Would you choose a pure Pull Driven Economy over Camp#3?

Climber

Join Date 03/2006

+17

Would you choose a pure Pull Driven Economy over Camp#3?

Reading the Elemental: Internal debates made external, it seems like the Camp#3 economy wins out there. However, I believe a Pull Driven economy (PE) is even better than Camp#3. That thread is too crowded. Do you like Pull Driven Economy described below) over Camp#3 economy ? Why or Why not compared to existing camps?
I’ve make some minor update to the PE I’ve posted there & also throw in 2 ‘desirable features A& B’ that I aren’t too sure about. Any improvement to option A & B?

Do you like the PE I’ve described more than all other camps?

Pull driven economy (PE):
Basically, it is a just-in-time, make-to-order system. The game calculate everything & caravan to fulfill your order.
1.    Creatures Resources (CR) (e.g. Bear, Horse, Fallen, Human, and your current race) is considered as one of the Natural Resource (NR) (e.g. iron ore, crystal) here
2.    No Manufactured Resources (MR) is produced at Factory unless explicitly ordered by gamer
3.    Factory (e.g. Blacksmith) converts unlimited amount of NR to MR, or MR to MR. Conversion takes 1 day.
4.    Warehouse stores unlimited amount of MR or NR
5.    When there is no order, the NR mines will automatically accumulate in its warehouse.
6.    When there is a new order, NR or MR warehoused is consumed immediately by a local factory or be caravanned away to a nearby factory that needs it. The game automatically setup a chain of MR/NR caravan, using the quickest route
7.    When all MR required for the upgrade/production arrives at order location, a new unit/MR is produced.
8.    When the gamer orders an ‘upgrade’ to existing units, the game calculates the extra NR/MR needed. The difference is paid via the PE process described above. If these units happen to be away from town, the extra NR/MR will be caravanned to them before the upgrade is considered done.
9.    Caravan travels faster than most units; road provide speed bonus

PE Econ
Example
At turn 1, Gamer order 20 “Soldiers with Sword +2” at the Barrack in Village E.
At turn 2, 20 Ore is caravanned from mine A to C. 5 crystals are caravanned from B to D. 20 local population are converted to Soldiers (without sword atm) by the Barrack at Village E.
At turn 3, Blacksmith at town C produced 20 Swords; the sword starts travelling to village E. Alchemist at town D produced 5 potions and starts moving them to Village E.
At turn 4, 5 potions & 0 Sword arrived at Village E Warehouse.
At turn 5, 5 more Potion arrive. Since 10 potions & 20 Sword are available in warehouse E, the Barrack make the best use of its inventory. 10 Soldiers has Sword+2. 10 Soldiers has normal sword.
At turn 6. 5 more Potion arrive at E. Village E has 15 “Soldiers with Sword +2”, 5 with normal swords.
At turn 7. 5 more Potion arrive at E. Village E has 20 “Soldiers with Sword +2”
At turn 8, Gamer build a Stable in Village E, which allows a NR to be mounted by another NR , when applies
At turn 9, Gamer orders ‘Upgrading’ of the ‘20 Soldiers with Sword+2’ to ride bears.
At turn 10, The Bear’s den at G produce 10 bears/turn. It starts a caravan of 10 bears to village E
At turn 11, 10 Bears arrived at E. Now there are 10 Soldiers with Sword+2 Bear Calvary. Gamer orders all 20 units to move away from E for a duty.
At turn 12, 10 more bears arrived at E. Since the soldiers has left already, the game setup a caravan route to reach the soldier.

The relations described above:
(Crystal+Alchemy->Potion+2) + (Ore+Blacksmith->Sword) + (Creature/NR+Barrack->Soldier) = Soldier with Sword+2
(Creature1/NR1)+(Creature2/NR2+Stable-> Mountable Bear)= Soldier riding bear

For orders that requires the same MR
Suppose the Gamer make another order of 10 “Soldiers with Sword +2” from another village H, at turn 6, this order also need the same MR Crystal mined at B. By default, the game will exercise this new order first. After the new order is completed, the game will continue the previous order by producing the crystal needed. The game will produce the UI for the gamer to override the default priority of the MR concerned.

Multiple sources of MR/NR available for an order
Where there are more than 1 Crystal mines (or multiple sources for a particular MR/NR needed by the order), the game will need to calculate if extra mine(s) will speed up unit production. If yes, 2 or more caravans will enroute to the Alchemy lab at town D.

Treatment of Obsolete Equipment after an upgrade
In case the Soldier’s ‘Sword+2’ are upgraded to ‘Sword+5’, the game will automatically caravan the old sword+2 back to the last town he visited. OR the gamer can sell the old sword for gold on spot.

