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The economic changes seem HUGE

Posted: Oct 06 2005
by tkobo
I have a few games saved (some mine, some that other people were nice enough to send me) that needed some serious reworking to make them profitable.

I have loaded 3 of them up,using the saves before any changes were made, and all three were now solid profit economies !

I dont know what the exact changes are yet. Im going to do a second install of the game and only update it to the number 2 patch.

Than im going to compare.

Over all at the moment, i would say the economies have been made VERY MUCH easier.

Ill know more in a few days after ive looked over the saves on the 2 different versions.

Posted: Oct 06 2005
by Balthagor
There where some bugs that where causing economies to fail faster than they should. I have also noticed that it has become easier to make money. We may end up going back and rebalancing some scenarios. Since they where balanced before we found some of those bugs, the economies may not have been properly balanced. We shall have to see what we find...

Posted: Oct 06 2005
by tkobo
As im looking these economies over a thought occurred to me.

In patch 2 you had to examine your economy and do some serious work in some cases to make it run well.

NOW, it seems in order to have a bad economy you have to examine your economy and do some serious work in some cases to make it run badly.

:lol:

Posted: Oct 06 2005
by Balthagor
...well hopefully you'll know when to leave well enough alone :P

but from the tests we've done, the economy is more stable and consistent.

Posted: Oct 07 2005
by The_Blind_One
Balthagor wrote:...well hopefully you'll know when to leave well enough alone :P

but from the tests we've done, the economy is more stable and consistent.
I just have one question,

Is it possible to play (for example) panama, start with a gdp/c of 4000 and unemployment of 10%, then during a nice sum of years end up with a gdp/c of 8000 and unemployment of 10%?

Is it really possible now to grow ur economy? or does it still just use the ''initial gdp/c'' settings and calculate inflation, unemployment and everything else from that? 8O

Posted: Oct 07 2005
by Balthagor
Well, we have not tested that extensively, our concern was making sure it didn't grow out of control. We did however do a test with mongolia and I believe I manged to double or triple the GDP/c and keep it stable at that point. The economic model does allow for much more GDP/c growth than before.

With the time it takes to test these kinds of situations, I would expect it will be one of our users who manages to create the situation first :)

Posted: Oct 07 2005
by The_Blind_One
Balthagor wrote:Well, we have not tested that extensively, our concern was making sure it didn't grow out of control. We did however do a test with mongolia and I believe I manged to double or triple the GDP/c and keep it stable at that point. The economic model does allow for much more GDP/c growth than before.

With the time it takes to test these kinds of situations, I would expect it will be one of our users who manages to create the situation first :)
Okay but my main concern is, when u tripled mongolia's gdp/c, did the unemployment reach 2%? and the inflation around 100% :D

All I really want in the economic model is to have REAL productivity per person growth 8O because that's the basis of a growing economy.

The prior economic model felt more like a harrod-domar type of increasing ur economy, that means; creating more working jobs for people without actually increasing the capital per person, aka just solving unemployment but no actuall productivity gains per person :D

I hope that's possible now :wink:

Posted: Oct 07 2005
by Balthagor
I'll see if I still have the savegame on the server, but much of this goes beyond me. Out of the team I'm likely the one with the least knowledge of economics ;)

Posted: Oct 07 2005
by Balthagor
As it turns out, I do still have the savegame an I think you will be happy with the results. Mongolia starts with a GDP/c of $1,900. By 2016, we had managed to push Mongolia to a GDP/c of $60,316 with unemployment of 2.2% and inflation of 22.2%. This was an attempt to crack the economy, done mostly by repeated money cheats and massive expansion of industries.

Posted: Oct 07 2005
by BG
Is the add money cheats somehow reflecting in the economy?After all it only adds money to the treasury without changing any other parameters so if something happens with it please tip us.Otherwise yes massive ind. expansion i have seen to create huge inflation not to mention drop in unemployment that cant go up even if i close these sites.

BTW what should i do in order to keep unemployment between 4-5% stanble?

Posted: Oct 07 2005
by Balthagor
BG wrote:BTW what should i do in order to keep unemployment between 4-5% stanble?
You're asking entirely the wrong person :) I'm constantly getting labour shortages in my high growth games.
BG wrote:Is the add money cheats somehow reflecting in the economy?
I would assume no. We don't program to account for the cheats.

Posted: Oct 07 2005
by The_Blind_One
Okay last question, if u answer this one correctly...I'll just orgasme while reading it :D

Question: (this is just an example and no hard figures are used)

Country: Mongolia
Year: 2010
GPD/C: 5000
Inflation: 3%
Unemployment: 10%

Country: Mongolia
Year: 2020
GDP/C: 15000
Inflation: 5%
Unemployment: 7%

Country: Mongolia (I'll take for example that mongolia didn't increase in production)
Year: 2030
GDP/C: 15000
Inflation: 3%
Unemployment: 10%

Is that possible now? if yes...I'll shout and tell u u guys are the greatest :D

Also another question wich just popped up.

U can't expand ur economy to fast can u?
I mean, I know u could expanded ur mongolian empire to $60.000 in 6 years. But mongolia should bounce back and unemployment should rise again WHILE keeping the gdp/c, correct?

And I hope u need to let ur economy advance through time, instead of just stretching it,

I mean a country should be able to hold a lower inflation and higher unemployment if the growth takes time over lets say...10 years, then for example if u push the max out of ur economy and do it in 1 year :S

I hope the inflation and unemployment drops again after a while, thus allowing for more growth in the economy to happen :D

Plz tell me it is so!

Posted: Oct 09 2005
by Balthagor
Well, you went too far, this one is out of my league :P

... I'll pass along your question.

Posted: Oct 09 2005
by The_Blind_One
Balthagor wrote:Well, you went too far, this one is out of my league :P

... I'll pass along your question.
Thanks, it's really importent to me :D

haven't got the time really to test update #3 at the moment, busy building a worldmap and with my school mid-terms :S 8_

Posted: Oct 10 2005
by George Geczy
To address a couple of the comments in this thread:

1) Yes, the economy is a bit easier, in particular for low-GDP regions. We made some adjustments to the income model, and for low-GDP regions we removed some adjustments for "tax shelters and underground economy" that cut tax income slightly. (This may not be entirely realistic since poorer regions also have significant underground economies and also corruption, which is in fact why many have trouble with their economies in the real world; but hey.) Prior to Update 3 this was addressed with additional subsidies from the World Market to poorer regions, but as was noted in other threads those subsidies favoured AI regions; the new economic system is equal to all.

2) Economic growth is now much better understood. Over a period of a few years, it is possible to grow the GDP and continue a 'balanced economy' that doesn't tip over like it used to.

3) In the Mongolia test Chris described above, we used the money cheat to simulate huge subsidies to build a first-world economy in a third world region. Once the economy itself is stable (ie at a GDP of $50,000) then the external subsidies are no longer needed, they were just used to build up the region (factories, etc) in the first place.

4) Regarding the Mongolia growth question above, yes, a progression like that should be quite possible now. Might be a bit challenging to build it up in a region like Mongolia from scratch (ie without extensive subsidies), but given time and some careful planning this should be very possible.

As Chris mentioned, we may look at the economic balance a bit more in the future to see if any scenarios need re-balancing. On testing so far it doesn't look like we've made anything too easy...

-- George.