DESIGN: Economy Details for v.2

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PowerCrazy
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#61 Post by PowerCrazy »

Where did you read that buildings were passed? I mean there are some who love building every pop units house etc. but there hasn't been an official word yet. We know what IS NOT passed, sliders a la moo1 and the pop model of moo2 but buildigns are not "passed" as of yet. (though i imagine they will be as Aquitaine and others like them) However i still think there are other better ways for the planetary economy to work.
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skdiw
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#62 Post by skdiw »

I remember Tyreth said that buildings were passed and discussed in the old forums. I'll try to dig up the thread if I come across it. The best deal is try to get one of the developers to update the features thread; they may not do so untill v.2

@krik
So what happens to food and min that aren't consumed? When you said they are redistibuted, is that locally or empire or system? When you say no resources left unconsumed, does that mean the AI adjust its pop allocations so no surplus are made? If so, what if you have farms that generates +B food/min, like a hypo farm. What happens to surpass taxed moneys?
:mrgreen:

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#63 Post by EntropyAvatar »

Krikkitone wrote: As for taxes the idea was, I'll include an example (one planet empire)
Ok, that's much more clear now. But my idea is WAY better ;)

How about this:
1. Planets get AU for various types of production (AU for research is deducted from the imperial treasury).
2. Planets lose AU for various types of consumption.
3. What remains is the planet's wealth. THIS is taxed, and the taxes go to the imperial treasury.
4. Remaining planetary wealth divided between consumer goods and development. Maintenance fees are paid out of development funds, facilities get built with the rest.
5. Government pays for maintenance of any of its structures.
6. Government pays for extra planetary development, military structures, etc. THIS portion is subject to diminishing returns.

For 1-4, I think this approach is a simpler way of handling research costs. Government pays for research, then claws some of that money back in taxes. Note that in this model it is possible to have a high local research level without a high local tax level, as research is funded from the global tax base.

As for 5 and 6, I think it's best to limit the areas where overdriving is a factor. Overdriving makes things more complicated and harder to predict, so we should limit it to areas where we need its effect. The purpose of overdriving is to prevent the player from using a big treasury from doing unlimited instant building and construction. It should make the setting for major projects important.

So, the development rate for farming and mining (and research and industry) should be driven mostly by the planetary wealth. If the government wishes to step in to accelerate planetary economic development, then overdriving calculations would have to be based on the planet's wealth, not industrial might.

Hmm. Now that I look at your example more closely, it looks as though overdriving is based on the equivalent of plantary wealth in your approach as well.

I'm undecided whether or not ALL overdriving should be based on planetary wealth. Building you major ship yard on a primarily agricultural world would seem strange, but on the other hand I'd be annoyed if I couldn't easily build defences on a super-wealthy mining planet.

Just for the sake of simplicity I'd lean to making all overdriving based on wealth, with the understanding that really wealthy farming planets are very rare. Most wealthy planets will be industrial.

The alternative is to have two types of government spending on a planet. Maintenance and general 'economic support' funding overdrives based on wealth, but construction funding (military facilities and special building) overdrives based on industry.

--------------------------------

Another question is how to handle reserves in this model. It would make the most sense for government to pay for excess resources, which are put into its reserve. It gets money from consumers when the reserves are drained. One problem is that you wouldn't want to go bankrupt due to a boom in agriculture. There would have to be some limit or policy here.

Are excess resources that don't go into the reserves just lost, or maybe converted into money anyway? Idea being that it makes much more sense to use a unit of minerals to fill a factory's need, but more production always has some benefit.

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skdiw
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#64 Post by skdiw »

How about simplifying steps 1-4 to like: resource generates small amount of AU - planet maintenence = planetary taxable funds. I don't understand why you even need taxation unless you mean you build facilities with wealth instead of pp.

I like the overdrive based on wealth idea. We can do wealth + Industry
:mrgreen:

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Krikkitone
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#65 Post by Krikkitone »

For 1-4, I think this approach is a simpler way of handling research costs. Government pays for research, then claws some of that money back in taxes. Note that in this model it is possible to have a high local research level without a high local tax level, as research is funded from the global tax base.
Well Actually, I wasn't panning on having any 'local' taxes at all (all taxes going straight to or from the Imperial Treasury) But yor change for point 2 , consumption before taxes is a good idea, keeps planets from going into debt because takes took away their food payment
The alternative is to have two types of government spending on a planet. Maintenance and general 'economic support' funding overdrives based on wealth, but construction funding (military facilities and special building) overdrives based on industry
Well the thing is that all of those (in a realistic/plausible sense use production) And I think the extra cost incurred on a mining/farm world is reasonable because they would have to ship almost everything in. (plus assuming they are productive, they are also rare.)


