FreeOrion

Of course. There's some great stuff in this thread, I look forward to plowing through it when I'm in 'econ' mode. Just didn't want you guys to think you were being ignored!

Re: buildings -- we actually have not passed a specific building model. We wanted to hammer out the details of what it is buildings would modify before we start actually doing buildings. We've been a little hazy on this on purpose, I think, because most of us agree that 'planets should build things that do stuff' but we haven't really hashed out how. All this and more will get looked at the next time we go into design mode, which will be after the dev team has started on v0.2 and the design team starts on v0.3.

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Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!

@EA
A few problems I have:
1. How do you produce buildings? If you build them from pp, then can I do manufacture focus to build farm upgrades then switch to farm focus and keep the buildings. What about facilities that provide a constant bonus (independent of pop) if I build them but outside of foucs?
2. Whats the deal with that money loophole? A colonly produce 20 food and 20 BC and conusumes 20 food and 20 BC, why not forget the money and say 20 food -20 consumed = 0; what's the money for? Now if you want wealth for the sake of maintenence... just say 20 produced a net 20 wealth and just forget consuming wealth part.
3. Research is a resources so why buy it when it is produced by research foucs planets?
4. I don't like to overdrive food and min and research--doesn't make sense. At any rate, overdrive should always have diminshing effect. Why wouldn't you want to work at max efficiency right from the start?
5. I wouldn't be too quick in saying that no fiddling as an option is necessary. What if the AI has to decide whether to build a +20 food for 100 cost or +10% for 200 cost or +30 food for 150 cost? Each has its own advantage and disadvantages.
6. Trading should be more player dependent. If trading is totally done automatically, I pretty much know your finanicial situation because you are giving me this exact amount and not anthing else which I can just backtrack; empire econ should be top secret.

@PC
I wouldn't be too hasty in saying all that. It really depends on the buildings model. Some building might not be in focus but are important like government buildings or planetary defense but not important enough to be classified as wonder. Under EA-like proposal, defense will go away in time because of lack of maintenence which I think it is lame. What if you conquer a planet that is both mineral rich and provides a research bonus? Does that mean you have to chose. Also, in regard to micro, a synomyn for classification is dev plans. Some ppl will complain about crappy AI is in managing buildings and the fact that you can't modify building quee will irritate those ppl more. If you can change quees, then we are back to square one again and worst off than moo3 because at least in moo3 you can classify a planet under 2 catagories. This modifiable quee classification is not a closed solution to micro.

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For buildings, I feel it should be farms, industry, mines, civil services (police, fire, stores, etc.), and maybe one or 2 more things. Civil services would take up one land space, but would affect the entire planet (though higher pop. planet might need more to stop unrest).

I agree. We should be able to keep those enhancement buildings even though they aren't in focus. Ohterwise, why build that pleasure dome to lower unrest if it is going away? Do you mean focus related buidings goes away?

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There are two types of buildings. One is boring old infrastructure that you need to produce stuff. These are built and maintained by the colony's economy (from the untaxed wealth). Infracture can be improved with technology and upgrades, but they will be pretty generic to minimize micromanagment. If there is a choice between two types of incompatible factory upgrades, for instance, the player would make the decision once for ALL her factories, rather than a thousand times.

The second type of building is either military or some reasonably building with some special effect. These buildings are built and maintained out of the imperial treasury.

For addtional flavour, we would also try to put in technologies that have empire-wide economic effects without having to construct or upgrade any buildings.

Since infrastructure is built with wealth, you don't NEED an industrial focus to build up a farming world (though perhaps a minor focus in industry could help you expand the economy faster, or support heavy-duty planetary defences more efficiently). It is true that you will lose some investment in infrastructure if you radically change the economic focus of your colony, but you aren't supposed to change focus often anyway.



There is no money loophole as far as I am aware. Money exists for the cases where a colony is not trading all its production to pay for food and minerals. When a colony is a net importer of resources, it pays a price. When a colony is a net exporter, it gets a benefit. Wealth flows to resource planets so they can expand their economy.

