Any chance for economic overhaul in Dots?

[Meister Röhrich]

Hey guys!

First of all I want to say I've watched this mod's progress a long time and I'm really amazed by your work and your aims to overhaul mtw and preview by preview it's getting harder for me to wait until this great project is getting finished.
Well the reason why I'm writing this awful long story is an idea that came recently across my mind when I thought about the economy in tw series:
It always annoyed me that the economy in tw games was restricted to 'get as much gold as possible from your settlements to recruit as much troops as possible', so I wondered how one might simulate an empire's economy and the need to care for it better. In my opinion the answer to a more challenging and realistic feeling is simulating needs of your own population but also special needs of your army with the help of resources. (I know you want to use GED's great economic package but I'm not sure how far he will go with the stuff I describe in the following so if he's going to implement s.th. like this or it has been discussed before just forget about my text)
Right now the game uses resources and trading with them just to calculate the individual income of settlements.
My question is: Is it in any ways possible to use them for simulating the needs of the population in the provinces?
For example take Rhodes as a province; due to it's historical status as a place of much trade and its terrain it can supply marble and silk as resources but lacks in grain. Now as a byzantium player you have to make sure that Rhodes always has the ability to trade with nearby provinces rich in agriculture, either your own provinces in greece or you have to achieve trade access with minor asia through diplomacy. Otherwise your population in Rhodes is starving and constantly decreasing, same with happiness.
Other goods on the other side could be neccesary for upgrading your troops like iron mines for mail.
This could add a whole new dimension to gameplay because you always have to consider what effects it could have on the economy if you attack your neighbour, but on the other side it could be inevitable to capture your neighbour's silver mines in order to maintain coin production for your economy.
All in all this would add a new aspect to the player's political consideration which was historical and in our days always a main reason for war or peace: scarcity of resources!

Now nice theory but is it possible for you to implement this in any ways and is there any chance we could see s.th. like that in Dots?

Oh and thanks for your patience!

[.Doge.]

Sounds very cool, I'd like to see such a economic system in DotS, too. But you'd have too change the AI a little, so that traderights are more expensive and less likely to get.

[Meister Röhrich]

Sounds very cool, I'd like to see such a economic system in DotS, too. But you'd have too change the AI a little, so that traderights are more expensive and less likely to get.

Yeah, at least! I think the real problem would be to make the AI 'think' like the player because propably they won't care about the resources they would need, just producing troops as long as it goes and in the end they may lose their empires due to rebellions in cause of angry populations in unsupplied settlements.

[RottenTree]

Sounds very complicated to implement if not impossible but I'm not a modder so I don't really know.
The way I could see it work is that where's no grain you lock the agricultural development of these regions so they have to get their growth boost by trade where's no iron you can't build a blacksmith...

So you set resource requirements for buildings that's possible as far as I know

[Meister Röhrich]

Sounds very complicated to implement if not impossible but I'm not a modder so I don't really know.
The way I could see it work is that where's no grain you lock the agricultural development of these regions so they have to get their growth boost by trade where's no iron you can't build a blacksmith...

So you set resource requirements for buildings that's possible as far as I know

Yes that would really be awesome!
The main thing I feel is to come a bit away from this military-centric gameplay in mtw. Of course this is what made the game so cool and famous: realistic battles; but unfortunately there isn't much more aside from few RPG elements for your generals and buildings for settlements and because of that a lack in long-term motivation.

[Azim]

Hey guys!

First of all I want to say I've watched this mod's progress a long time and I'm really amazed by your work and your aims to overhaul mtw and preview by preview it's getting harder for me to wait until this great project is getting finished.
Well the reason why I'm writing this awful long story is an idea that came recently across my mind when I thought about the economy in tw series:
It always annoyed me that the economy in tw games was restricted to 'get as much gold as possible from your settlements to recruit as much troops as possible', so I wondered how one might simulate an empire's economy and the need to care for it better. In my opinion the answer to a more challenging and realistic feeling is simulating needs of your own population but also special needs of your army with the help of resources. (I know you want to use GED's great economic package but I'm not sure how far he will go with the stuff I describe in the following so if he's going to implement s.th. like this or it has been discussed before just forget about my text)
Right now the game uses resources and trading with them just to calculate the individual income of settlements.
My question is: Is it in any ways possible to use them for simulating the needs of the population in the provinces?
For example take Rhodes as a province; due to it's historical status as a place of much trade and its terrain it can supply marble and silk as resources but lacks in grain. Now as a byzantium player you have to make sure that Rhodes always has the ability to trade with nearby provinces rich in agriculture, either your own provinces in greece or you have to achieve trade access with minor asia through diplomacy. Otherwise your population in Rhodes is starving and constantly decreasing, same with happiness.
Other goods on the other side could be neccesary for upgrading your troops like iron mines for mail.
This could add a whole new dimension to gameplay because you always have to consider what effects it could have on the economy if you attack your neighbour, but on the other side it could be inevitable to capture your neighbour's silver mines in order to maintain coin production for your economy.
All in all this would add a new aspect to the player's political consideration which was historical and in our days always a main reason for war or peace: scarcity of resources!

