Scenario focusing on micromanaging economy. Yes or No?

[appleide]

The aim of the scenario will be to build a better economy to fund the AI-controlled allied military to fight the other team.

This is not your normal game of wesnoth. It is a game of managing economy. I have been inspired by some current events.

Things player can do:

Control Interest rate, money printing, borrow or invest money to try keep down or increase inflation. This wouldn't be tampered with unless you know what you're doing or you're on the verge of bankruptcy!!!

Control labour and industries... (proportion of workers in Lumber, Mining, Farming, Machinery industries).

Pass legislations such as allowing people to trade in international market/funding for hospitals. Even force markets to half their prices when selling. (Mugabe did this... so I guess its a 'valid' economy 'management') This would probably be done once or twice in a game.

Trade in local and international markets. Try to keep your economy up. Prices will fluctuate, and so will the worth of your nation's currency. Influence international market to limit the other nation to gain advantage.

And lastly... When you can afford it, provide funding to the military. controlled by AI.

There could be some more.


The AI general can reborn when it dies if King (your only unit) is alive. Objective: to kill the other king, and then its general. When king dies, a 'Secretary' takes control so you can still keep playing but your powers will be much more limited.

Since players do not need to manage any units at all, and are pressing end turn half the time... The turns will actually pass faster than in a normal game of wesnoth, and so the game will flow faster. I am aiming for the game to end at ~30 turns.

So, can this be fun or not?

[Truper]

I'm not sure why you'd consider Wesnoth the proper vehicle to expound your economic theories...

[Dovolente]

The aim of the scenario will be to build a better economy to fund the AI-controlled allied military to fight the other team.

I really like the basic concept here.

So, can this be fun or not?

Managing an economy that goes beyond basic resource collection may be too intangeable and obscure for the average player to appreciate. That doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't make it anyway! The more variety of scenarios we have, the better.

[Rhuvaen]

Since players do not need to manage any units at all, and are pressing end turn half the time...

Most of the user interface in Wesnoth is geared at controlling units on a map. The only support for what you described above would be the messages and options. It would be cumbersome, to say the least. I think if you designed an excel spreadsheet for that it would have more functionality than wesnoth's message system. Except the end turn button, I'll admit.

From the sound of it ideally you'd need tables and controls such as sliders, input boxes, etc to implement this in any practical way.

It would also feel bland to have a few people playing on a map that just represented the game state with labels, while all the decisions were carried out in message boxes that wouldn't be visible to the other players (while the players are doing actions, anyway).

I think to make something like this integrate into wesnoth at all it must be unit driven. Units harvest resources (peasants first creating, then "killing" immobile crop units), advancing into specialist producers, crops transforming into a goods transport on being killed, those goods then being brought somewhere to be sold. The events you describe such as special laws being passed could happen when a player achieves a certain objective to enforce them. I don't know if this would be interesting, but it would be more suited to what the game offers in terms of a UI infrastructure.

[Velensk]

Just curious but have you tried A New Land, it dose deal with empire building. I suspect that it is about as close as you are going to get to economy managment in Wesnoth, if you want something more in depth, then what you realy want is a diffrent engine probably.

The main thing I wish A new land would do as far a eco management is make it so that there is some advanatage to spreading your villages out instead of clumping them next to the castle.

[Ken_Oh]

Most of the user interface in Wesnoth is geared at controlling units on a map. The only support for what you described above would be the messages and options....From the sound of it ideally you'd need tables and controls such as sliders, input boxes, etc to implement this in any practical way.

I think putting labels on the map and using the whole right-click command stuff could make a decent slider, since you could place objects to use as markers that you could always see. That way you wouldn't have to actually use any message/option screens for rates. You actually don't have to use option screens for any of it, but it seems like you'd want to have some to work with.

About the idea, as a huge M.U.L.E. fan, I love any ideas that have to do with game economics. I also like the fact that your army will be automated. I've wanted to incorporated that into something of my own but I could never figure out a good way how.

The only real pitfall I see is how the game might not be dynamic. How will one game vary from another as fas as economic control goes? The international market seems like it would be the most interesting aspect to this since it creates this kind of variation, but if it's too simple I could see it really being a zero-sum game. I think it would be neat to have different commodities that effect a nation differently. A certain material would influence the price and/or availability of scout units, another for magi, another for archers, etc. Maybe then it would be wise to allow players to somehow choose what gets recruited (maybe you were already thinking this), but not how they act.

In short, ya, I like it.

EDIT: Just because I felt like it, here's an in-game mock-up of what I think a good slider would look like. Those item/scenery images are supposed to be poor representation of markers. This would be on the side of the map where that player calls home.

[eyu100]

You could also let the player code their own AI if they wanted to (this would be hard to do).

[appleide]

I think to make something like this integrate into wesnoth at all it must be unit driven. Units harvest resources (peasants first creating, then "killing" immobile crop units), advancing into specialist producers, crops transforming into a goods transport on being killed, those goods then being brought somewhere to be sold.

