The introduction of Trade as a resource has elicited several discussions in various threads about which resource, Energy or Trade, should be the “currency of Stellaris”. As those have devolved into name calling, I thought I would start a new thread discussing Currency and its application to Stellaris and maybe even conclude something, though no promises that it will be something profound.
First a few assumptions:
The Basic Stellaris Economy
The basic universe of Stellaris is built from Energy (Energy Credits), Organic Matter (Food) and In-organic Matter (Minerals). Aside from a few rare resources anything else can be created from these three Basic Resources through various processes e.g. Research can be made directly from Energy by a machine consciousness or needs all three and another process (consumer goods). [personal side note, I really love the E=mc2 aspect of this]
This illustrates very well that a MoP with absolute control is more efficient and that a society with less than absolute control needs an actual economy of some sort to go beyond the Basic Resources. This is something that the game does really well, giving the player a sense of various forms of societies being and operating in completely different ways.
Obviously, currency as a concept does not exist at all in a machine consciousness as that would only add an unnecessary layer of abstraction to the efficiency calculation it would need to do to apply its resources optimally. Likewise, a pluralistic society without scarcity would not need a currency either, as no level of society would need to “balance a budget”, so currency would only exist in MoPs that were either forced to make choices about where to apply resources or deliberately kept those resources away from certain part of society.
So, to model the Stellaris economy across that massive span it actually does something quite interestingly as it instead creates a sort of industrial capacity for any given MoP and through that creates the Complex Resources relevant to said MoP. This has become more and more complex over the iterations of the game but each time it has added more diversity to the system and by that (either by design or simply by organic growth) making the economy more nuanced, actually introducing a civilian economy (“civilian” is used loosely to signify the part of the economy not under direct MoP control) with the introduction of Trade Value.
Now, all of the above leads to this first actual point that as the simulation has become more complex what was represented by Energy Credits in the first versions of the game has been reduced to it no longer being the Currency except in the galactic market and as abstracted income from Trade Value and for Mega Corps. Yes, it is used as currency in a number of situations but that does not make it the Currency, that just means that the two parties agreed that Energy was the means of exchange, it could have been any other resource. The galactic market is the only place where Energy actually works like a Currency, in all other cases it is just used to simplify the transaction for the player so that every transaction would not need to use the diplomatic trade interface.
Which would mean that introducing Trade as proposed, would remove Currency as a concept except in those few cases where abstract wealth is created by an economy e.g. certain Mega Corp income and even then, it could be argued that if that economic output is also changed to Trade it would no longer be Currency (more on that further down).
The Advanced Stellaris Economy
An economic simulation without a Currency does sound a little strange, which is probably why the aforementioned threads focus so heavily on it and why there were Energy Credits to begin with, but the way the Stellaris economy actually works does not need a Currency. The industrial capacity alluded to before does not need the abstraction of a currency to function, if it did, it would not be able to encompass MoPs that does not use currency at all. Instead, currency is abstracted into other relevant resources such as Consumer Goods and Trade Value which much better reflect what currency actually is than Energy Credits do.
A given MoP does not create Currency it then uses to buy the needed capacities from a civilian economy like most governments on Earth, it creates those directly by creating infrastructure and employing (using the term loosely) labour in that infrastructure with the remuneration of that labour reflected in the cost of their living standards and job upkeep – in other words by increasing industrial capacity. Even leaders as individual, named NPCs are not paid in currency but instead have a cost to the MoP’s political capital in the form of Unity. [a little side note on this, imagine how obscenely wealthy the leaders as single individuals would have been when their upkeep was paid in Energy Credits]
Trade Value was the first attempt to elevate this simulation by adding an actual, albeit abstracted, civilian economy that would add value outside the industrial capacity of the MoP and, while very simplified, added more than just Energy Credits as it could be directed towards other resources as well so again acting more as an abstract resource than a Currency.
This leads to the next point, that Trade is not a Currency and does not replace a Currency. Trade is an abstract resource, like Unity, which is mostly generated by the civilian part of the economy not directly controlled by the MoP, reflected in the fact that the more absolute the control of the MoP the more of their industrial capacity need actively be directed towards this resource to be able to use it, somewhat equivalent to a command economy having to manage supply and demand instead of the market balancing itself.
In other words, the civilian economy is “stored” latently in the Trade resource (as a sort of commodities futures) and can be “exchanged” into goods and services which are constantly moving around in there regardless of what the MoP is up to. And subject to how far away it is from the control of the MoP, and with the galactic market being the logical end state of a fully integrated galactic civilian economy.
Certain MoPs have to create Trade to partake in this economy - if there is no civilian logistic infrastructure to piggy back on, something has to be created from scratch, while others such as Mega Corps might do so to extract value from the market itself - like investment banks, and MoPs with thriving civilian economies can simply tap into them when the need arise while being restricted to the actual size of it, reflected by the monthly output of the Trade resource and the maximum size of the stockpile.
Disclaimer, the details are still a bit fussy on how this will actually work in the game and the idea does break if a “market” for resources exist for MoPs with a very high level of control over their economies before the galactic market comes into play (they currently have access to an “internal market” and can use Trade generated by maintenance drones to buy resources even though they should have no internal market at all).