As for the surplus food/minerals. I was figuring each world would have it's own stockpile. Because the primary use I can see for stockpiles is blockade survival.

Admittedly, having to pay for 3 food per person when you have an agricultural boom could lead to problems in some majorly importing planets. but the fact is based on the consumption model, the money has to come from somewhere or the system opens up for unbalancing effects.

An alternative is to maintain an Imperial level stockpile, where It is paid for by the government, and consumers pay based on what they actually eat/burn in the factories...possibly government coffers automatically make up the difference.

Then, whenever a world becomes blockaded, a local stockpile is produced and deducted from the Imperial stockpile. (it is assumed to be 'already there')

This Would have the advantage of no sudden drop in a food importing planet's* wealth from an agriculture boom, but would have the disadvantage of a sudden drop in the treasury.

*which would probably be most of them

If we wanted to be Really complex, the AUs that a unit of food or minerals were worth that turn could depend on the Imperial wide production/consumption ratio. (but that would destroy the ability of easily balanced mineral/food trade between empires. It would minimize someone going broke because of an agriculture boom though.)

Actually, I saw a part of your post that clicked here's the plan

1. Resource Produces get AUs based on the fixed price

2. Resource Consumers pay AUs based on Consumption*fixed Price

3. Government pays for Surplus, collects for Deficit until the Stockpile is X* total consumption, where X is set by Government policy. (stockpile is Imperial, and divided among world's when they get blockaded proportional to their consumption)

4. Amount remaining is bought back by Producers (so if 10% of all food produced that turn is unused and unstored, then world's that produce food are charged 0.025 AUs per food produced)

No one goes into anymore deficit than they would like, (unless there are a number of undeveloped food importing worlds in your empire (because I assume the Imperial treasury would subsidize those worlds)..but that is an example of bad management.)

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#66 Post by EntropyAvatar »

Krikkitone wrote:Well Actually, I wasn't panning on having any 'local' taxes at all (all taxes going straight to or from the Imperial Treasury)
Sorry then. It just seemed that way when you were talking about research being paid for out of the taxed portion of income.
Well the thing is that all of those (in a realistic/plausible sense use production) And I think the extra cost incurred on a mining/farm world is reasonable because they would have to ship almost everything in.
Well, I'm sure if we thought hard we could come up with reasons why it would be realistic the other way around. Maybe farms and mines are assumed to come with some integrated light manufacturing capability. Even shipping everything can't be too bad since we are assuming reasonably cheap (or even negligible/free) freight.

I don't want to have mine and farm construction/maintenance require local industry because it means the purer resource worlds will be seriously outpaced by mixed worlds, for reasons that are not obvious at first glance. If we require local industry, optimizing mineral and food production would be pretty complicated. I think we'll have a hard enough time convincing the core design team to go for something like this without that added headache for the player.

If we go with overdriving based on wealth, the rule for the player is 'try to build expensive things on rich worlds'.

If we go with a two types, the rule for the player is 'try to build expensive things on heavily industrialized worlds'

If maintenance and construction of everything depends on local industry, the rule is 'try to build expensive thing on heavily industrialized worlds, and every world that's trying to build up quickly needs an initial emphasis on industry, but that will change over time, except that you always want enough that you aren't paying too much for maintenance'
Admittedly, having to pay for 3 food per person when you have an agricultural boom could lead to problems in some majorly importing planets. but the fact is based on the consumption model, the money has to come from somewhere or the system opens up for unbalancing effects.
I was thinking of an agricultural boom making you bankrupt in the sense that a sudden large surplus means the government has to start paying a lot to producers to put it all in storage. If there are set storage targets, as you suggested, that's not such a problem.
Then, whenever a world becomes blockaded, a local stockpile is produced and deducted from the Imperial stockpile. (it is assumed to be 'already there')
This sounds good to me.
This Would have the advantage of no sudden drop in a food importing planet's* wealth from an agriculture boom, but would have the disadvantage of a sudden drop in the treasury.
So you are talking about excess food being consumed for morale purposes? If we go for constant cost and constant consumption this is not a problem. I don't know how to best deal with it if consumption per person is highly variable.
If we wanted to be Really complex, the AUs that a unit of food or minerals were worth that turn could depend on the Imperial wide production/consumption ratio.
I think we should avoid that if possible. Aside from the initial complexity, price changes would operate as feedback and I think could introduce counterintuitive, unstable situations (moreso because it's not a real market with intelligent decision-makers).
Actually, I saw a part of your post that clicked here's the plan...
I like this plan.

