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Anyone wants real and working economy?

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Victoria 2 17560 After Action Reports (AAR)
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AlknicTeos said:
i havent thought that something like this is possible without too much cpu usage.

like it
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It's simple :)

Biges said:
We have an educated fellow here :)

Good ideas. I also have degree in economics, that's why I still wait for the next patch and/or mods to see if they fix the current broken economy model. Personally I also see problem in the factories model, for example they can't upgrade/downgrade, convert to another production. But I already mentioned this in another thread.
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Hi fellow :)
Factories will be hopefully fixed with improved capitalists AI (at last upgrading and building one) in next patch as Kallocain said. I would probably leave converting to another production for artisans. Could be good with better AI.

Radu said:
Finally somebody that knows his stuff. They could have used you during the dev cycle. You should see about joining a mod team. My personal recommendation is the Victoria Improvement Project (VIP). Unless I'm mistaken, OHGamer is the bigwig there, drop him a line.
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I would like to. I don't think that it is possible to mod it in without help from PI.

andreasm said:
It might be stupid gameplaywise, but it would certainly be realistic. When investing in new infrastructure/production in the real world, starting with old technology and then scrapping every "level" to build the next level of technology would be stupid. :)
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I has been talking about having too much money to build everything.

About your point: I wonder why I must build Experimental Railroad first when I've Early Railroad tech. It seems stupid. (But it is in real world too. We heave build MPEG2 digital broadcast In Czech Republic and MPEG4 was available. Now they are talking about building MPEG4. I think that purpose was to make someone make money two times.)
On the other hand you don't have to look at it as "starting with old technology and then scrapping every "level" to build the next level of technology". It can be looked at as expanding coverage (I think it was mean to be this way - look infrastructure level in %. It just has stupid name).

Evleos said:
Good ideas indeed !

It would make my day / week / month if they listened to you, or us economists. I too have a degree in economics ;)

I was very stoked on hearing the potentials of the current economic system, e.g. with the realistic flowing money system and autopromotion of pops. But disappointed upon the realization that demand was static, which makes it impossible to link up demand / supply in any realistic way later in the game -> huge productivity increases whilst static demand causing overproduction and infinite saving..
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Economic system with the realistic flowing money system and autopromotion of pops. Exactly! Maybe we will play some day Victoria 2 multiplayer against each other with working economic system.

DavidBacon said:
First, thanks for putting on equation what I've trying to say in other threads. To much money sitting on banks and savings. Second, for capitalists to use that money whould be realistic and if you add a feature allowing people to take money from the bank, it would solve the problem of instant industrialization. If you take the progressive spenditure model you describe above and add credit taking, it would add a use for the money sitting on banks.
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Agree.

DavidBacon said:
2. Projects should be more expensive. 1250$ for a factory, in front of 2mil$ sitting on banks and/or national funds is too cheap. There should also be a limit to how much a POP can take in debt from banks, so the money just doesn't disapeared.
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Yes. It's hard to tweek, with bank money going to infinite. With my system there would be some balance point (set by system economy itself) of cash in the bank at the begging. And it would be max 2-3x bigger at the end of the game (per person, not taking pop growth and country expansion into account). Than we can make variable like max_lending_to_capitalists = 0.1. So bank would lend max 10% to capitalists. We can tweek it.
 
Master's degree in Economics here, very curious about your work.

Modelling the entire world economy is, strangely, rather tricky.
 
This is all wrong the issue is not demand. The issue is a pseudo-economy left over from Vic1. There the world market bought everything so price had no impact same as EU3 price had no role. So the price only had to move around a base price which were set in a file. Think about it an economic system where prices are set in a file! Of course it wont work it cant work.

What we need is prices to be determined by real demand and supply. Of course since supply is static in the game in the case of RGO products we should focus only on factory products in game. So first tie prices to real supply and demand, supply is there no problem and real demand is also in the game as evidenced by the actual bought numbers in production. In one game there was like 50 times as many ammunition produced as was "actual bought" in this case price should collapse and all the ammu factories should go bankrupt capis and AI shouldnt build more so supply would go down. It is supply that should follow demand not the other way around. Supply should make a real effort to try to correct for overproduction. After the WM is 50 times oversupplied maybe you stop new factories by force or something. Much better than trying to correct with demand.