As for calculating net wealth, I am calculating net wealth. I add up production and I subtract consumption. I'm not proposing that resources are magically converted to wealth. It's just an easy way to calculate who pays and who gets payed.



Government pays for research so research planets will have the wealth needed to expand, upgrade and maintain their labs. Research planets that are good at generating research get payed more so they expand faster.



Nothing ever gets overdriven unless the government spends more on a colony than it collects in taxes. Only then does the government (not the local economy) experience diminishing returns. The steepness of the diminishing returns curve depends on the amount of local industry. So if you're going to build expensive stuff, build it on an industry world.



We design the system so the planetary AI's decision are always dead obvious. Less like a decision and more just an equation. At any given time, your empire will have the current model of factory, lab, mine and farm available to be built. If the planet has money to spend on factories and some factories are of the old model, it will start upgrading them. If all factories are of the current model, it will start building new ones. We design the technologies so this is always the best decision to make anyway. If there are interesting or difficult tradeoffs to be made, the player decides that once for the whole empire.



Probably there will be two types of trade. One is 'closed': "I'll exchange 100 food for 200 minerals each turn." Another is a more open trade agreement, where you exchange to meet each other's needs each turn if possible (and possibly some other mutual benefit). While in the second case you do get information like: "He has extra minerals and a shortage of food", it would be hard to keep that information from a real trading partner anyway. If enemy spies are so dense they can't notice empty supermarket shelves you probably don't have to worry about them stealing top-secret plans for your Zoomba-Cannon prototype.




This is not true. Well, I'm sure you think it's lame, but that's not how the model works. Only excess economic infrastructure left over from some change in focus will be scrapped for lack of maintenance. Government buildings (of which there will be few) and planetary defence are built and maintained by the government and will be maintained until your government goes bankrupt. I see non-military government buildings as much more plentiful than wonders, but not something you need to build three of on every planet. More like 'which three systems in my empire should be trading centers?', 'where should I put my imperial academy?' and 'do I really need two espionage training centers?'

Again, many economic effects can be decided once at the empire level: 'Build weather control systems on all agriculture focus planets? Cost is 70 BC (840 total) and 5 BC per turn (60 total) Y/N',

Or even simpler: "Your scientists have developed weather control technology, +25% food production on worlds with major agriculture focus, +10% on worlds with minor agriculture focus"

Note that making it easy to implement a decision does not make the decision trivial.



Well, you do have to choose in that you can't select both mining and research as the major focus. That's the kind of decision a space emperor has to make



As far as I know, major and minor focus is in. I for one welcome our new focus overlords



My strategy is to make the part the AI controls so simple that its decisions are obviously optimal. Growth and maintenance of colony infrastructure is only a bit more complex than automatic growth of the population.

The difficult decisions are what planet classifications to use, what taxes should be, where military and special buildings should be built, what economic breakthroughs to research, etc. If people are upset that the brain-dead, obvious part of the game happens automatically... <shrug>

Anyway, I hope this post has cleared up a few foggy areas about the proposal.

Theres no reason to build all of these civil buildings on every planet. This isn't Sim City, or Sim Planet, its not even Sim Empire. Its 4X, I want to conquer and play with my fleet not tell bob on aquitaine to build a farm to feed himself.

Why not classify each planet as I colonize. If i colonize a research bonus/mineral rich planet than i obviously classify it as a Research/Mining planet (we are allowed 2 foci). As far as fire stations/police stations/etc. Why not just say every planet has them. I mean you are paying maintenance anyway right? So logically isn't that maitenance paying for something? And Defensive should NEVER be a classification. Its a misc building that can be built on any planet or all of them BUT your empire would go bankrupt if you tried to build them on every planet. So you'd have to decide which building to build where, etc. The rest of your planets would develop and contribute to the empire with minimal player interaction, thus decreased micro management.

