DESIGN: Money Money Money

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emrys
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#61 Post by emrys »

Starrh wrote: lets set up an example three worlds

LotsofFood wants production and is willing to give up food has no need of minerals
lotsofproduction wants minerals and is willing to give up production has no need for food
lotsofminerals wants food and is willing to give up minerals has no need for production

in this example cash can make this work very simply. lotsofproduction can sell product to lotsoffood for cash lotsoffood can then buy minerals from lotsofminerals. This is a simplistic example and of course the more complexes system will give you more flexibility. In my opinion money will conform to the kiss concept a little better, everyone is familiar with the use and exchange of cash and in the midst of a trading situation you do not have to search out a combination of trades to get what you want.
The risk with having money in there though is that we get carried away with this idea, and say, so you can sell stuff you don't want for money, and buy stuff you need for money. This works in your example, but imagine:

A) Loads of food. - has lots of food, needs minerals
B) Lots of Food - has some spare food, needs some production
C) Lots of production - willing to give up production, needs minerals.

We blithely convert stuff to money rather than sorting out the trades and get A sells food buys minerals, B sells food buys production, C sells production buys minerals. This works in terms of money, but of course we've just invented the minerals from nowhere, and sold more food than anyone wanted to buy! (this is a danger in any setup that isn't precisely balanced, i.e. every combination)

One alternative, properly netting off the surplusses and deficits and then trading them between planets rapidly leads you into headaches trying to model the correct prices of commodities when modelling the market economy, just ask Krikkitone, he and EntropyAvatar bashed their heads against this one for ages.

The other, hamstringing the conversion process with strange rules, limits and ad-hoc arrangements, makes the players life so complicated you'd be much better off just keeping the resources completely separate and handling the surplus and shortfalls by independant allocation rules.

emrys
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#62 Post by emrys »

han_krum wrote:
emrys wrote: What determines the price of the resource?
Equally, are there any monopoly effects modelled (if you own all the sources of cotton / oil / something does that have any effect on anything). Is the resource output of each province fixed? (I presume so since I seem to remember the output of provinces in EU was pretty constant in general?)
Now the problem is it's been quite a while since I last played EU and I'm not sure I remember correctly. The output is fixed IIRC. I think the price did depend on the quantity of the resource being traded at the same trade center. Also, if I'm not terribly wrong, provinces automatically got assigned to the trade center where you'd get the most money, considering the two factors, distance and availability of the commodity. Monopoly effects, I'm not sure about provider monopoly, but you could have trade monopoly, like you could control 100% of the trade at a given trade center, and I persume it was harder to be outcompeted when you control a larger part of the trade. Nothing stops US from having provider monopoly or anything, though. After all, this is a different game :)
O.k. then, as I see it this "special resource" system is entirely parallel to the decision about money or not as a separate "resource", since if we have money, then these things get converted, via a trade centre into money, and if we don't then they could get converted via a trade centre into one of the existing resources.

It also appears to be separate from any decision about taxes or other details of the economy system, since again it could be equally bolted onto the side of any version so far discussed.

That said, I think it might be fun on it's own merits. So I'd vote that Aq sneaks it onto the design doc for about v6 or 7 maybe... He can do that, and we'll all think we agreed to it way back now, so It'll keep the discussion to a minimum too :wink:

Starrh
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#63 Post by Starrh »

emrys wrote:
We blithely convert stuff to money rather than sorting out the trades and get A sells food buys minerals, B sells food buys production, C sells production buys minerals. This works in terms of money, but of course we've just invented the minerals from nowhere, and sold more food than anyone wanted to buy! (this is a danger in any setup that isn't precisely balanced, i.e. every combination)
I am not sure I agree with you here you are not really creating minerals out of nothing you are just short circuiting the process by making a direct trade instead a more convoluted scenario that you would probably have to go through in order to get the minerals. Again in a real system you could probably be able to find a direct trade situation.
emrys wrote: One alternative, properly netting off the surplusses and deficits and then trading them between planets rapidly leads you into headaches trying to model the correct prices of commodities when modelling the market economy, just ask Krikkitone, he and EntropyAvatar bashed their heads against this one for ages.
I agree but I think that is going to be an issue as long as you have trade in the game no matter what form.
emrys wrote: The other, hamstringing the conversion process with strange rules, limits and ad-hoc arrangements, makes the players life so complicated you'd be much better off just keeping the resources completely separate and handling the surplus and shortfalls by independant allocation rules.
You are probably much more knowledgeable then me on this but it seems that exchange rate or independent allocation rules either way you have introduce complication to the game. If you say that independent allocation rules would be more complicated then exchange rate I am not sure I would agree though I am not sure what evidence I could produce that would prove my case.
If it was easy then we all would be doing it!

emrys
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#64 Post by emrys »

Starrh wrote: I am not sure I agree with you here you are not really creating minerals out of nothing you are just short circuiting the process by making a direct trade instead a more convoluted sneer that you would probably have to go through in order to get the minerals. Again in a real system you could probably be able to find a direct trade situation.
Nope, note that in my example nobody had spare minerals to sell, so where did they buy them from? This is an (admittedly blatant) example of the kind of nasty snafu it's all to easy to get into when you start thinking in terms of money in situations way outside normal life (which is simplified hugely by the fact that nothing much any one person does makes more than the slightest difference in an economic sense). For a game like this you need to think in terms of at least major governmental planning in order to get reasonable parallels with real life.