First a few assumptions:
- The player assumes the role of the “Monopoly of Power” in a “geographical” region of Space. This MoP comes in many different versions spanning from a fully inclusive, xenophile democracy, through various forms of oligarchy and authoritarianism, and all the way to almost absolute control as a hive or machine consciousness.
- To be the “currency of Stellaris” a Currency would have to make sense across that entire spectrum of MoPs, otherwise it would only be the internal currency of a given MoP.
- Energy Credits and Energy as a resource are interchangeable i.e. there is no difference between a unit of Energy Credits and a unit of Energy.
The Basic Stellaris Economy
The basic universe of Stellaris is built from Energy (Energy Credits), Organic Matter (Food) and In-organic Matter (Minerals). Aside from a few rare resources anything else can be created from these three Basic Resources through various processes e.g. Research can be made directly from Energy by a machine consciousness or needs all three and another process (consumer goods). [personal side note, I really love the E=mc2 aspect of this]
This illustrates very well that a MoP with absolute control is more efficient and that a society with less than absolute control needs an actual economy of some sort to go beyond the Basic Resources. This is something that the game does really well, giving the player a sense of various forms of societies being and operating in completely different ways.
Obviously, currency as a concept does not exist at all in a machine consciousness as that would only add an unnecessary layer of abstraction to the efficiency calculation it would need to do to apply its resources optimally. Likewise, a pluralistic society without scarcity would not need a currency either, as no level of society would need to “balance a budget”, so currency would only exist in MoPs that were either forced to make choices about where to apply resources or deliberately kept those resources away from certain part of society.
So, to model the Stellaris economy across that massive span it actually does something quite interestingly as it instead creates a sort of industrial capacity for any given MoP and through that creates the Complex Resources relevant to said MoP. This has become more and more complex over the iterations of the game but each time it has added more diversity to the system and by that (either by design or simply by organic growth) making the economy more nuanced, actually introducing a civilian economy (“civilian” is used loosely to signify the part of the economy not under direct MoP control) with the introduction of Trade Value.
Now, all of the above leads to this first actual point that as the simulation has become more complex what was represented by Energy Credits in the first versions of the game has been reduced to it no longer being the Currency except in the galactic market and as abstracted income from Trade Value and for Mega Corps. Yes, it is used as currency in a number of situations but that does not make it the Currency, that just means that the two parties agreed that Energy was the means of exchange, it could have been any other resource. The galactic market is the only place where Energy actually works like a Currency, in all other cases it is just used to simplify the transaction for the player so that every transaction would not need to use the diplomatic trade interface.
Which would mean that introducing Trade as proposed, would remove Currency as a concept except in those few cases where abstract wealth is created by an economy e.g. certain Mega Corp income and even then, it could be argued that if that economic output is also changed to Trade it would no longer be Currency (more on that further down).
The Advanced Stellaris Economy
An economic simulation without a Currency does sound a little strange, which is probably why the aforementioned threads focus so heavily on it and why there were Energy Credits to begin with, but the way the Stellaris economy actually works does not need a Currency. The industrial capacity alluded to before does not need the abstraction of a currency to function, if it did, it would not be able to encompass MoPs that does not use currency at all. Instead, currency is abstracted into other relevant resources such as Consumer Goods and Trade Value which much better reflect what currency actually is than Energy Credits do.
A given MoP does not create Currency it then uses to buy the needed capacities from a civilian economy like most governments on Earth, it creates those directly by creating infrastructure and employing (using the term loosely) labour in that infrastructure with the remuneration of that labour reflected in the cost of their living standards and job upkeep – in other words by increasing industrial capacity. Even leaders as individual, named NPCs are not paid in currency but instead have a cost to the MoP’s political capital in the form of Unity. [a little side note on this, imagine how obscenely wealthy the leaders as single individuals would have been when their upkeep was paid in Energy Credits]
Trade Value was the first attempt to elevate this simulation by adding an actual, albeit abstracted, civilian economy that would add value outside the industrial capacity of the MoP and, while very simplified, added more than just Energy Credits as it could be directed towards other resources as well so again acting more as an abstract resource than a Currency.
This leads to the next point, that Trade is not a Currency and does not replace a Currency. Trade is an abstract resource, like Unity, which is mostly generated by the civilian part of the economy not directly controlled by the MoP, reflected in the fact that the more absolute the control of the MoP the more of their industrial capacity need actively be directed towards this resource to be able to use it, somewhat equivalent to a command economy having to manage supply and demand instead of the market balancing itself.
In other words, the civilian economy is “stored” latently in the Trade resource (as a sort of commodities futures) and can be “exchanged” into goods and services which are constantly moving around in there regardless of what the MoP is up to. And subject to how far away it is from the control of the MoP, and with the galactic market being the logical end state of a fully integrated galactic civilian economy.
Certain MoPs have to create Trade to partake in this economy - if there is no civilian logistic infrastructure to piggy back on, something has to be created from scratch, while others such as Mega Corps might do so to extract value from the market itself - like investment banks, and MoPs with thriving civilian economies can simply tap into them when the need arise while being restricted to the actual size of it, reflected by the monthly output of the Trade resource and the maximum size of the stockpile.
Disclaimer, the details are still a bit fussy on how this will actually work in the game and the idea does break if a “market” for resources exist for MoPs with a very high level of control over their economies before the galactic market comes into play (they currently have access to an “internal market” and can use Trade generated by maintenance drones to buy resources even though they should have no internal market at all).
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