All the basic buildings for the planetary focus are built. who cares when or how, they just are. And EAs propsal of wealth is wonderful because that way a planet develops based on how naturally productive it is (we could even have a % that says how developed a planet is). Thus a Gaia farming planet would develop and be MUCH more valuable than a barren farming planet.

There are other tings (of course) but i'll stop here to listen to your concerns/objections.

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Aquitaine is my Hero....

It clears up everything I have so far except three more and some sub-questions: 1. What if you don't want weather control system on all your planets? Can you do partial? Specify which planets? Delay it? Defer it? And 2. Is there any routine buildings that you would want for all or most of your planets i.e. civ's temple? Are the non-focus building auto maintain and don't depreciate and funded by the local government or imperial? I assume that if I do industry focus, I can still select whether I want planetary defense or police station or...? I assume industry is only good for generating money to build stuff including ships? Lastly, 3. Why would I want to tax anything less than enough to maintain the buildings and keep pop happy...Couldn't the AI just find the maximum tax rate? Or does the untax portion goes to boost local econ and tax goes to imperial funds with a one time penalty?

I also have a suggestion. I do suggest that money magically appear out of nowhere when you do +20 food +40 BC - 20 food consumed local and -20 BC to just say this planet net the empire 0 food and 20 BC. Combine the 40BC and -20 BC together to save cluttering. This is much cleaner. Just explain it in the encylopedia that the extra money comes from good management and local trading blah blah blah. I don't get what you mean by "when a colony is a net importer of resources, it pays a price. When a colony is a net exporter, it gets a benefit." Does that mean empire net wealth from food and min= 0? If so, why add a money variable when you can just do fine with the acutal resource themselves ledgering correctly? If it is net surplus, then just do a net to empire, since, after all, the importer is part of your empire and you want them to do well too. I think this is easier.

@Impaler
FYI, I was the one who said that I didn't want to play a game of sim city then... you don't need to fire back at me. That why I started "winning FO" thread to ask what kind of game we want. Most answered a conquest and economic game; and I take it research and secret wins are secondary. Conquest is very well under covered. That's why I propose some sort of market for trading for the econ win. Maybe a galactice stock market that ppl invest in each other empires like I'll exhange 35,000 shares of my mine co. for your 20,000 shares of your food co. Players set their pricing and whatever with AI helping.

In no where did I say that I was oppose to classification and complain that it shouldn't be in the game.

As far as I can see, money = pp in EA proposal; if you program EA's prop and do a search and replace the word "money" with "pp" it would work no differently.

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Here's a little 'sample turn' I've come up with. (specifically for illustrating some things how I think Omega Plan would work)

We have a Two planet Empire (Note Empire is designed to illustrate the way certain situations are handled and so is rather..badly designed)

Planet 1 (HW)

Pop..10
Food Richness (Food/Farm)..4.5
Mineral Richness (Mineral/Mine)..1
Major Focus..Farm
Minor Focus..Balanced
Overall Development...100% (perfectly in line with major and Minor Focus)

Planet 2 (New World)
Pop..10
Food Richness (Food/Farm)..0.5
Mineral Richness (Mineral/Mine)..2
Major Focus..Industry
Minor Focus..Industry
Overall Development...50% (ratios are currently equivalent to what the should be from Focus)


Empire Facts
Treasury...2 AUs
Food Stockpile...0 (Stockpile policy is set at 0.1)
Mineral Stockpile...0 (Stockpile policy is set at 0.1)
Farming Tech (Farm/popunit for labor)...1
Mining Tech (Mine/popunit for labor)...1
Industrial Tech (Factory/popunit for labor)...1
Lab Tech (Lab/popunit for labor)...1

Planet 1 (HW)

Farms...5.5
Mines...1.5
Factories..1.5
Labs...1.5

Planet 2 (New World)