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Krikkitone
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#67 Post by Krikkitone »

If maintenance and construction of everything depends on local industry, the rule is 'try to build expensive thing on heavily industrialized worlds, and every world that's trying to build up quickly needs an initial emphasis on industry, but that will change over time, except that you always want enough that you aren't paying too much for maintenance'
Well that sort of works with the common custom in these games, first thing on Any New world is a factory, etc., but you're right that it would be easier if it wasn't


Ok plan B, or F by now, sounds good,

Consumer Goods, Economic Development, and Economic maintenance, are direct AU costs.

All other spending is vulnerable to Declining returns based on

1:1 for Industry minus Total spent on Local Economic Development and Consumer Goods (with a minimum of 0, so you always get to start out at the minimum level of overdriving)

X:1, ie decreasing returns for everything above that (with Industry as the multiplier)

So a non-Industrial world can't build ships, or local defenses, or terraform* effectively. but it will develop and grow like any other world.

Also an Industrial world would spend less of its industry on development and Consumer Goods and so would start out at 1:1 ratio for a significant portion of its time.

*This is probably OK if pollution cleanup costs are tied to production... so only a highly Industrial world would need massive amounts of terraforming. (for bad environment mining worlds, a number of population increasing buildings seems better)

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#68 Post by EntropyAvatar »

Krikkitone wrote:Well that sort of works with the common custom in these games, first thing on Any New world is a factory, etc.,
That's true. If it were just the neccesity of having at least one factory I wouldn't worry. It's the continuing complexity of having diminishing returns in all construction and maintenance that makes me wary here. The parts of the game that are automatic shouldn't be complex.

I like how you've laid things out. One final wrinkle is economic development assistance. I wouldn't want boosting to be subject to the possibly steep penalties of the regular diminishing returns scale, but unpenalized and unlimited would be really broken. So maybe say you can give a planet a chunk of money from the treasury. It will use those to double it's economic development (and consumer goods?) spending while the funds last. There is a conversion penalty of 3:2 however. Very much like MOO1, except it's only used by the civilian economy.

We would also have to decide on which side of the line special economic buildings fall. Is building a global weather control system subject to diminishing returns? Who's responsibility is maintenance? Is that maintenance subject to diminshing returns?

Finally, I agree that capping the cost curve at some maximum multiple makes the most sense. I think something between 5 and 10x would be sufficient though. Enough that I don't have to bankrupt my empire to ship something pre-fab, but a cost that will quickly catch up to you if used too much.

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Krikkitone
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#69 Post by Krikkitone »

OK plan Q

Government Total Spending is at 1:1 AU:PP until it reaches planetary pretax wealth, then it is subject to the exact same Industry dependent diminishing returns as all other government spending.

So if
planetary Total Wealth was 200 AUs, Industry=100 PP(this world exports food/minerals/research)
Tax Rate=25%
Wealth spent by the private side=150 AUs
Government Spending =400 AUs (major investment in this world)
Government yield in PPs
first 50 AUs to 50 PPs (200 initial AUs wealth minus 150 spent privately leaves 50 for proper government spending)

next 150 AUs to 100 PPs (first wave of diminishing returns based on Industry output of 100 PPs)

next 200 AUs to 100 PPs (second wave of diminishing returns based on Industry output of 100 PPs)

400 AUs Government spending gives it 250 PPs to spend on
Economic Development (includes maintenance)
Ships (Includes Troops to be stationed on other planets and Shipyards)
Planetary Defenses
Terraforming (includes pollution cleanup)


(and I'd probably put the cap at 20*... maybe about 16* (four doublings worth)... at which point you can spend as much as you want at that loss ratio)

As for Special Economic Buildings I'd like to try to avoid them if at all possible.

The best way I can think to deal with them is one of two ways


1. If it is a building that you would build on every planet with a particular focus, then just make it a tech that just increases the capacity for that resource only available on major, or minor, focus.

