Diverse alien races would never use the same currency, so each race should have its own currency that could be converted when dealing with other races.
I know that money as resources has been rejected and so far I didn't mind, but this ? Each Species having a monetary policy that has to take into account the monetary policies of other Species, both in the same Empire and in others ? That's gold !
If someone is versed enough in economy so as to propose a good implementation of it, we should really put it into the game...
(actually I'm not sure that economic theory would prevent different Species to be subject to a common currency, so keeping different monetary systems or trying to unify them - partially or totally - could be a way of managing one's Empire and its inter-species relations)
AFAIR, the main problem with currency is that some species won't use any form of currency, money, credits, anything. Think of George for example, George doesn't commerce with himself.
We have influence now.
Non-monetary economic systems exist IRL and AFAIK they're a challenge only to obscurantist economic theories, they are taken into account by others.
Influence can be considered as an abstraction of the economy, that is true.
But the more we abstract, the less leeway we give to precise management (which is the objective when this management would be micromanagement), so it may be interesting to abstract a little less in this area, provided we have a good implementation of monetary politics available.
I think “money” can be appropriately abstracted* with some type of Trade mechanism that acts as an additional source of Influence (Instead of only population/planet based influence production)
* ie still allowing some interesting control/decisions
LienRag wrote: ↑Sun Jul 11, 2021 3:42 pm
Non-monetary economic systems exist IRL and AFAIK they're a challenge only to obscurantist economic theories, they are taken into account by others.
Influence can be considered as an abstraction of the economy, that is true.
But the more we abstract, the less leeway we give to precise management (which is the objective when this management would be micromanagement), so it may be interesting to abstract a little less in this area, provided we have a good implementation of monetary politics available.
Actually that may work with monetary policies I guess...
But I can't think of good ones.
LienRag wrote: ↑Tue Mar 15, 2022 9:06 pmActually that may work with monetary policies I guess...
But I can't think of good ones.
Capital Markets and Black Market already are policies. There could be Fiat Currency or Unified Currency policies, perhaps an Entitlements policy (ie. guaranteed income or other government-supplied support equivalent), and perhaps Gift Economy, and then something like Post-Scarcity as an economic system, though I don't really like that name for it...
Most 4X games include some kind of money, starting with Civ at least. Usually it allows to finish some production quickly. I always thought that the concept doesn't make sense. You cannot finish a half-built pyramid in one day, no matter how much money you spend. It reminds me on this IT joke: A project manager is a man who thinks that 9 women can give birth to a child in one month.
Money is surely used within the empire, but at the empire level it is hardly relevant. The imperial stockpile is a way that allows some production to be saved to speed up production when needed. Internally you can imagine that money has a role in it, but there is a limit how much you can spend simply because you cannot hire workers from the outside.