Farms...0.5
Mines...0.5
Factories..3.5
Labs...0.5


STEP 1 in plan Omega is comparing demand for labor from all facilities to supply
In both Planet 1 and Planet 2, there is sufficient Labor (planet 1 needs 10 units; planet 2 needs 5; and both of them have 10)
(If a planet did not have sufficient Labor, all facilities would work at a % capacity equal to total population/total labor demand)

STEP 2 in plan Omega
Resources are produced.. and Wealth Generated

Planet 1...................Planet 2................Imperial
5.5*4.5 (24.75)........ 0.5*0.5..(0.25) .....0......Food (0.2 AUs each)
1.5*1 (1.5)...............0.5*2...(1)............0.......Minerals (0.2 AUs each)

+5.25 AUs..................+0.25 AUs..............+0 AUs
5.25 AUs.....................0.25 AUs...............2 AUs Total

STEP 3 in Plan Omega
Resources are consumed

Imperial Demand for Food...20 (10 pop on HW, 10 Pop on NW)
Imperial Food Supply...25 (produced)+ 0 (stockpile)=25

a) Each World Pays for its food
Planet 1 (HW)..............Planet 2 (NW)
-2 AUs.........................-2AUs
Running Total
3.25 AUs....................-1.75AUs

b) The Empire will now buy a stockpile of food (target based on Policy of 0.1 * consumption or a target stockpile of 2 units)
Amount Available...5
Target.....2
2 Food units are purchased by the Empire to replensih stockpiles
Imperial
-0.4 AUs
1.6 AUs Total

c) Excess is sold back to producers
Excess=3 units
Production=25 units
3/25 food unit sold back per food unit produced (at 0.2 AUs)
=-0.024 AUs per food unit produced
Planet 1(HW)...................Planet 2(NW)
24.75*-0.024..................0.25*-0.024
-0.594 AUs...........................-0.006 AUs
2.656 AUs............................-1.756

****Note: I am thinking that at least at certain Tech levels, if not immediately, resources of one type could be converted into another at a loss (ie 3:1, 2:1 conversion) if necessary, for this example I'm not doing that so I can illustrate both a shortfall and a loss************

Imperial Demand for Minerals....5 (1.5 Fact on HW, 3.5 Fact on NW)
Imperial Supply of Minerals.......2.5 (production) + 0 (stockpile)=2.5

a) Fractional consumption determined (Each planet will consume an amount equal to 2.5/5 * their requested consumption... with a corresponding drop in factory output, or the effects of starvation to follow)

Planet 1.............................Planet 2
0.75 .................................1.75..........Minerals Consumed
-0.15.................................-0.35........AUs Change
2.506.................................-2.106.......AUs Total


STEP 4 in plan Omega
Research and Industry
Research (1 AU per, + for planet - for Empire)
Planet 1......................Planet 2..................Imperial
1.5.............+..............0.5.............=............2............Research
+1.5...........................+0.5........................-2...........AU Change
4.006............................-1.606....................-0.4.........AU Total

Industry (1AU)
Planet 1......................Planet 2
0.75.............................1.75............Industry
+0.75...........................+1.75............AU Change
4.756.............................0.144.....AU Total

THIS TOTAL IS THE "GWP" of the World it's 'Wealth' (may be adjusted by trade agreements, etc.)


STEP 5 Taxation

say 50% Tax rate (because this empire is really messed up its going to need that much to hold it together)

Planet 1................Planet 2...........Imperial
4.756*0.5...........0.144*0.5
-2.378..........+......-0.072.....=>....+2.45........AU Change
2.378..................0.072.................2.05..........AU Total

STEP 6 Population Growth and Spending
[Increase population to make room for new Economic Development... assume both planets are full in this case]
(ED=Economic Development)
..............................Planet 1.............Planet 2
% of Untaxed to ED*...10%.................30%
Local Spending..........0.2378..............0.0216
ED Imperial Spending.....1.....................0.9
Ships Imperial Spending..0........................0
Defenses Imperial Spending..0...................0
Terraforming Imperial Spending..0.............0 (assuming no poll. for now)
Total Imperial Spending.....1.....................0.9

