring of moral philosophy (ethics). That fact of intellectual history is the main reason I've never really appreciated Stardock's past attempts to discourage discussion of politics on the GC2 boards or Stardock-wide Off-Topic. I'm all for keeping a civil forum, but I oppose hate crime laws in the real world for the same reason I believe it should be no crime in Stardock game-land to discuss political theory, current events, and history. Brad's OS/2 GalCiv (the real GC1) and Sid Meir's 'original Civ' share an essential syllabyle: civ. Civilization is fundamentally political and so are 4(5)X TBS games, so why is it such a faux pas to be direct about it?

At the risk of vexing the folks who are worried about the game having a story layer that means their sandbox is just a boring obstacle course, I have to say that this is entirely a 'story' question. And I'm saying that, with the shudder quotes, because I'm a lapsed social scientist and a lifelong lover of fiction that involves insanely long timelines. Maybe a lame reference to A Canticle for Leibowitz will make me seem at least half-resonable here (and yes, that was at least half a half-life joke).

Thank you for posting this. The objection, though, isn't that advanced financial techniques weren't influential historically, rather that fantasy as an artistic genre generally excludes them. That's what creates the the uneasiness. It's one thing to include the 'bank' as a town improvement -- even Master of Magic does this -- it's another to introduce a game mechanic which shackles your all-powerful sorcerer king to market necessities.

There are still more than enough political scientists who behave as though they were (or wish they were) economists.  Almost as scary as the number of economists who behave as though they were physicists.

Well, these private-sector entities could appear as researchable techs near the end of the "civilization" branch of the non-tree-tech-tree-that-really-doesnt-use-techs-per-se (NTTTTRDUTPS). That would solve a little of the realism problem.

I like the idea of having free markets in the game, as most (if not all) TBS games have centrally planned economies. You run your empire as you see fit, and build whatever you think or want in each town. Of course you then have bonuses and penalties associated with the buildings you put in place. What if it was a free market economy though and the citizens could build what they wanted and/or needed. You would then see your society develop on its own, you would end up with the bonuses and penalties associated with buildings as before, but entrepreneurs would have shouldered the cost of construction. The downside to this would be that you would get what the AI citizens built, and that the availble labor (production) would be reduced during the period. This would require a pretty good AI to be implemented correctly, as well as a good understanding of economics by the developers.

I agree with Denryu, and there lies the challenge.

As to whether the suggested system is viable in the game, I haven't given it much thought. As previous posters mentioned, I would also like to see a bit less determinism on the part of the player in favor of a more engaging populace -- far too often, games present the populace as an unthinking mob totally at the service of the player, which does a disservice to the people of the time presented, and our own. After all, parliaments and republics have had a major role throughout world history, from ancient India and Greece to early modern Europe and North America. 

As a side benefit, it would allow for lots of neat events and some role play on the part of the player. Do you become a tyrant amongst your people, crushing them beneath your magical iron seven league boots, or do you allow them democracy, and accept the limitations that come with popular representation?

I'd particularly like to remind people of the Hawks and Doves of previous versions of Civilization, where they might go behind your back to start or end wars, and generally raised Cain. While it could be annoying, it made the people you ruled over feel like more than just a bunch of resource generators.

I hated that. I want my populace to be an unthinking mob. While I have no problems with accepting penalties to espionage and war weariness in the name of freedom, I feel as though I should be making the important decisions, and shouldn't have to submit to the whims of the senate just to get my science and economic bonus. In other words, I would rather have a simpler game that sacrifices the need to engage in internal politics.

In general, there are a lot of really cool ideas for the economy floating out there on the forum. However, I don't think that economy/politics should be the focus of a magic based game. It would just end up being a distraction if it got too complicated.

Goodmorning all

I think that 'free market' really was the wrong word to describe what i was going for. 

I was more going for a special event type situation. rather then an entire undertone to the game mechanics.

in brief

Every building has two effects;
  A standard effect and a standard Cost/maintanence cost/ possibily usage cost. whatever.
  And a Mister Money bags Cost/maintanence cost/usage cost/ whatever, 

Only a few buildings have the second set of stats, and only those can be build by the sepcial event. 

If Money banks has enough money to construct the building, and the building isn't contructed, and the city would benifit significantly from its constrcution... and,...  Then you might trigger a special event where Money bags would offer to build the building for you.  It would present List 2 states and say you would get these instead of list one stats,  and you would choose to let it be build for you or not. 

If money bags controles alot of buildings, Money bags offers to build buildings more often,  

I also feal that using money bags should have a long term risk associated with allowing somebody in your empire to become very powerful (by way of money rather then magic) so 'some' sort of accumulating negative effects should be included for allowing money bags to run TOO much of your buildings. 

Some possibly bad things are:
that money bags could start demanding you do certain things or he will do bag things
If you use money banks, and another empire doesn't you'll have poor-er relations (vise versa)
If you are much richer then another empire, and you allow Money bags alot of buildings you will have poorer relations with them
If you Choose to 'nationalize' all/some of money bag's ownings, other empires will hate you, proportionally to how strong thier Money bags is.
If you suddenly stop allowing money bags to do whatever they want, they may go to other factions and build things there with money they can't spend in your territory.

The basic idea being that you get a building for free,   it works less then it normally would, but it's free,  if you use it TOO often you end up uninentionally making somebody powerful  who is loyal to making money, not loyal to you.  And that can have a downside.


One could go all out and have a full model economy to make all this happen more 'naturally' or you could modle it as 2 or 3 members of your faction who for whatever reason are more profit driven and get up and go then the rest of your populous.


Take care all.

Robbie Price.

I have no problem with a playstyle position like yours; I'm often in a despotic mood myself. But I'm always at least a bit put off when I'm playing a game like GalCiv2, develop something like Star Democracy, and there is no change in my level of control over 'my' civ. The 'advanced governments' need different names, or they need to come with new mechanics that reflect the tradeoffs an autocrat makes when seeking to do something like boost the national economy by tolerating more autonomous decision-making at lower levels of gov't and/or in privately operated markets.

I agree: while my playstyle definatey trends toward the dictatorial end of the spectrum, it might be nice to actually have to give something important up in orsder to get the better economy or less war-wearyness or whatever of a new governing ethos.

Sure. I think that bonuses and penalties are a better way of handling this. The choice the player has to make is what combination of bonuses/penalties are best, considering their current situation. In other words, the Civilization system minus the interference of the Senate. (Or, alternatively, the Master of Orion system, which makes government type a racial pick.)

Anyone ever play Victoria Revolutions?  Personally I think something like this could be implemented with the hero system (heroes using money granted to them by the player or their family or land possessions to set up businesses, purchase farms and conduct trade, enriching themselves and the cities they conduct business in), however outright venture capitalism would have to be somewhat restrained.  It bears remembering that businesses of the time (ie the high medieval era) were extremely limited in what they could do and how they could compete by extensive guild structures, royal monopolies and a whole host of other anti-competetive practices.  I think in order to be effective for this game the capitalists would have to have a human face (hence the concept of character run property and business).  This would be both fun and accurate to watch what your characters create while they enrich themselves (and help you in the process). 

An adventurer gets rich by killing a successful bandit lord and uses the proceeds to start dealing horses in one of your cities (building a horse dealer in a building tile.. owned by him, but usable and taxeable by you).  He expands his trade to several cities, and then uses the profits to build himself a nice little stronghold in the country.  The business and fortress would then be passed down to his kids, and used to meet their own ends (so if they are hostile to you, possible discord and other machinations may come from that alternate center of power).