Developer Diary 23 – Gold
- Thread starter King
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I really don't understand why you're jumping on this. This is brilliant game design. It's historically accurate, leads to good gameplay, and helps balance out the economic model nicely(which V1 had some trouble with). Looking at the game mechanics listed before this DD, the fixed money supply was one thing I was worried about, but they dealt with that admirably.
Gold will probably make for good provinces. Above-average production, which the government gets to take an above-average amount of - it'll be good to take them. But it's not like they're infinitely better than everything else. Money is just how you count, you still need to actually produce things, and gold doesn't do that.
Also, what exactly is the economic system you propose? Barter? Using wheat or coal as currency? You seem to be raging against the entire idea of a money system, but I can't think of any replacement that's anywhere near as natural.
Will money sinks in the form of construction costs exist - i.e., if we build a railroad(say, as a communist nation), will it still cost 2000 pounds in addition to the material costs like it did in V1? Or are the costs pure materials?
As King said in the original diary, it's because there's no other money faucet in the game. Money doesn't disappear in Vic 2, it only changes hands, and there's no mechanism for governments introducing more money of their own accord - so as the population inevitably grows four-fold from 1836 to 1935, if there's no money faucet, everyone gets poorer and you get deflation. To avoid that rather ahistorical outcome, and as a much simpler alternative to introducing government-controlled money printing, gold mines became money faucets.
\o/
That means the cost of building a factory will vary as the goods required to build it do.
So no money sinks here, just a Gold faucet.
Still confused about railroads though. Money faucet or resource hog?
To build a railway the Capitalist needs to buy the goods as well. They are going to need to acquire machine parts to do so, so that should slow rampant railway growth a bit.
I didn't suggest that you should model speculation bubbles, though it would definitely be nice. I was simply questioning the whole concept of money/currency in a computer game that doesn't model pure money phenomena. I didn't want to be rude I just wanted to understand why you felt the need to introduce money instead of sticking with prices. Maybe it really needs an Economics degree to really capture the difference but I just hoped it wouldn't.
Anyway, I want to thank you for the critical feedback on my post. Whilst I still think that the mechanism is unnecessary and artificial, I guess it's effects on actual gameplay might not be as disastrous as I've thought at first. Money supply probably shouldn't rise for more than 1 or 2 percent on average per year during the Victorian era. Hence, the effect of gold income on state budgets shouldn't be that large. The more so the more widespread gold is. Hence, I asking again if we can expect to find gold at unhistorical places. In the DD you talked about precious medals. This should include silver, which is pretty much a perfect substitute for gold, of course of lower value. Therefore it would be totally plausible to have precious medals mines all over the world. These could even abstract for nickel mines. If you can prevent that the game becomes a nation-lead gold-rush I can agree with what you are doing. Please drop the prejudice that everybody who knows a thing or two about Economics cannot think in terms of game-design and only wants his geeky macroeconomic simulation ideals fulfilled.
Precious metal mines appear in fixed defined provinces via scripted events.
you don't need more money to get richer but more goods. The only point I want to make in this discussion is that you actually don't need to simulate money in a computer game, prices are enough. In Economics we differ between the money economy and the real economy. Vicy does a pretty good job modelling the real economy. Why even bother introducing money?
Thank you for your answers. I like how the game is shaping up. These changes make the "build Railroads here" national focus more meaningful, as well as the "make industrial goods" focus.
I am going to assume that military units are the same way - all goods, no cash to raise. Cash is only for soldier POPs to spend.
These changes are making me almost as happy as the changes in Revolutions did.
You are spot on with military maintenance. This was also done to create a constant demand for military goods so that military production could function inside our, not always correct, economic model.
Is there the possibility of FRB being added in an Expansion down the line? So that at first currencies are backed by gold/silver, but later... and following historical lines, FRB is invented and expanded... adding to the supply of cash, is that a possibility?
Communist!
Ahem
I think it would confuse most of the people who buy the game if there was no concept of money in it, only prices, although I grant your point it would probably be possible to write such a game. HOI 3 comes close, but is the only game I can think of off hand in which money is mostly irrelevant. Don't know of any production chain games that ignore the money supply though.
Well first up, let's be clear no plans for an expansion. That is not to say we won't do one, just not planned at the moment. Will I rule out features now, no I won't. What I can say is that I personally feel that there are better things that could be done in an expansion for the economic system. That would give greater benefits to the game for time invested. Personally, if it were up to me and I was to design one right now, I would pick regional markets to replace the world market as my number one addition.
By this you totally reestablished my trust in the Economic competency of the development team. It's a pity that you guys are that ressource-constrained. But this also shows that not buying the game because I'm not happy with one or another feature is just not an option here.
Well in one regard you are quite correct I am not a qualified economist I am in fact a mathematics graduate. However, on the other hand if we made a game that you needed to be a qualified economist to play we would be bankrupt.
That's good to hear. Overall, it seems to me like V2 will be structured in a way which will potentially allow for a whole lot of more features to be added / deepened without completely replacing the whole system. Which would make adding to the game via an expansion a viable thing to do later, but let's see Fredrik's hair first :rofl:
I suppose I should clear up one thing here. Victoria 2 is not explicitly designed with an expansion pack in mind. It is designed to be a fun stand alone game which you should all enjoy.