The time needed for producing a new unit equals the time needed by its most time consuming process (alchemy in this case). i.e.
Time needed to accumulate enough NR for the factory (or time needed to caravan NR to the factory, whichever is longer)
+ The factory conversion processes, takes 1 turn to convert NR to MR (or from MR1 to MR2)
+ Time needed to caravan the MR to the place it is ordered.

A.    Empire wide industrial Specialization (a desirable feature for Pull driven economy)
1.    All factories connected directly to a NR mine can be upgraded up to level 10. Each upgrade further reduces the 10% (for example) NR needed to provide same output
2.    All Unit Producing Building (UPB, e.g. Barrack) can be upgraded up to level 10, Each upgrade further increases its number of units output per turn (of course its production rate still depends on what equipment the unit needs)
3.    Higher level building requires progressively higher building cost
4.    When any factory/UPB reaches the level 5+n (where n=1 to 5), all factories of the same type & of lesser level in the empire will be upgraded to at least level n without cost.
5.    The more factory types you have in the same town, the more expensive it is to build a new factory.
A rough example will be:
New factory’s additional % building cost = l * total types of factory in town * MAX(total level of all factories combined – k),1); where k,l is a constant for balancing purpose
Goals:
Town can specialize in certain industries to improve efficiency, but at the same time tends to crowds out other industries (Rule 5).   This avoid the more factory is always better. Strategy required.
Empire mastered certain type of factory/UPB means it has the knows-how to be effective in building similar factory at smaller city (Rule 4)
Allow certain selected industry become a nation’s competitive economic advantage, produce extra MR for trading etc.

B. Semi/Permanent Caravan Route (a desirable feature to simulate Push Economy)
1.    Gamer can setup caravan route for any future resource production output from NR mines or Factory or UPB. X% of its future output per turn is caravanned to a specific location, where X=1 to 200. When X > 100%, it means it’ll remove any stockpile in the local warehouse, whenever applicable. This route can lasts Y turn, where Y=1 to ∞. Map overlay to shows all caravan routes.
- It is not exactly a pure PE mechanism. It is also micro. But I realize that some amount of manual caravanning is needed anyway even for PE, why not make it nice & make it set-it-and-forget?
- This feature alone can simulate most of what economy Camp#1 is all about (& thereby the issues comes with it).

- If gamer otherwise has to setup caravan route only 1 turn at a time instead, I think they will get annoyed very soon.
2.    Unit stacks can also be the caravan’s destination.
- Caravan is dynamic updated each turn to track its mobile target.
- It can then used to upgrade the stack’s equipment, or as a supply (of food)
-Or it can be used as a way to represent the unit stack is protecting the caravan
3.    Caravan route can be adjusted manually using Rally Points, for fine-tuning
4.    Caravan route has a label showing (to you & ally) why there is such a caravan, e.g. if it is a part of producing certain unit from an order at town Z.

Credit to Denryu, Winni, Spartan, CKessel, Pigeon & Psychoak for previous suggestions

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Sammual
Spartan
landisaurus

Quoting pigeonpigeon,

reply 23

Quoting Climber, reply 22
I did read & got your point…., but I assume there will be dozens+ as they allow custom units transferred from SD’s internet to gamers’ computer.
I already mentioned that you should be able to decommission unit designs so that MR is no longer produced for them. If you have a city capable of producing your Icy Swordsman and Lightning Swordsman, but your Icy Swordsman design is decommission, then Icy Swords won't be produced automatically. You may have a small quantity of them left over, but that's pretty minor. And we'll be able to have unlimited custom units, considering all of our units will be custom (like in GC2), although I presume there will be some defaults as well. You could still train Icy Swordsmen if you wanted, in which case the required MR (if not available) will be produced to demand - no extras or anything.
Climber: The kind of decommission (& turning factory on & off) is the kind of Camp#3 hassle I’ve talked about all along. SD may be able to design good UI to bypass this issue.

Quoting Climber, reply 22I am just trying to point out Camp#3 has its problem.   It is design balancing act of whether you’ve wasted/obsolete MR scattered around or increased micro of enabling/disabling production of some of the 110MR at the Factories.    Camp#3’s demand prediction is not as flexible as the just-in-time production suggested in the OP. So far I like Camp#3 best, but an almost pure PE is better.
The just-in-time production has its own problems, which personally I think are greater. For one I don't like unlimited storage or unlimited conversion rate. And it would also lead to delays unless the MR is being produced in the same city that is training your units.
Climber: Unlimited storage & unlimited conversion rate is just my preference for the PE.   By now, everyone should realize giving warehouse a storage limit does not give gamer a lot of fun/strategy. So this is a feature I don’t particularly like to see.
Put it in another perspective limiting factory conversion rate, allow gamer perceive factory as more ‘realistic’ and allow SD to balance factory’s production time.   If the latter is required, then let it be because it is a valid way to balance JIT PE by controlling its overall flow rate.
Anyway, these 2 points are my preference that some of you do not like, but it is not like they are the disadvantage of JIT PE.