2. Let the Government pay for it if it is a building you would only want under certain conditions that Don't have to do with focus (border world, pop maxed out/low, etc.).. and that amount of its maintenance is just deducted from the government budget of the appropriate kind... (assuming global weather control is a food booster that's only worthwhile at high populations, then it would subtract its net PPs from the ones obtained by the Government on Economic Development)

The thing is the only stuff I can see that should fall into the category of 'special building' are scanners defensive structures, shipyards, academies, capitals (basically mostly military stuff) all the rest I can see rather easily as a 'continuum of spending' that can rather easily be applied anywhere in particular (with the exceptions easily categorized)


However, as a General rule I think we want to avoid those #2 types of buildings, they make magement more difficult, and should be more 'special' to qualify for 'special buildings' (I would like to see things as generic as possible ... in the sense of game mechanics...you could still have a city picture type view like MOO2, but it would be calculated from development levels and Techs available.)

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#70 Post by EntropyAvatar »

Ok that looks good. One formula for overspending and it should be pretty reasonable under almost every circumstance. Maybe you should do this professionally ;)

I still think 16x is a little high, but I'd love the chance to be proven wrong in play testing.

I'm sure you're right about special buildings. We definitely want to keep the management as click-free as possible.

Now, how would you handle upgrades?

Output per person is going to go up a lot during the game. I think the thing we want to maintain is the ratio of investment to productivity. Maybe the end-game factory-worker can put out 25x as much, but building and maintaining the infrastructure so they can do that should cost at least 12x as much as the starting situation.

So say you get a new factory tech, what happens?

1. All existing factories now produce at the new rate, and have the new maintenance fee. New factories are built at the new cost.

2. As above, but planets pay to upgrade all existing factories before the new rates kick in. As in Moo1.

3. As above, except upgrades happen incrementally, you don't have to wait until all are upgraded on a planet to start reaping the benefits.

4. Any reasonable alternatives?

I don't like (1) because larger empires get a much greater benefit without incurring any additional cost.

One other thought. If we have a fixed value for food, food in the end-game is going to be very cheap compared to the value of production that it supports (as the per-person value of production goes up). This mean worlds with an agricultural focus will become relatively poorer as the game progresses. I don't know that I have any particular problem with this (maybe the inhabitants of those worlds would...). If we wanted to avoid this, the most obvious thing would be to change the price of food, but would we want that?

Also, if we keep 1 min-> 1pp constant, there's going to be an awful lot of minerals extracted late game, compared to food. Is it advisable to ever change this ratio? I think it could be interesting.

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#71 Post by skdiw »

After you guys are done, could one of you post a comprehensive detailed proposal for everyone. Using modifiers like "planetary," "system," "empire-wide" would be helpful. I'll modify my model after you guys are done.

I am probably wrong without fully understanding, but it seems that you guys are forcing in taxation and generation of AU for the sake of realism and have no profound actual game effects. But I can't really say this without first reading your proposition. ppl also seem to want to win through economic means via some sort of stock market so maybe a more elaborate, but in more meaninful way, economic system is in order. Maybe some galatic companies that players can invest in.

Also, some ppl here don't like moo3 overdrive mechanics. I don't like it because the step function invites unecessary micro as players might be tempted to maxed out their efficiency of funds at this 4:1 ratio before going to next ratio. S-curve is much easier plus we can use it over and over for other parts of the game. I imagine just write a library for it along with other commonly used mathmatical functions and just call upon in programming.

As for upgrades, I think I recommended a refit with no additional/miniscule maintenence costs and that refitting will be preferred than building extra buildings (to save AI some trouble in deciding whether it is more cost beneficial to build new or refit existing and consider maintenence). Remember that players already dump in tons of time and resource in research for signigicant improvements; I don't call a 5% increase in efficiency and a 4% increased cost a significant imporvement to drop a billion AU and 20 turns for that tech upgrade.
:mrgreen:

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#72 Post by Aquitaine »

Just FYI--

We have not decided on or passed any 'money' feature. This is on the list for v0.3 so we will be addressing it soon, after the v0.2 doc comes out. So before you go spending all day writing an econ proposal, might be a good idea to make sure you know which things are set in (loose) stone and which things are really part of what you're proposing.
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#73 Post by EntropyAvatar »

Aquitaine - I think the ideas Krikitone and I have been developing will probably form a v.3 proposal (especially if you are already in the process of writing the v.2 DD). I'm hoping that the design process allows for this degree of refinement and elaboration within the design space laid-out by previous decisions.