(*This number is not set by the player but by a formula)

Local Spending always gets 1 PP for 1 AU

Compare Total Imperial Spending to total Taxed Wealth to determine PP:AU ratio
......................................Planet 1..............Planet 2
Spending v. Taxes........... 1<2.378............0.6>0.072
Ratio...............................1:1........................see formula

formula,
T=Taxed Wealth on Planet
S=Spending on Planet
I=Industry on Planet (or a multiple of Industry on planet to decrease the severity of overspending)
X=S-T
M=Maximum AU:PP Multiple

PPs = T + X/M +(M-1)/M * I * LN * (X/I +1)

(Basically a non-stepped diminishing returns formula that has an AU:PP that gradually goes from 1 to M...the speed of which depends on Industry)

For our example and a M of 20...
Planet 2 gets ~0.48 PPs for 0.9 AUs

So Total ED Spending (in PPs, local + Imperial)
Planet 1.................................Planet 2
1.2378......................................0.5016

Assuming that 1 Facility (factory/lab/farm/mine) takes 0.1 PPs maintenance, planet 1's maintenance needs are 1, planet 2's are 0.5
PPs Left for New Development
Planet 1.................................Planet 2
0.2378...................................0.0016

Planet 1 (HW)
No New ED possible
the 0.2378 is split up among other government spending amounts according to their importance...or just saved by the Imperial Treasury

Planet 2 (NW)
New ED possible
the 0.0016 is divided according to the target v current (assuming all cost the same of 5 PPs per unit)
EDType.....Target.....Current......Difference...PP Cost......PPs received
Industry....7..............3.5................3.5...........16.5....0.00102
Farm.........1..............0.5................0.5.............2.5.....0.00016
Mine..........1..............0.5...............0.5.............2.5......0.00016
Research....1..............0.5...............0.5.............2.5......0.00016


(following Steps would be effects of terraforming spending, ship spending, defense spending, etc.)

In Omega plan, one of the advantages would be a possibility for uncomplicated buildings, ie Factory techs would merely say
+0.5 to (Factories per population unit)

Which would make all 'Factories'
1...Use less labor
2...Have a higher 'target value' (a 'Target value' is population* Factor based on Focus*Factories/farms/etc. per pop unit)

The target value is what you would build towards (New ED would be split among the 4 types based on their Target value minus Current amount, times cost) Also lowest Target value:Current level would determine what got scrapped first (if ED wasn't sufficient for maintenance)

Focus Factor being say 0.1, +0.2 if minor, +0.05 if minor=balance, +0.4 if major, +0.1 if major=balance

If something was Blockaded under Omega plan, best simplification might be 'Wealth'=Industry, all excess food and minerals go to the 'Local stockpile' to which is taken from the Imperial stockpile at the time the blockade begins. (but that's up around v.5 so....)

Note: I CAN think of a possible time when Wealth would 'come out of nowhere' and that would be Trade Agreements (but note that that would be an effective boost to Industry)


.

Yes, the money is just to make sure that specialization is allowed/reasonable (ie the total Wealth will be equal to the total Industry of your worlds, but with a Farm world and a Industry world the Wealth is distributed more evenly among them than Industry is)


(after all in all other empire games what was money, but merely a way of making production from other things..since usually you could make money from production.)

There are two ways to go with money,
1 recognize it is a production substitute, and treat it as such
2 create a free market form of money

I currently have a 'MOO4' design doc that goes with the second idea. It gets VERY complicated.

You should be able to delay or defer it. Note that it will never be built on all worlds, but just worlds that have a major (or possibly minor) focus on agriculture. You should probably be able to specify 'build on major focus' or 'build on major or minor focus' but I don't see selecting individual worlds. We might as well have a building at that point.



If we decide that there needs to be some sort of effect like this, it's the type of thing that would be handled on an empire-wide basis.