Example: The AI or player choses to make a hundred regular clothes factories and nothing else. The solution is not to raise pop demand to 2000 regular clothes per farmer, the solution is that these factories go bankrupt because the price collapses to close to nothing.


Another big issue is why a lot of economies tank is because of waste. Factories always buy full inputs but they cant always sell their outputs fully, the result is waste which burdens the industrial economies compared to RGO-s where there is no waste. Eliminate waste and you free the industrial system out of it's problems. Some output is outright wasted this way, you could eliminate this and make them comparatively better off than RGO-s. Also seems a bit of oversight that wages are not part of the costs in a factory, instead workers are treated as shareholders who get % of profits. It's not like a common worker would get millions for working in a diamond factory (ud. very profitable factory) while starve in an unprofitable one, he should get some min-max wage in both not make 1000 times more in one place than the other he is a worker not a capi.
 
Heretic said:
V1 economy did not work very well on initial release - or was quite fudgeable
However a couple of patches in and certainly in V:R it was pretty good.

Surely with input like this it will get there quickly
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I disagree about V:R economy. It was broken and still it is. It isn't just so obvious, because global market is buying surplus of supply and flood economy with money.
Now when PI stopped global market buying surplus of supply, every can see it.
 
Also remember that the game already has a system that can "correct" a degree of economic imbalance, it's called a Great Power system. It means that even if the World Market is badly oversupplied, a strong great power with a large SOI can still sell his own products while other states will be stuck with not selling their goods, and all of the damage from overproduction will hit them and make their economies even weaker etc. So a great power can live off of internal demand to a point, which of course shouldn't be an excuse on not trying to correct rampant overproduction just saying bit of overproduction is not a problem.
 
@Sajobabony
You have misunderstood me. I'm not making pops bought every good on market. Just spend their money. And influence it by price of the goods.

I agree on V1 pseudo-economy.

About Great Power system: It's nice when you are great power. You have so much money. You can't even spend them. Have you try play some low tech country with 5-10 provinces?
 
I think there should be some corrective measures for countries witch a lot of money. Like "Hey, our government is rich, we demand this and that!" (social reforms, lower taxes...)
 
I like this discussion about idea to improve the economy system in Vick2. I am note an economy expert but I can see that this is something that need improvement. There seems to be interesting things in the game like banks etc. but they are not (yet?) used to there maximum capacity. Continue the good job ;)
 
Basically you are asking them to better incorporate concepts of
1) Changing consumption based on POP savings (up or down).
2) Price elasticity.

Very reasonable request to eventually have that. Just looking at the game now seems like the focus now is fixed needs and getting that right. i.e. a pop of this type wants this level of fixed consumption. Now if they have savings they promote....to x,y,z which has totally different consumption levels. To promote you need a certain level of of savings. In a way, it's sort of in there, but not like you'd see in an economic model.

In short- pop promotion is a bit of a surrogate for the function you are requesting.

Agree that lower prices should stimulate demand. Right now, the model currently allows more needs of pops to be fulfilled but does not raise the demand function.

That's going to add a lot of code I am thinking however...you would have to have price elasticity for each good for each pop type....maybe not too bad but it's not clear to me that they have modeled price changes of goods well yet. So you are gonna start working on price elasticity without getting supply/demand right first?

My gut is - there are going to be a lot of iterations to the economic model over time. Keep providing feedback.

