1.03 Precious metal worth 50 pence on the WM?

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Possibly WAD, but odd enough that I thought I would mention it.

I noticed that the number of provinces producing precious metals had been drastically increased. This is fine, though personally I never had problems getting enough of the stuff in 1.02 (it was just expensive, that's all). There also seems to be a new event that increases the output of existing provinces -- at least, I've never seen the event before, and now I got it twice in one game.

What does concern me is that the amount of precious metal on the market is so high that it usually costs £0.50 on the world market. It's often the cheapest commodity, down with rubber in the early days of the GC when no-one's ever heard of electric gear.

It seems to me that, whatever price problem in 1.02 was being fixed, things have swung too much in the other direction. Unless a "lot" of precious metal is tiny, it seems way too cheap. If the lot is a troy ounce, it should be something like £10.

 

[Grosshaus]

Prolly linked to rich and medium having too low cash reserves.

 

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Same with Opium.
Now it's absolutly useless to annex Oman...

 

[Derek Pullem]

Same with Opium.
Now it's absolutly useless to annex Oman...

Game balance - not strictly speaking a bug.

Which means we'll have a go a tweaking it and let you know the results

 

[Kriegsspieler]

Game balance - not strictly speaking a bug.

Which means we'll have a go a tweaking it and let you know the results

Derek P. and Grosshaus --
Help me out here. I started a thread on the main forum ("First aid for my capialists"), describing how my capitalists seem to have very little disposable income, apparently far less even than my craftsmen. This is obviously connected to the absence of demand for gold. What's going on with them?
Thanks.

 

[Derek Pullem]

Derek P. and Grosshaus --
Help me out here. I started a thread on the main forum ("First aid for my capialists"), describing how my capitalists seem to have very little disposable income, apparently far less even than my craftsmen. This is obviously connected to the absence of demand for gold. What's going on with them?
Thanks.

Well - we saw this in connection with Capitalists in beta and tried to fix it. From our games the POPS (with the exception of Capitalists) did start getting cash in the bank towards the end of the game. This is probably due to the increased supply of most goods driving down prices.

In the middle game we often see luxury items price plummet as the pops can't afford their basic needs.

It looks like we need to reduce life and everyday needs a little and increase luxury demands.

All of these can be tweaked using the relevant .txt file in db/economy folder. Which is what I'm going to do after my Prussia 1.03 game is done

 

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The basis of this problem is the strictness the game deal with the substinence/everyday/luxury categorization. In reality (the famous one ), it is not set in stone-and if the situation that arises in game (ie: cars or gold costing less than grain), would occure, i assure you, that many people would buy (some of) them even without fulfilling their other "needs" first. Not to mention this categorization is not absolute either (i mean, people buy both luxury, normal and giffen goods at the same time).

Which, interestingly, is something that could be implemented in Victoria-i mean, POPs would spent 80% of their inome on substinence, 15% on everyday and 5% on luxury, with leftover cash going for next category. Then, there is an issue which should be also removed, that (at least i think so), POPs always buy from the left to right (ie: clothes first, paper last from everyday category). It should be either random or, better, some of every good at once.

That should fix most of the demand/supply issues present now.

Anyway, i have strange feeling that precious metal could have absolute minimum cap on price. I mean, the age when gold WAS money...

 

[Kriegsspieler]

Well - we saw this in connection with Capitalists in beta and tried to fix it. From our games the POPS (with the exception of Capitalists) did start getting cash in the bank towards the end of the game. This is probably due to the increased supply of most goods driving down prices.

In the middle game we often see luxury items price plummet as the pops can't afford their basic needs.

It looks like we need to reduce life and everyday needs a little and increase luxury demands.

All of these can be tweaked using the relevant .txt file in db/economy folder. Which is what I'm going to do after my Prussia 1.03 game is done

Derek --
When you have a suggestion to adjust this, please post it in the general discussion forum. This is something we all could help out with.
Thanks!

 

[Sir Garnet]

Since I had farmers being able to buy liquor and everyday items while the capitalists couldn't quench their thirst at all, I wonder if the formula for distribution of national income is a little too egalitarian. I read that the upper and middle class receive a substantial multiple of what the working class gets but I don't see that reflected in what they are able to buy.

I also find it funny that the "capitalists" and white collar classes spend money like dot-com yuppies while the working class accumulate capital for retirement. If they become wealthy enough, can they promote themselves into capitalists while the spendthrift top-hat boys go to work on the plantations?