As for money, in this model it is nothing more than production that's transferrable (subject to limits and diminishing returns). Since all the other resources (food, minerals, research) are transferrable, production should be as well. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a single 4X game that didn't have money or something that played the same role. So I'm pretty confident money will be accepted in some form. We'll just have to try to convince people that this is the right form.

Skdiw - I'll try to put up a clean explanation of the proposal (as I understand it) tonight when I get back from work. I'll try to include a section on motivations in order to make clear that it's not just window-dressing for the sake of 'realism'. As for the overdriving mechanism, I agree that a step-wise approach is not desirable as the corners would breed micromanagement. I don't this the proposal requires any particular diminishing returns curve.

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#74 Post by EntropyAvatar »

Economic Proposal Omega:
---------------------------

The primary and secondary focus of a colony together determine the target distribution of population between production of food, extraction of minerals, manufacturing and research.

Population by itself doesn't produce anything (or at least, very little). To be productive, infrastructure must be built and maintained. A factory worker needs a factory, a miner needs a mine, etc. This infrastructure won't represent just buildings, but everything needed to get the job done.

The colony automatically builds infrastructure to fit the colony focus. If you switch focuses, the need to build new infrastructure slows the transition. After the switch, the now unused infrastructure of the old focus will be gradually scrapped due to lack of maintenance.

Each turn, the game tries to fit people into the desired jobs (e.g. 50% farming-major focus, 30% mining-minor focus, 15% research and industry). If the aren't enough farms, maybe one unit will work in a factory instead.

Food and minerals produced each turn are either consumed by your empire, bought by the government and placed in reserve, traded to a friendly empire, or wasted. Colonies that import resources pay in production, while colonies that export resources gain production. Here's how it's implemented:

Each colony gets money (measured in BC: billion credits) for each thing it produces, at a fixed rate. Each colony pays money for the food and minerals it consumes, also at a fixed rate. If production doesn't equal consumption, the government can buy excess resources to put in reserve, or sell resources from the reserve.If there is a trade agreement, other empires might also buy and sell resources. The government buys all research. If no one buys a resource, the producers of the resource lose a proportional amount of money, so everything remains balanced.

The BCs a colony has after buying and selling is its wealth. The government takes a percentage of this wealth in taxes. The rest is divided between consumer goods to keep people happy and the development and maintenance of infrastructure.

While the colony spending takes care of itself (determined by colony focus), the government spending is decided directly by the player (or through whatever macromanagement tools are selected). Government can spend up to whatever it took in taxes on the colony without penalty. As soon as it goes beyond this level (total spending greater than total colony wealth) it starts to experience diminishing returns in a smooth curve. The steepness of the curve depends on the amount of industry on the colony. This way, expensive things such as shipyards are best built on industrial worlds.

-------------
Notes
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The need to build and maintain infrastructure means that economic growth is directly linked to population growth AND investment in economic growth. New population will mostly just be a burden unless the infrastructure is in place.

Using this system, colonies will develop over time according to their planetary focus, without much fiddling from the player. No autobuild is needed for this, as spending is just allocated depending on focus. Colonies that excell at their focus will grow into rich economic centers while colonies that are unproductive will be relatively stagnant.

Important spending decisions, such as placement of shipyards, ship construction, planetary defences and unique or very special buildings are always up to the player, unless he chooses to use some macromanagement tool to direct construction.

Entering into trade with another empire allows you to automatically supply each other's needs as the economies are linked together. Though both empires benefit, the empire with the more efficient economy benefits more.

Thanks to Krikitone for helping to jointly thrash out this model. Of course, me being me, I'll probably want to tweak or change things, so be on the lookout for Proposal Omega+1.

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#75 Post by PowerCrazy »

That sounds good to me. The planet is colonized, the player picks a focus, time passes and the planet develops. Solves all micro-management problems as there is no benefit to be had from fiddling. Buildings are BIG and IMPORTANT. i.e. Shipyards (of various sizes) Starbases (of various sizes), perhaps planet defenses, Galactic wonders, and maybe even empire wonders etc. Basically when you choose to build something it is an IMPORTANT decsion, and WILL be a strategic part of the game.
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