My own wish list is they do things like having more realistic debt/equity markets like say in Railroad Tycoon. That will add a lot of gameplay, risk taking, and realism --and more fun. You'd have better price movements if you did what you are saying first tho.
 
so, will this solve the problem of trade good prices appearing somewhat static, or rather, appearing to have an upper/lower limit? Has anyone else noticed this?
 
shikaka said:
so, will this solve the problem of trade good prices appearing somewhat static, or rather, appearing to have an upper/lower limit? Has anyone else noticed this?
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of course that was I was talking about. In V1 this was perfect as the WM bought everything there was no big deal in having prices or setting them in a file. Eu3 same deal who cares if spices are only 15 gold it wont matter anyway, yes they are bit better than grain but it was just there to provide gold income in the end. Here prices should matter yet they are still set in a file with upper lower limits never going below certain thresholds etc. And also there are a LOT of luxury goods that wont get filled up almost ever (esp. after modding) so when a pop can buy life needs his demand jumps and everyday opens up then lux goods, so it constantly creates real demand. Unfortunately real demand is not used to determine the price ingame. The problem is prices wont follow and there is nothing beyond lux. goods. for example Aristocrats cant do anything with saving money they should just have huge lux good needs and really prop up the lux clothes etc markets so they get a little action as well. Life and everyday needs should be smaller to compensate and so they wont demote too fast.
 
This is good stuff, I hope Paradox takes a look. If not, please consider joining a mod team, a lot of players would appreciate it!

Another economic variable I think needs to be looked at that hasn't been discussed yet is inflation. With the gigantic and ever increasing money supply from all those gold mines you'd think inflation would be in the game. As the money supply goes up, inflation goes up, and the price of all goods and construction goes up to compensate. Would also help prevent money from pooling uselessly in the so-called banking system as currently implemented. Of course, the most realistic way would be country based inflation modifiers, but with the way the money supply is circulating so fluidly in the worldwide economy and the fact that there is basically only one global currency any ways, I would think that some sort of global inflation modifier would be doable. Would have to balance it so it doesn't hurt under-developed countries too much, but at least they should be earning more from their RGO's which should help.
 
marshman said:
Basically you are asking them to better incorporate concepts of
1) Changing consumption based on POP savings (up or down).
2) Price elasticity.

Very reasonable request to eventually have that. Just looking at the game now seems like the focus now is fixed needs and getting that right. i.e. a pop of this type wants this level of fixed consumption. Now if they have savings they promote....to x,y,z which has totally different consumption levels. To promote you need a certain level of of savings. In a way, it's sort of in there, but not like you'd see in an economic model.

In short- pop promotion is a bit of a surrogate for the function you are requesting.

Agree that lower prices should stimulate demand. Right now, the model currently allows more needs of pops to be fulfilled but does not raise the demand function.

That's going to add a lot of code I am thinking however...you would have to have price elasticity for each good for each pop type....maybe not too bad but it's not clear to me that they have modeled price changes of goods well yet. So you are gonna start working on price elasticity without getting supply/demand right first?

My gut is - there are going to be a lot of iterations to the economic model over time. Keep providing feedback.

My own wish list is they do things like having more realistic debt/equity markets like say in Railroad Tycoon. That will add a lot of gameplay, risk taking, and realism --and more fun. You'd have better price movements if you did what you are saying first tho.
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There isn't going to be anything like a realistic debt/equity market. That's an expansion feature at best, but I'd say more like a Victoria 4 feature.

As for the static demands and promotion, you've got it wrong. Craftsmen are the second most needy pop in the game, they need something like 8 times what aristocrats need and 20-50 times what laborers/farmers need, even though they are more "poor" than clerks, clergy, officers, aristocrats, etc. (Clerks need 20-30 times LESS than them, even though craftsmen promote to clerks!).

Sooo yeah. It is not an uphill climb, it's a zig zag all over the place. Laborers can promote to craftsmen in which case they will have massive needs they can't meet, or they will promote to aristocrats in which case they will easily meet their needs and spend their lives happily contributing nothing.

Given the logic illustrated and it simplicity, I do not see why it is prohibitive to run once per POP per day. It is a few comparisons, a few multiplications... certainly not on the order of millions or billions across all POPs (how many pops are there in the game, anyway?)
 