 

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Since I had farmers being able to buy liquor and everyday items while the capitalists couldn't quench their thirst at all, I wonder if the formula for distribution of national income is a little too egalitarian. I read that the upper and middle class receive a substantial multiple of what the working class gets but I don't see that reflected in what they are able to buy.

Don't forget that upper class has more basic need than lower class. It is in any case necessary to tax the "rich" very low, while the "poor" can take pretty hard taxing, at least in the start (and probably in the end). There seems to be a general lack of everything in the middle, and that probably is a result of the economic model in the game. Too much adjustments, too little basic calculus.

 

[Derek Pullem]

Since I had farmers being able to buy liquor and everyday items while the capitalists couldn't quench their thirst at all, I wonder if the formula for distribution of national income is a little too egalitarian. I read that the upper and middle class receive a substantial multiple of what the working class gets but I don't see that reflected in what they are able to buy.

I also find it funny that the "capitalists" and white collar classes spend money like dot-com yuppies while the working class accumulate capital for retirement. If they become wealthy enough, can they promote themselves into capitalists while the spendthrift top-hat boys go to work on the plantations?

The problem I suspect lies mainly in the huge demand for furniture and clothes as life needs for upper classes (this was boosted at a late stage - may have been overdone). I'm looking at slipping some of the life needs into everyday and luxury (e.g. 1:1:1 for clothes and furniture for aristos but also looking at pulling forward some fractional demand of luxuries into everyday and life.

The only problem I can see is running out of space to display demands as multiple fractional demands are included.

 

[Sir Garnet]

Derek, please let us all know what needs adjustments you come up with.

Thanks,

Sir Garnet

 

[Derek Pullem]

Derek, please let us all know what needs adjustments you come up with.

Thanks,

Sir Garnet

Work in progress

files from tonights work - no guarantees

 

[Kriegsspieler]

Derek --

We'll give it a look a provide some feedback.

 

[Kriegsspieler]

Derek Pullem --
I played Prussia for about about 15 years with your new economic files and I want to say that they look very encouraging. Just before I quit the game -- when I got embroiled in a messy Great War over the Schleswig-Holstein question -- my laborers & farmers were buys about 70% of their subsistence things & both the clerks/clergymen and the aristocrats/capitalists were getting something around 60% of their subsistence goods. This is a considerable improvement over what the wealthier classes were getting in my earlier games witrh 1.03. I want to play a longer game tonight, to look into the increasing ability of wealthier classes to buy everyday & luxury things.

Two comments: First, I noticed that the wealthier classes (I saw this in particular with capitalist POPs) had regular clothes and regular furniture listed as both "subsistence goods" and "everyday goods". Did you mean to do this, perhaps to boost the demand for those things & stimulate the ai to build more factories?

Second comment: I wonder if the balance might be improved by increasing slightly the demand by the poorer classes for subsistence goods. Might one add demand for grain, for example? Also -- if I want to play around with a possibility like this one (i.e., adding grain to subsistence demand by the poor) does one always have to make it in .25 increments?

Thanks for helping address this.

 

[Derek Pullem]

Derek Pullem --
I played Prussia for about about 15 years with your new economic files and I want to say that they look very encouraging. Just before I quit the game -- when I got embroiled in a messy Great War over the Schleswig-Holstein question -- my laborers & farmers were buys about 70% of their subsistence things & both the clerks/clergymen and the aristocrats/capitalists were getting something around 60% of their subsistence goods. This is a considerable improvement over what the wealthier classes were getting in my earlier games witrh 1.03. I want to play a longer game tonight, to look into the increasing ability of wealthier classes to buy everyday & luxury things.

Two comments: First, I noticed that the wealthier classes (I saw this in particular with capitalist POPs) had regular clothes and regular furniture listed as both "subsistence goods" and "everyday goods". Did you mean to do this, perhaps to boost the demand for those things & stimulate the ai to build more factories?

Second comment: I wonder if the balance might be improved by increasing slightly the demand by the poorer classes for subsistence goods. Might one add demand for grain, for example? Also -- if I want to play around with a possibility like this one (i.e., adding grain to subsistence demand by the poor) does one always have to make it in .25 increments?

Thanks for helping address this.

Those % are actually quite disappointing - what were your tax settings and what was the price of clothes / furtniture? I was shooting for 100% life needs with 50% tax & tariff for Prussia. Did they buy any everyday goods as well?

Did you have a large number of unemployed pops?

In answer to your specific points:

1. Yes this is intentional. Previously there was a large demand in furniture for life only. I tried to maintain some of this in a boom economy by moving it to everyday.