Aquitaine
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#65 Post by Aquitaine »

Let's seperate out two issues here--

Can we talk about an econ system where you cannot simply convert money to PP or RP as a matter of course? Or, if you could, this would be the exception and not the rule?

I think the problem here is this conversion, tying money into every other resource. I have fewer problems with stuff in the other direction - tax production to get money; sell things to get money; but I don't like just sending money off somewhere to augment a system we already have (and that is something better put off until later.)

But for v0.3, we have to decide on the economy and on buildings, so we know how to start designing the tech tree. There actually won't be anything to spend money on in v0.3, I don't think, since there's no fleet maintenance yet, so maybe we can put this off for v0.4, but I think we need to know where we're going with it before then. Plus v0.4 will be a madhouse anyway.

-Aq
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luckless666
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#66 Post by luckless666 »

Aquitaine wrote:I have been thinking about a 'no money' solution as well, but it leaves some significant gaps.

Your proposed method seems designed to solve the problem of 'how can you get a new colony off the ground fastest,' or, more generally, 'how can you direct outside production to a new location.'

Personally, I don't think this is a problem that needs solving.

In terms of 'what does money allow us to do' - it means we have a metric to handle transactions, really, and nothing else. So we can have events that cost money, trade money for other things in other empires, have one Empire pay tribute to another, have a cost associated with fleet maintenance, and so on.

Some of these things we could do with a 'national PP stockpile' as well, though; fleet maintenance could be measured in terms of PPs required, and this is intuitive in the sense that you pay PPs and not cash to build a ship, so why not also to maintain them.

So long as we keep the monetary system fairly straightforward (maybe even less complicated than EU2's) then I'm still on the side of having one, but I guess that's the discussion I was hoping to have here, rather than the 'how can we design a really interesting and complex economic model.' In MOO2 it is an interesting resource that differentiates some races from others; but we already have strategic resources MOO2 doesn't. I guess the question is, is it worth the trouble to design a system for it? EU2 does have other strategic resources, of course; grain, gold, cotton, naval supplies, et cetera, but they aren't really central to the game (except maybe grain) like food and minerals are to the MOO universe; most of those resources are just money pits, and few of them have an effect on anything else.

So - I'm not totally sure we need money either. I think we can make a case for not having it, but then we have to kludge PPs or something else to fill the two or three necessary functions that a money system was supposed to provide. I guess the question that I'd want to see answered is: if it's really that unnecessary, can we think of some games that don't use it for the reasons emrys suggests not using it?

Off the top of my head, I can think of only HoI, but that's really more of a military simulator than an Empire-simulator.
I agree that this type of game needs money as a medium to the other resources, as ell as trade etc. I like the idea of a more compliacted monetary system, though many people dont. Even though emrys provides a very good argument against money, in my opinion, PP can not be used for everything money can be (you cant pay people in a factory with parts, can you?) Trade is also very good example. you cant effctively trade RP (thoughts basically) so that would fall down to minereals and PP. but what if thats what you want? then money can be used.
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Daveybaby
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#67 Post by Daveybaby »

I agree that money shouldnt be able to be converted directly to PP/RP/food/minerals. What it should be able to do, however, is speed production of these things by a limited percentage. e.g. paying overtime, buying more/better tools etc.

If money is only going to be used to pay for maintenance and other turn by turn expenses, then it shouldnt be in the game, period (deduct the expenses directly from your industrial output instead). Money is only any use if the player can choose when and where to spend some of it.
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Underling
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#68 Post by Underling »

emrys wrote: We blithely convert stuff to money rather than sorting out the trades and get A sells food buys minerals, B sells food buys production, C sells production buys minerals. This works in terms of money, but of course we've just invented the minerals from nowhere, and sold more food than anyone wanted to buy! (this is a danger in any setup that isn't precisely balanced, i.e. every combination)
I think the problem we've had in this discussion so far is really an inability to agree upon the parameters of an economic model. For example, if this game were a market simulater (any of the Tycoon type games or games like Machiavelli, Merchant Prince, etc...) then the level of focus on the mechanics of trade mentioned above would be welcome, necassary and appropriate. However, this is a 4x game - the player is going to be focusing on diplomacy, warfare, exploration, etc, etc... Making the player spend this amount of attention on trade mechanics seems a little excessive.