…

Quoting Climber, reply 22When your empire is big, you can be number one in all industry. I want check and balances to avoid that. I want smaller empire still has an industry that beats bigger one. Maybe the Point A4 and A5 is not the way to do it correctly, but lets think of it as a start.
If your empire is big enough, wealthy enough and focused enough on industry that it can be number one across the board, then it should be number one across the board. Imposing artificial and unintuitive penalties to prevent sensible things from happening is silly.
Climber: This is a not silly. Having a big empire does not automatically means economic advantage, it should comes with economic disadvantage. I don’t necessary like Civ4’s corruption rate, but this is one example why a small econ has its pros. There should be some kind EWOM mechanism that give smaller econ a specific advantage, making sure bigger is not always better.   Historically, it is very unwieldy to manage an economy that spans huge territory.

Quoting Szadowsz,

reply 25

Quoting psychoak, reply 24

Unmodified camp 3 with no customization at all, yeah, it's going to scatter everything all over creation….
Climber: This is my point.
QFT

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Quoting Climber,

reply 1

Climber: The kind of decommission (& turning factory on & off) is the kind of Camp#3 hassle I’ve talked about all along. SD may be able to design good UI to bypass this issue.

SD will probably be able to create a good UI.The JITPE that you propose would have several micro problems too, more annoying ones in my eyes.

Climber: This is a not silly. Having a big empire does not automatically means economic advantage, it should comes with economic disadvantage. I don’t necessary like Civ4’s corruption rate, but this is one example why a small econ has its pros. There should be some kind EWOM mechanism that give smaller econ a specific advantage, making sure bigger is not always better. Historically, it is very unwieldy to manage an economy that spans huge territory.

Half right. There is a point at which to increase the scale of the economy/industry will cost more than you gain, yet up until that point it will always be more worth while, if possible, to increase the scale of the economy/industry.

I still stand by my opinion that the amalgamation of your idea and camp 3 which I proposed in my post on the first page.

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Climber, you've gotta format your posts better, that last one hurt my face At least make your entire response bold or something, rather than just your name.

Quoting Climber,

reply 1

The kind of decommission (& turning factory on & off) is the kind of Camp#3 hassle I’ve talked about all along. SD may be able to design good UI to bypass this issue.

Turning factories on & off I can see being a hassle. You are likely to have many of them, and I can imagine situations in which I'd be spending much more time turning them off and on than I'd like to. However, I don't think decommissioning unit designs could actually be called a hassle. For one, you aren't likely to have that many different designs, and you aren't likely to constantly be decommissioning and recommissioning them every other turn. The point is to make a system where any units that you have no intention of training again (or at least in a very long while) should be decommissioned. The unit designs that are still commissioned simply provide you insurance than when you do start training that unit you will enough enough MR stockpiled to start training immediately, while production starts up again to meet demand. I see this as very efficient with hardly an micromanagement or hassle at all.

Quoting Climber,

reply 1

This is a not silly. Having a big empire does not automatically means economic advantage, it should comes with economic disadvantage. I don’t necessary like Civ4’s corruption rate, but this is one example why a small econ has its pros. There should be some kind EWOM mechanism that give smaller econ a specific advantage, making sure bigger is not always better. Historically, it is very unwieldy to manage an economy that spans huge territory.

Yeah but the penalties you are proposing don't only affect the larger empires - in fact, from what I understood they would affect larger and smaller empires equally if not have a greater impact on smaller ones. You proposed for factory costs to increase based on the number of different factories you have. Now, if that is on a per-city basis then you screw over smaller nations. Large nations could afford to simply specialize all or most of their cities very narrowly and still cover a wide range of production, while smaller nations can't. Thus, the smaller nation would feel this the most.

If you want this to count all the different factories in your whole kingdom then there are other problems. For one, it's likely that most people will want to build some of all or most types of factories, whatever their size. So you'd screw everyone equally, making it pointless and downright annoying. There is also already an implicit limit - to be the best at many things requires splitting your investment and focus. Thus only the huge empires will really be able to excel in many things at once. I don't really see much a problem with this, but if SD decides to limit this a much better method of doing so would be to scale technology cost with empire size. That way larger empires would continue to feel the cost of splitting their investment in different areas without causing all sorts of other problems and annoyance.

Quoting Climber,

reply 1

Unmodified camp 3 with no customization at all, yeah, it's going to scatter everything all over creation….
Climber: This is my point.

Hardly anyone (if anyone at all) here is advocating for a pure camp 3 economy with no modifications, so you're arguing with thin air here

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Shadowsz and Pigeon, I believe I’ve made my point; Let’s agree to disagree. Camp#3 without modification has major issues, but probably it can be easily fixed by UI managing factory & UPB. And I’ve my personal preference of the JIT PE.