2. Grain is relatively cheap but I want to keep it low to try to boost liquor factories (which is very expensive). You can adjust the needs in increments of 0.01 or maybe even smaller.

 

[Kriegsspieler]

Those % are actually quite disappointing - what were your tax settings and what was the price of clothes / furtniture? I was shooting for 100% life needs with 50% tax & tariff for Prussia. Did they buy any everyday goods as well?

Did you have a large number of unemployed pops?

In answer to your specific points:

1. Yes this is intentional. Previously there was a large demand in furniture for life only. I tried to maintain some of this in a boom economy by moving it to everyday.

2. Grain is relatively cheap but I want to keep it low to try to boost liquor factories (which is very expensive). You can adjust the needs in increments of 0.01 or maybe even smaller.

Don't be disappointed by the results of 70%. As zillions of people have been pointing out, Prussia starts out in a touchy -- although, I might add, anything but impossible -- situation. I did indeed have many unemployed clerks, although I devoted most of my available money at the start to either expanding factories or cbuilding new ones. I even forced some of those clerks back to the farms to pick more fruit for my new winery. For all that, I still couldn't manage to get everyone working by 1845. And yes, both taxes ( ~ 48%) and tariffs were high in an attempt to get a positive income balance. That's why I was encouraged by the result: with all that, the system did appear to be functioning more as one might have expected. Neither did I see any POP devolution.
I still believe that subsistence needs could be tweaked in a way to force the poor to spend disposable income on something like grain. There is so much grain produced in the world in 1836 that I have trouble believing that making the poor POPs eat a little of it will affect prices or the possiblity of building distilleries. But by the same token, there are a lot of poor POPS in the world in 1836! (BTW, were grain prices to rise as a result of creating a POP demand for it, you might end up simulating the politically touchy issue of the continuation or repeal of the Corn Laws in 19th-c GB, right?)
I'm going to play some more later & will update my results.

 

[Derek Pullem]

I still believe that subsistence needs could be tweaked in a way to force the poor to spend disposable income on something like grain. There is so much grain produced in the world in 1836 that I have trouble believing that making the poor POPs eat a little of it will affect prices or the possiblity of building distilleries. But by the same token, there are a lot of poor POPS in the world in 1836! (BTW, were grain prices to rise as a result of creating a POP demand for it, you might end up simulating the politically touchy issue of the continuation or repeal of the Corn Laws in 19th-c GB, right?)
I'm going to play some more later & will update my results.

Well this can be done. By increasing demand the price will rise which will make poorer nations less able to feed their POPs. If you do increase grain demand I'd decrease liquor needs

Corn Laws were actually a tariff structure preventing the excess cheap grain from flooding UK market. So a historical UK should be applying high tariffs in a low grain price economy. Of course in the game they are mostly laissez faire so tariffs are relatively low.

 

[Kriegsspieler]

Well this can be done. By increasing demand the price will rise which will make poorer nations less able to feed their POPs. If you do increase grain demand I'd decrease liquor needs

Corn Laws were actually a tariff structure preventing the excess cheap grain from flooding UK market. So a historical UK should be applying high tariffs in a low grain price economy. Of course in the game they are mostly laissez faire so tariffs are relatively low.

I misspoke about the Corn Laws: what I meant to write was that by making prices for grain rise, you would be simulating the problem that the British govt. faced: by propping up the agricultural sector and therefore the rural gentry and aristocracy, the Corn Laws were squeezing the laboring classes. Maybe the way to go would be to make grain a subsistence requirement only for craftsmen and labourers and not farmers. That would lessen the impact on poorer countries.
Well, I won't play with grain prices before I have a longer view of your "new economic model," so I'll work with that first.

 

[EUnderhill]

I misspoke about the Corn Laws: what I meant to write was that by making prices for grain rise, you would be simulating the problem that the British govt. faced: by propping up the agricultural sector and therefore the rural gentry and aristocracy, the Corn Laws were squeezing the laboring classes. Maybe the way to go would be to make grain a subsistence requirement only for craftsmen and labourers and not farmers. That would lessen the impact on poorer countries.
Well, I won't play with grain prices before I have a longer view of your "new economic model," so I'll work with that first.

It was the capitalist squeezed by the Corn Laws. Wages were always such that the workingman would have his bread and little more. It was essentially a welfare plan for the marginal aristocrat. Only when the capitalist class had sufficient Parliamentry clout were they overturned. Would have been nice to see these kinds of domestic politics better modeled in the game, but you can't have everything.