A simple model where money represents an abstraction of the economics undoubtedly going on within and between empires can cover all of the game's needs without requiring an economics major or accountant to determine the optimal trade patterns for maximum profit.
emrys wrote:
One alternative, properly netting off the surplusses and deficits and then trading them between planets rapidly leads you into headaches trying to model the correct prices of commodities when modelling the market economy, just ask Krikkitone, he and EntropyAvatar bashed their heads against this one for ages.

The other, hamstringing the conversion process with strange rules, limits and ad-hoc arrangements, makes the players life so complicated you'd be much better off just keeping the resources completely separate and handling the surplus and shortfalls by independant allocation rules.
I would argue that money should represent an abstraction of economic activity tied to an arbitrary value rather than have it be tied to a specific resource. To tie money to production is the equivalent of using a "gold standard". If we keep money unfettered to production or any other resource, we can essentially have a floating value currency whose availability can be tied to empire size and level of development.

I look forward to seeing where all this economic discussion actually leads.

The 'Ling

Oh yeah, for our younger members, the gold standard was when the dollar was backed by our federal gold reserves. Each dollar bill was redeemable for a specific weight of gold bullion.

leiavoia
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#69 Post by leiavoia »

Yeah, no fair to have money but not be able to spend it on what i want. If i wanted to just pay bills with it, i'd just go back to real life. I want me a superdreadnought every so often! :-)

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#70 Post by krum »

I don't have a problem with you buying a superdreadnought in one turn, as long as you actually buy it from someone and it doesn't just magically pop out of nothingness. :)

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#71 Post by krum »

Underling wrote:However, this is a 4x game - the player is going to be focusing on diplomacy, warfare, exploration, etc, etc... Making the player spend this amount of attention on trade mechanics seems a little excessive.
A moderately sophisticated trade model would provide for a lot more interesting diplomacy. Something akin to EU's system, maybe a little less compliacted, and even in EU it's not complicated. Ideally, in most cases you'd only have to spare some time for managing trade when your diplomatic policy changes.

emrys
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#72 Post by emrys »

luckless666 wrote: in my opinion, PP can not be used for everything money can be (you cant pay people in a factory with parts, can you?) Trade is also very good example. you cant effctively trade RP (thoughts basically) so that would fall down to minerals and PP. but what if thats what you want? then money can be used.
I'm not sure I understand this. If you want Minerals and have PP, you trade PP for minerals and vice versa, no need for money. If you have neither, but do have money, well the money you have presumable came in instead of Mineral or PP output (more taxes = less production), so rather than trading money for minerals and PP, you could have just lowered your taxes and got the minerals and PP in the first place.

The only advantage money gives you is the option of picking which of minerals or PP you'd like to have at a later time (the buying point) than if you'd actually planned your strategy (the production point). I.e. it lets you cheat a bit :).

p.s. I was planning on paying the people in the factories with cars, microwaves, houses and iPods, but that's just me. Maybe they would prefer green bits of paper, after all they do burn nicely.
Last edited by emrys on Tue Mar 09, 2004 2:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Aquitaine
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#73 Post by Aquitaine »

I think the problem we've had in this discussion so far is really an inability to agree upon the parameters of an economic model. For example, if this game were a market simulater (any of the Tycoon type games or games like Machiavelli, Merchant Prince, etc...) then the level of focus on the mechanics of trade mentioned above would be welcome, necassary and appropriate. However, this is a 4x game - the player is going to be focusing on diplomacy, warfare, exploration, etc, etc... Making the player spend this amount of attention on trade mechanics seems a little excessive.
Well said. That sums up my take on the money situation.
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emrys
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#74 Post by emrys »

han_krum wrote:I don't have a problem with you buying a superdreadnought in one turn, as long as you actually buy it from someone and it doesn't just magically pop out of nothingness. :)
Don't worry Han, I'm sure there's a superdreadnought production yard hidden away in the "abstract" star system that produces thousands of superdreadnoughts a turn, just hoping somebody will buy them with money that then can't be spent on anything, because between them all the empires' governments fully control all the food, minerals and production in the galaxy :wink:

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#75 Post by skdiw »

han_krum wrote:I don't know if we really need money; they could be just an unnessesary complication of the resource system. Trade would work fine without them, only with RP and PP. What money seem to be basically is a stockpile for stuff. The game could feel more dynamic without them; I think we should think twice before including them; in a way it can spoil the game if a player accumulates a large amount of money and mess up things... remember, KISS. Money is only needed if there is something really important that can't be done by something more simple, IMHO.
I thought we passed all the resources kind we need. I don't see why any of the four resources can serve as money also. What is so difficult to say pp is industry and pp is stockpile behave just like money because you can exchange for other resources and do whatever.
Last edited by skdiw on Tue Mar 09, 2004 5:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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