Dishonor said:
I can say you are referring to part 1 (which would be started for every pop), part 2 would be started only once globally. I've wrote "no impact on game speed". Not because of promoting my idea but because I believe so. I have estimated about +5-10% max.
<snip>
There are many more thinks that are computing for every pops like promoting, demoting, births, emigrating, militancy, consciousness and a lot of staff we don't know about.)
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Actually I meant that the time spent on goods calculations for each POP type would be doubled/tripled, i.e. the overall effect wouldn't be nearly as big, though I'd think still a bit more than 5-10%. Remember this would have to be repeated 20 odd times because each POP type needs 20 or so goods. In addition your Part 2 ought to be done for each pop type in each country, rather than once globally, since tariffs should affect the prices of goods differently in every country.

Nonetheless as you noted there is no need to recalculate this daily. I would suggest doing this each month instead of every 10 days, which ties in with the other monthly processing that the game currently performs. That way there should be no noticeable performance effect on a daily basis. Which I guess really makes more sense anyway; price stickiness would suggest prices aren't going to change overnight on the local market (although I have no idea if they did historically in this period). Essentially, ignore the last 2 paragraphs :D

More importantly, one thing that came to my mind is that won't this affect the game mechanics of calculating how upset a POP is when not meeting its needs? I'm not entirely certain about how this calculation is currently done but I assum its an average of how much of each goods the POP could buy over how much the POP would like to buy, as defined in the poptypes files.

Which wouldn't work very well if demands changes according to price. For instance the luxury needs of labourers includes 1.5 opium. If prices jumped up so that demand falls to 1 opium, and the POP buys 1 unit of it, would this be 33% of needs unfulfilled? if so, the POP could not fulfil that need because its demand for opium has been limited to 1 (which it has met). If we say that is 100% needs fulfilled, but then POP is still consuming less than it would have liked had things been cheaper, so surely it is some sort of unfulfilled needs that ought to have relevant consequences?

Maybe this could be changed so that the POP wants a certain total amount of goods for each of their life, everyday and luxury needs. Each POP would consume a combination of goods in each category, as determined by their money available and the different demands for each type of goods as calculated using the demand curve. The resulting consumption basket's weighted total value can then be compared against the desire number for that category.

i.e. say the life needs of an officer is:
Code: 
life_needs = {
	cattle = 2.0
	fish = 3.0   
	grain = 10.0 
}
Instead, we could give officers a life need total of 15. Which could then be met with 5 cattle, 0 fish, and 10 grain. Alternatively, by 0 cattle and 5 fish, with still 10 grain. This would probably work better if the values of goods are weighted, i.e. have each unit of cattle count 2x as much as a unit of grain.

In other words, taking the substitution effect into account for calculating whether needs are met.
 
@ cwg9 The problem with this is that the period had huge deflation due to increasing production efficiency. But just like the two posts before yours, I think a price fluctuation model would suit us better.
 
@Marcus, Eldar thanks for support.

Biges said:
I think there should be some corrective measures for countries witch a lot of money. Like "Hey, our government is rich, we demand this and that!" (social reforms, lower taxes...)
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Yes, I would connect it to tech level. Dunno if it would be better then to country wealth. At last you would have to research some industry and commerce tech. If you go for milittary and prestige only, you will become broken.

marshman said:
Changing consumption based on POP savings (up or down).
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Only up if they have too much of money. Down is changed in current system. Pops consume what they can afford. And get militancy. I would leave it be.

marshman said:
That's going to add a lot of code I am thinking however...you would have to have price elasticity for each good for each pop type....maybe not too bad but it's not clear to me that they have modeled price changes of goods well yet. So you are gonna start working on price elasticity without getting supply/demand right first?
Click to expand...

shikaka said:
so, will this solve the problem of trade good prices appearing somewhat static, or rather, appearing to have an upper/lower limit? Has anyone else noticed this?
Click to expand...

I haven't be aware of that. Few points here:
1. It is easy to scale price to demand and supply by some curve.
2. Demand in market is "virtual demand", what would pops buy if the have money. This is definitely wrong. I think it would be changed in some patch. Demand should be based only on pops which can afford good.
3. Price almost doesn't change (at last down). I think this is on purpose by PI. If they allow real price changes, their current economics system would crash in no time.

