Economy

Rough ideas that have been put forward:


 * A "mint" to create currency specific to one country (expensive? building decay?)
 * Buy things from country using its' currency.
 * More resources.
 * Use of resources not money, so in effect the more valuable resources will become like currency.

Kokuya's Notes
Kokuya's Currency Notes: [Note from here in this system will be reffered to as the Kcur system to differenciate it from other ideas of currency] With the intention of:
 * Bringing customised currency for each country
 * avoiding confusing exchange rates
 * avoiding server problems or large calculations
 * making use of existing code
 * making the system optional, so only those who want to will see things in custom currencies

The basic principle of Kcur is:
 * Finance Ministers will be able to change the name of their countries currency once per day
 * Finance Ministers will be able to destroy money that is in the government bank, or print new money for the government bank.
 * When money is destroyed the value of the currency will increase
 * When money is printing the value of the currency will decrease
 * All transactions are shown to the player in their own currency
 * All calculations will be done by the client not the server

The Coding of Kcur:
 * using the existing database the amount of money a country has will be stored in a unit of credits
 * using the existing database the amount of money printed/destroyed will be stored in a unit of currency
 * The amount of money a player has will be stored as normal in a unit of credits
 * All items will have a price in credits, that is hidden to the player
 * Client: The value of the money will be calculated by dividing the amount of money printed+original money/the number of credits
 * The value of the money will be multiplied by all prices and values that are in credits to show their cost in that currency
 * This will allow the player to see everything in their own currency easily
 * This means the only way to add value to your currency is to destroy it as the finance minister - trading does not destroy the currency
 * This means the value will only change when the finance minister changes it
 * This means the currency will only be able to gain value when the government is willing to destroy their funds, or the people are willing to donate to the government to do it.

So although this would not add a dynamic system it would help make each country different and have it's own feeling of identity,

Kokuya's Resource system Notes:

Intentions:
 * To bring a free market
 * To add purpose to resources
 * To add a reason to trade
 * To add dynamic prices

Ideas of how this would be done:
 * There would be a basic set of resources that can be combined to make things at factories, built by the players
 * The items built would give various bonuses and could be traded or used
 * The resources to make these items would be mined/farmed individualy by the players
 * Every country would be given a set of resources that their land contains
 * The resources would be out of 100% and show the amount of the country dedicated to making that resource
 * For example 20% of the land is coal, 30% has farmland, 10% hills for stone, 40% is woodland, 0%has oil
 * For example, people in a country with 20% stone would mine twice as much per hour as people in a country with just 10% stone.
 * These 'stats' would determine the efficiency of any mining done - where 0% means it cannot be done here.
 * Once a week each country can "re-roll" their resources if they have received "unfavourable" ones
 * Resources can be traded from players to governments and from governments to players
 * Different mining rates would be given to different resources to balance the economy, i.e. 20% stone might give 10/hour while 20%wheat might give 100/hour
 * To integrate this with wars, resources could be stolen from governments when a war is won.
 * Taxes could also be imposed on people importing/exporting goods to earn government funds.

mkk's notes
The economy is a free market. Things to be bought are (for example) an oil refinery and oil. These are seperate items. The refinery is limited in quantity, so is oil.

A country can buy the refinery and it will generate oil for that country and be resold. This means that oil is created all the time but is limited in existance by how willing countries are to trade it to others.

The refineries can be resold to other countries for a much larger amount. Oil is cheaper.

Anything can be traded for anything -- like 3 bananas, 4 cars and $1500 for 1 food factory.

Pavitra's notes
I like the idea of each country issuing its own currency. Not just a different name for the same underlying $ units, but actually creating new, fiat currency -- the game itself won't accept this currency as payment for anything, but other players might depending on whether they think your credit is good.

To actually trade it with other players, you need a free market. The market works like this: Alice posts a sell offer (in a format the game software understands) saying "I'll give you 100 Alicebucks for 1 parcel of land." The offer becomes visible in the market to all players. Bob sees Alice's offer, decides it's a good one, and clicks the Accept button. The game transfers 100 Alicebucks from Alice to Bob, and 1 parcel of land from Bob to Alice.

Alternatively, Bob thinks it's a bad offer and posts his own offer, "I'll give you 1 parcel of land for 300 Alicebucks."

Thus, the values of player-created currency are not fixed in game code as the generic currency is, but are instead defined by free market transactions. The currencies can float in value relative to each other, as real currencies do. Governments can do all sorts of creative things with this.

mkk pointed out that having 200 currencies would hurt players' brains, so: only countries can make a new currency, no more than one currency per country (aside from the generic one), and you have to pay a bunch of money for a mint before you can make a currency.

Salaries and harvests would still be paid, and games and things bought, in generic money. National currency money is only created when the finance minister decides to print some.

This is hard to explain. The following may be clearer (edited from the irc):

Say you print some currency. You post in the market saying "hey, I'll give you 100 of this currency I just made if you give me 30 food." I think about it and decide that you're trustworthy and your money is probably solid. So I agree and send you 30 food. I get 100 of your currency. Later, I want to buy something and pay in your currency. Hopefully, I'll be able to find a seller that accepts your currency. Possibly that seller is you.

Basically, a national currency is an unofficial IOU signed by the country.

So the players really decide what the currencies are worth. (Just like in real life.)

It's very unlikely that the players will decide all the currencies are worth the same. Different countries will mint different quantities; changes in government will affect the trustworthiness of a country; some people Won't Get It and will mint a bazillion bills.

Also, consider the recent war. The political landscape affects how much (for example) the Yen is worth. The Yen would likely have different values to a Japanese person than to a member of TAPA.

There's no formula the computer processes. You create the currencies and allow nations to print them, and the world decides what value they have.

The rules are fairly simple ("you're allowed to trade play money if you want") but the effects are incredibly complex.


 * I like the idea. My only problem with it is how money is created and destroyed. If a government is allowed to just print more money, it is guaranteed lots of newbie players will print billions and it is all useless. Also, how can money be destroyed? Maybe 5% of all currency transfers could be deleted? -- Mkk 23 14:32, 18 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Reiterating on mkk's statement, this is why only governments can create mints. Also this is why the mint building is very expensive. This gives the players time to learn the game mechanics, and by the time they had saved enough money to buy a mint, surely they would have enough sense not to print off tons of cash. I would say about the money being destroyed, because I understand why it's important...if you can only create money and not destroy it then there will be billions of money floating around...heres my proposal, during war...alot of things get destroyed. So then maybe we can work in a feature that destroys a certain amount of money when a country is attacked. This could be a completely random number, or it might be modified according to the size of the attack. -- Baltaar 10:18 AM, 18 July 2009 (CST)