All areas of the economy are supported by the local wealth. Not having a focus on industry doesn't mean I have zero industry, it just means the target is to have 10% of the people working on industry (or maybe 25% if the focus is balanced). So the local economy will try to build and maintain enough factories that 10% of your population can work there.

The reasonably rare non-military, non-infrastructure building is paid for by the empire.



There probably won't be police stations, but planetary defence would ordered directly by the player, or through whatever macromanagement tools we adopt for that sort of thing. Maybe you set a target defence level for the colony, or declare that all border worlds should build a planetary shield. Basically it's undecided.



Barring outside influences or special events, industry produces all your empire's money. Some of that gets sent to farming and resource worlds (or indirectly to research worlds through the imperial treasury).

The other use of industry is as a limiting factor for how much extra you can spend. Overdriving a world that lacks industry gets very expensive.



The higher the taxes the more you have available to spend on military and other stuff. However money that goes into the imperial treasury is money that doesn't go into growing the local economy. If taxes are too high, the economy will stagnate or even shrink. Plus, people gradually become unhappy with higher taxes. There's no one point where everbody will go from happy to unhappy, so there's no easy-to-predict maximum tax level.



Adding up production and subtracting consumption is just how the game calculates it. There's no need to show the intermediate values to the player. He will probably just see stuff produced and net wealth. Exactly what to show the player is undecided.



We can call it money, or PP that gets moved around. I think calling it money is more intuitive, but I'm sure others disagree.

Krikkitone, I'm not sure what to think about real numbers for everything. I recognize it's easier to program and avoids possible 'Fun with Rounding' exploits, but I still feel the Civ-like allure of discrete units.



I think food -> minerals could work, but I'm against minerals -> food, or any conversion to or from research.



I'll have to throw this into excel to see how it looks

well I think minerals->food should be available at mid-high tech levels (Food Replicator Technology)

But I definitely agree with you on research (I was only considering food+Minerals as resources there)

as for 'degree of discreteness'... well there's going to be some discreteness whether we like it or not. (from computer limits on data size if nothing else) The issue is how much should we have (~1, 10, 100 or 10000 buildings per pop unit). I'd tend to want the discreteness in Tech levels (and the display to the player) as opposed to the actual buildings... but as someone pointed out with overspending, stepwise levels tend to lead to non obvious benefits for micromanagement.

I still don't see why you need importers to pay. What if you landed on a new colony that produce zero wealth? Are you saying that new colony has some initial wealth but the colony grow slowly unless you overdrive it?

It seems to me that Krik's omega is different from EA. I thought the only foucs allowered were the four resources. And EA would also have a stockpile for each of resources instead of selling back to producers.



Why not do both? The devlopers passed "industry or pp" so mind as well call one or the other to save confusion. Let me read the doc and I'll simplify the free market for FO.

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If importers didn't pay and exporters were still rewarded, then total empire wealth (or production if you prefer) won't equal factory production. In effect farms will produce food and production. I prefer importers to pay because then wealth reflects contribution to the empire.



It's a good point that there needs to be some mechanism to get a colony going. One possibility is that they get a factory or three from the scrapped colony ship. It's probably also advisable to give a starting colony some extra funds to get it developing faster.



As far as I know, neither Krikkitone nor I have talked about more than 4 focuses. Excess resources are purchased by the government to build the stockpile to a pre-defined target. Excess resources not purchased by the government are basically wasted and all producers lose money in proportion. We can think about this as selling back to the producers, or just waste. The process is the same either way.

How about excess resource tax? I don't see why the government has to buy the resource. We can just do excess resource * gov inefficiency -> imperial stockpile.



I prefer empire wealth not equal to factory production as it is easier. I prefer the having the resource itself reflect the contribution to empire. No need of extraneous money variable when they just cancels out. Nothing wrong with +20 food and +20 BC for exporter and just -20 food for importers. This way is simpler.

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