@Sajobabony
100% agree. As someone said luxury needs shouldn't be satisfied ever.

cwg9 said:
This is good stuff, I hope Paradox takes a look. If not, please consider joining a mod team, a lot of players would appreciate it!

Another economic variable I think needs to be looked at that hasn't been discussed yet is inflation. With the gigantic and ever increasing money supply from all those gold mines you'd think inflation would be in the game. As the money supply goes up, inflation goes up, and the price of all goods and construction goes up to compensate. Would also help prevent money from pooling uselessly in the so-called banking system as currently implemented. Of course, the most realistic way would be country based inflation modifiers, but with the way the money supply is circulating so fluidly in the worldwide economy and the fact that there is basically only one global currency any ways, I would think that some sort of global inflation modifier would be doable. Would have to balance it so it doesn't hurt under-developed countries too much, but at least they should be earning more from their RGO's which should help.
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I'll join mod team when community can benefit from my work. I can't do anything now There are almost no modding tools in V2.

About inflation. Could be useful. But I'd rather keep it simple and take small steps in developing. Postponing inflation for later.
 
rmdsc said:
Which wouldn't work very well if demands changes according to price. For instance the luxury needs of labourers includes 1.5 opium. If prices jumped up so that demand falls to 1 opium, and the POP buys 1 unit of it, would this be 33% of needs unfulfilled? if so, the POP could not fulfil that need because its demand for opium has been limited to 1 (which it has met). If we say that is 100% needs fulfilled, but then POP is still consuming less than it would have liked had things been cheaper, so surely it is some sort of unfulfilled needs that ought to have relevant consequences?
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Part 2 changes needs of pops not what they buy. They would change needs from 1.5 to 1. They would buy 1 and have 100% fulfilled.

Substitution effect would be interesting. But I think it would be too big change to make it into vanila now.
 
JimboOmega said:
There isn't going to be anything like a realistic debt/equity market. That's an expansion feature at best, but I'd say more like a Victoria 4 feature.

As for the static demands and promotion, you've got it wrong. Craftsmen are the second most needy pop in the game, they need something like 8 times what aristocrats need and 20-50 times what laborers/farmers need, even though they are more "poor" than clerks, clergy, officers, aristocrats, etc. (Clerks need 20-30 times LESS than them, even though craftsmen promote to clerks!).

Sooo yeah. It is not an uphill climb, it's a zig zag all over the place. Laborers can promote to craftsmen in which case they will have massive needs they can't meet, or they will promote to aristocrats in which case they will easily meet their needs and spend their lives happily contributing nothing.

Given the logic illustrated and it simplicity, I do not see why it is prohibitive to run once per POP per day. It is a few comparisons, a few multiplications... certainly not on the order of millions or billions across all POPs (how many pops are there in the game, anyway?)
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On needs of pops...Do you have the data on that? That's an easy fix.

i.e. Luxury goods demand by pop type...I think it's more likely to get a tweak in consumption using existing game functions. i.e. Craftsman demand x, capitalists demand 5x luxury goods, aristocrats 3x, clerks 1.3x.
Demand for discretionary items should be scaling up, not down as you suggest. Not by my game or I'd check

This is far easier for them to make more realistic than a marginal demand curve or utility functions.

Getting more sophisticated then that and you might get a response from the devs like "This is not an economic model Marshman, this is a video game". :)

As for debt markets, --there already is a debt market in game and it's got a lot already working under the hood. The things to make it more realistic are pretty simple.

Yes an equity market somewhat similar to RR2 is an expansion type feature but getting a simple one in there is not hard at all and not much of a leap from where we are now. But making it more realistic on who can borrow, and who cannot...tech to actually have borrowing and a debt market in the first place for some countries. Should Vietman be lending France money for example in 1836? Brunei? Closing off debt markets, diplo options to open them in the first place a la EU3 with "open market". Associating a particular tech with even having debt/equity markets in the first place. (equity came later). Pretty easy to do with gameplay value and they've done it before.
 
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