Message and Mockup.

Got an idea from these two.

Neat... Proposed Mechanism:
Beginning of each player's turn, a 'crop' unit falls on every farm (needs to be 'terraformed' into farm, costs wood), a tree unit on every lumber camp (needs to be built, costs wood and metal), and a mineral unit falls on every mountain village (costs wood and metal) if it is empty. 'Killing' a resource nets that resource into either 1. the local market, or 2. the government treasury. It could also be any percentage between that, set by the player via messages and options. The wages for each peasant also set by player.

At end of turn all unharvested resource units disappear.

Each player gets a peasant unit for every 10 population the nation has. Whenever population increases, new peasant added, decreased, random peasant dies. They level up into specialised workers'.

The prices in local market depends on supply and demand over the 3 previous turns. It trades in the nation's currency. It also has limited stocks. People use their wages to buy everything they need. if they have any remaining money after that, 20% goes towards buying extra food, wood or metal. Metal will only be purchased if supply is bigger than demand (cheap) (i.e people will use extra money to buy luxuries). after that, they sell 20% of everything they have extra.

The market accessed any time via right-click menu

International market trades in gold. (yes, real wesnothian gold). Player must exchange cash for gold. Prices are adjusted in same way as local market, based on supply and demand over last three turns, and perhaps the odd random event. International market is shared between both players whereas local market is isolated to each player.

The exchange rate of currency to gold is calculated thus: 1 gold = total currency in circulation (currency spent in trading/selling for gold counts also. Money in treasury of government doesn't count.) divided by the total amount of goods whose value is calculated via prices in international market and converted back to currency.

Player can print as much cash as they see fit. They can also lend money to players at interest rate set, or borrow currency at interest rate set.

When players have enough wealth in terms of gold, they can give it to the military (who accepts gold only.)

The military then uses gold to recruit and attack. Killing a peasant = 10 people dies/ subtracted from population.

Is this going to be a

zero sum game

as Ken Oh puts it??

[Lorbi]

i do really think this could be fun and is a smart idea ...
buuut why in wesnoth?

i think the time it will take to implement all this things in WML is similar to the time it wpould take to learn a real programming language and code your game ..

even a scrpting language like python or php can do this

[Viliam]

I like ideas which turn game into something very different. (For a good example, if you play Warcraft III, try DotA. Multiplayer. Strongly recommended!)


The AI controlled military would be relatively easy -- there is an allied side. All money of allied side is given to you. All units recruited by you are given to allies. So AI does the war, and you do the economy. You decide which units to buy.

To make game longer, the "enemy" does not need to be a normal enemy, but rather an endless wave of enemy units created each turn on the border of the map. (OK, now that I read your post again, you probably wanted to make a multiplayer scenario. But this could be a single-player alternative.)

Non-military units (Lumberers, Farmers,...) stay in your posession. There can be WML events for harvesting lumber and farming. It can be done really simple for user, without additional user interface: At the beginning of turn, if there is a Lumberer unit on forest hex, it becomes Lumberer+wood unit on a grassland hex. In the village it becomes normal Lumberer again.


...but the other economical details (interest rate, inflation) seem too complicated for me.

[playtom]

could be made into addition to the new land, but really seems too hard to do, great manpower and coding expertise is needed here, i'd be off with normal campaigns and just "a new land"

[Rhuvaen]

The thing with the unit-driven harvesting was just an example - and maybe unfitting for this sort of scenario.

I think the most important consideration is this: how can you make the interactive part of the scenario as exciting and interesting as possible?

Currently, from what I understand, the main interactive part in your scenario is the international markets. All of that is done via right-click-menu, right? That won't do, IMO. You reduce the interactive element to a solipsistic exercise.

At the same time, some of the less important parts are implemented with a high intensity of interaction - selecting and moving units. The harvesting sounds like it is just a micromanagement addition to your original idea. Perhaps it isn't - the choice of what to harvest and how to put your population to work was part of your original description. But it's not an interactive element, at all.

Together with the military it could become more interactive. Which resources are safe to harvest? Where can my peasants be protected? Players would colonize the map, but only where their military covered their units or where there was no competition. That would only happen if resources were scarce enough, of course.

The problem here is that the AI would play a major part in determining your choices - where you can go, and how the game is going to end. I don't think that the AI is a very good tool for determining the progress or outcome of the game. At the very least you should give each player two AI sides, one more aggressive and one less, so that they could switch individual units between those two modes. Also the player could be made to have certain units that can act as leaders for the AI side during their turn, causing the AI to move its units to protect that leader. Those would be sort of explorers or governours, means to expand your influence in a certain area of the map.

But really, I think you should look at representing the interactive elements with units - the international markets. Even if you removed all the military elements from the game, there's enough competition in that subject...

You could have the player's gold be turned into buyer units (with different capabilities depending on trade and economic policy - for instance backstab or berserk) that have to fight over the resources available for sale with the other buyers. Just like M.U.L.E. made the trades real time races, you could abstract the whole market affair into a battlefield.