[quote]Yeah but the penalties you are proposing don't only affect the larger empires - in fact, from what I understood they would affect larger and smaller empires equally if not have a greater impact on smaller ones. You proposed for factory costs to increase based on the number of different factories you have. Now, if that is on a per-city basis then you screw over smaller nations. Large nations could afford to simply specialize all or most of their cities very narrowly and still cover a wide range of production, while smaller nations can't. Thus, the smaller nation would feel this the most. [quote]
Well said (& that’s why I say it is an ‘desirable feature’ in OP). I might not be able to suggest a way to give smaller economy some kind of edge, but my point is I want such feature. Big empire economy has its own woes, EWOM should has a mechanism to represent that.

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Quoting Climber,

reply 4

We don't disagree with you that Camp #3 without modification has major issues. Brad didn't go into incredible detail on any camp, and most of the modifications we have all suggested, particularly for Camp #3, aren't changes but addenda - additional details that Stardock very well might have already considered but that Brad didn't type out in his post for the sake of brevity, clarity and time.

We can, however, agree to disagree on which 'modifications' are best

Well said (& that’s why I say it is an ‘desirable feature’ in OP). I might not be able to suggest a way to give smaller economy some kind of edge, but my point is I want such feature. Big empire economy has its own woes, EWOM should has a mechanism to represent that.

How do you like scaling technology research costs with empire size? That way if a mammoth kingdom splits its industrial focus in too many directions it will end up with a varied but relatively inefficient industry compared to a smaller kingdom with a much more focused industry. It also has the added benefit of making smaller kingdoms more viable as a strategy in general (for example, in Civ IV small nations are at huge disadvantages because they inevitably fall behind technologically). I think this would solve your problem quite nicely; but I think that it should be balanced to allow for sufficiently large industrial powers to dominate in multiple areas. All else equal, a kingdom should have to be more than X the size of smaller ones in order to dominate in X different industries.

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Goodmorning all

I personally agree in part with Peapiggion,

Just in time delivery has serious disavantages. You eithor have to set up explicate stockholding, or risk latancy between order and delivery which is location dependent, even for small orders.

I also don't like very much the infinite production of MR/turn.

I like the Pull method best, i think that Pulling should be the way that LARGE order are filled.

as i suggest it:

You have a global setting for each MR, 'i would like to have X of Y on stock in my empire' Every city that uses Y would build up a stock pile of Y (a % of X determined by the amount they can use /turn of Y and size of city). Caravans would move supply from NR and cities with more Y then they need to citys that want to stock more Y (and NR to places that can make Y)

Once you hit X stock, production would shut down, and NR would accumulate. (assumnig they can be used for other things, and accumulate where they can be used by the same % method).

If a large order that exceeds a cities standing supply is made, nearby cities have thier supplies pulled to meet the demand, latancy is minimal, stocks replenish over time. (units have a set turns to build minimum perhaps, or number/turn max to make like all other MRs).

For VERY large orders, larger compared to X, most of the nearby towns would send all, and remainder would be sent from factory as it becomes made, farther away towns (if the failing to arive of MR from factories would limit rate production of units.)

No limits on stockpiles would be needed, or desiable in this system, No sigificant extra MRs are produced (only upto X). no caravan routes need to be explicately created.

In my proposed multi micromanagment suggestion this would be a level 2 micromanagement, i would think, maybe level 3.

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Peapiggion

I'm going to have to call him that now.

I'm still just waiting for the alpha so we know what we're seeing in terms of economy and research costs and such.

level 2 micromanagement? level 3? I wasn't aware there was a level system for that (you talked about them in another thread as a concept, but it confuses me here since I don't actually understand what the level numbers represent)

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Quoting landisaurus,

reply 7

My appologies, Essentually the idea is that the game be shiped with two(or more) options for how complex the economy is, just as you chose the number of opponets, the ammount of natural resourses on the map, the size of the map, You would also have the options to choose how micromangement heavy the economy of that game is going to be.

The number are arbitrary

1 is low, think civ revolutions for the DS, All nautural resourse are mined, and avalible instantly everywhere. MR's are not resourses, cost of making the equipment is part of the unit cost, having a proper building enables the local production of that type of unit (MOM) in that town.

4 is high, everything is a resourse, everything can be shiped, stored, reqested, traded, carravaned, improved, blessed and converted into everything else. Player is responcible for minimizing latancy by building smart road networks, smart prodution chaines (first level MR factories near NRs second order MR factories after first, demand near final production factories, so that resourses don't Criss cross the map a dozen times before being made into final products . . . you name it, you have to think about it and make it work.)

and things inbetween.

Sorry i should have made that clearer.

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