P.S. Ken Oh, thanks for that sliders idea! Fantastic

[appleide]

The thing with the unit-driven harvesting was just an example - and maybe unfitting for this sort of scenario.

I think the most important consideration is this: how can you make the interactive part of the scenario as exciting and interesting as possible?

The only way I can think of for the market to be interesting is to have it in some village that must be controlled before possible access. That, IMO , is rather boring.

So I decide I will think of some other concept for another scenario. Thanks Rhuvaen for helping me not to see this idea past the drawing board or I would have a lot of hours wasted.

[Bob_The_Mighty]

Just thought I'd mention that I made a New Land scenario called 'The State' which, athough not as complex as your idea, did include some micro-managing features.

The game consisted of two teams of three players, each with different roles. Each team had a Mayor (to manage ecomony/control peasants) a General (to control military units) and a King (to oversee mage research and police). It was also the role of the king to allocate funds to his two aides.

Each side had a max/population limit based on how many villages you owned. A housing shortage, alongside other factors such as units dying, resulted in civil unrest - represented by thieves and outlaws appearing in the midst of your city. Police could be used to reduce civil unrest, but if it went unchecked it could descend into assassination attempts and full-scale revolution. That was always fun when it happened.

Generals, Kings and Mayors each had different special options when they visited a university - and the king could even select one of six policies (warmonger, repression, peace, exploitation, etc) which all had different effects on gold produced, population limit and civil unrest.

In one version there were even taverns, which meant your peasants could get drunk - which sometimes placated your citizen's social unrest, and sometimes alcohol merely fuelled riots and so on.

Splitting the teams into 3 seperate roles made for a unique and pretty fun teamwork, but it often took a long time to teach new players what was going on.

Sadly the scenario stopped working when the new land stuff was updated, but i still have the file and hope one day to get it working again.

I agree that if the economic side of stuff gets too abstract, it will cease to be fun.

[Rhuvaen]

The only way I can think of for the market to be interesting is to have it in some village that must be controlled before possible access. That, IMO , is rather boring.

Actually, during posting I had another idea: each commodity market could be a star-shaped area of the map, with a central hex and a path (price-slider) for each player. During their turn, players would set the sale price by moving their units along the path either further outside (higher price) or further inside (lower price). They could also specify the amount by right-clicking (increasing hp or something).

They could then send their buyer units to any market (they have access to) and "attack" any of the sellers to buy that commodity.

I'm not saying that this is very exciting, but it would allow all players to see the market in action. There is no hidden information about transactions that is hard to keep track of. (unlike the right-click menu stuff where you'd have to guess what happened between one turn and the next to your commodities/stats)

Turn order could be very deterministic and unfair in deciding who gets to buy what, though.

So I decide I will think of some other concept for another scenario. Thanks Rhuvaen for helping me not to see this idea past the drawing board or I would have a lot of hours wasted.

I didn't want to dissuade you... . I think there is a way to make a playable and enjoyable game that's based on economic concepts. You just need to frame the abstract concepts into concrete terms that provide

• - a goal / victory conditions
  - player-to-player interaction
  - an interface to enable the above and make them apparent

goal: a tangible victory condition that is player-driven, that offers interaction and interference from other players and where progress towards the goal is apparent

Code: Select all

example: "the player must have a monopoly on two different commodities at the end of a turn, and no other player may hold a monopoly"

bad example: "the allied AI must beat the enemy AI" (not player-driven)

bad example2: "the player must have a GNP of 1,000,000" (not apparent to other players, not interactive)

That doesn't mean that such elements should not be present, it just means they should not be decisive for victory. For instance, in a game that's just about establishing monopolies, it could be interesting to have allied AI sides control the military and let the player concentrate on resource production and commodity markets. (am I the only one who sees a connection between this idea and Dovolente's idea of an AI-driven war scenario? )

player interaction: see my last post. A player's actions need to be somewhat apparent to other players, so that strategies and counter-strategies can be formed. I don't see any problems with the economic theme as such in this department.

interface: 90% of the information and interaction should be on the map. It's cool to have the other 10% in menus that add that special touch, but it's cumbersome to have to access them all the time. The sliders are a good solution, and you could have advisor units that change their health to represent some stat, for instance "it ails the trade minister to see that we are selling our commodities at such a low price while we have to import for xxx gold."

I would add though that you are requiring the player to learn a new interface when you provide sliders, indicator and selector units, and areas of the map that are used for nothing more than to represent game state.

This is where a New Land builds cunningly on what the players already know - moving units, villages as economic centres, etc. It doesn't twist the interface into something else, completely. Players still care about terrain, their units' defence on them, ZOC, fog and visibility and all the rest.

I made a New Land scenario called 'The State' [...]
Sadly the scenario stopped working when the new land stuff was updated, but i still have the file and hope one day to get it working again.

Wow. Let's hope this day is soon...