Now nice theory but is it possible for you to implement this in any ways and is there any chance we could see s.th. like that in Dots?

Oh and thanks for your patience!

The player will have a harder time earning money from agriculture alone. Especially in colonies and autonomies/vassalages, where this income will be only a fraction of what it is in homlands. (Because the ruler is only taxing a fraction of the true income, that of his vassal.) Trade routes will be much more important as a source of income, so it will be important that the player can maintain good relations with trading partners and protect land and sea trade routes from enemies. DotS will also have a banking system (which is a feature that GED plans to implement in his economic package). The player will be able to take out loans, but must be careful not to fall into debt, lest he face very, very serious consequences. The research and mapping teams are also being very thorough in their discussion of resource types, values, and placement. We won't know how well the DotS economics system will work until playtesting, of course, but it will be very different from vanilla.

Sounds very cool, I'd like to see such a economic system in DotS, too. But you'd have too change the AI a little, so that traderights are more expensive and less likely to get.

That would probably hurt the AI more than the player. If the AI factions make fewer trade agreements with the player and amongst themselves, their incomes will drop. The player can deal with this, because he can get money in other ways (conquests, mechants, and missions - the AI does not get missions) but the AI will not be able to deal with this.

[Meister Röhrich]

The player will have a harder time earning money from agriculture alone. Especially in colonies and autonomies/vassalages, where this income will be only a fraction of what it is in homlands. (Because the ruler is only taxing a fraction of the true income, that of his vassal.) Trade routes will be much more important as a source of income, so it will be important that the player can maintain good relations with trading partners and protect land and sea trade routes from enemies. DotS will also have a banking system (which is a feature that GED plans to implement in his economic package). The player will be able to take out loans, but must be careful not to fall into debt, lest he face very, very serious consequences. The research and mapping teams are also being very thorough in their discussion of resource types, values, and placement. We won't know how well the DotS economics system will work until playtesting, of course, but it will be very different from vanilla.

Just have to love you guys! This will be definitely the best mod on mtw in all aspects! (+rep if I could)

[Pilgrim9]

well in the third age total war mod they implemented scripts for settlements so they got larger armies and money.....
couldn't something like that be implemented to lighten the ai's load?

but of course.. im no modder

[Azim]

The AI will get a cash bonus, the size of which varies with the difficulty setting. The player can also choose to remove cash bonuses during the start of campaign configuration. There will be no garrison scripts, however.

[spanish_emperor]

interesting, though i would like to see mines have a certain age limit. that is, after a hundred years or so mines should give little to no profit because every resource has being already extracted.

[uanime5]

Right now the game uses resources and trading with them just to calculate the individual income of settlements.
My question is: Is it in any ways possible to use them for simulating the needs of the population in the provinces?
For example take Rhodes as a province; due to it's historical status as a place of much trade and its terrain it can supply marble and silk as resources but lacks in grain. Now as a byzantium player you have to make sure that Rhodes always has the ability to trade with nearby provinces rich in agriculture, either your own provinces in greece or you have to achieve trade access with minor asia through diplomacy. Otherwise your population in Rhodes is starving and constantly decreasing, same with happiness.
Other goods on the other side could be neccesary for upgrading your troops like iron mines for mail.
This could add a whole new dimension to gameplay because you always have to consider what effects it could have on the economy if you attack your neighbour, but on the other side it could be inevitable to capture your neighbour's silver mines in order to maintain coin production for your economy.
All in all this would add a new aspect to the player's political consideration which was historical and in our days always a main reason for war or peace: scarcity of resources!

The main problem with this is while we can require that certain buildings can only be built in settlements with certain resources M2TW does not consider a region trading resources as possessing them. For example if you have one regions that has grain, another than has iron, and both are trading with each other M2TW will register them as one region with grain and one with iron, rather than two regions with grain and iron. You also can't contact other factions and try to buy the resources you need, so you can't offer them your grain in exchange for their iron.

While you may be able to implement this with a script that tracks how long you've held regions with iron or grain and gives you so many 'resource points' for doing this you would still not be able to trade resources.

[Goodfella]

This would be amazing if it was possible.
I hope someone comes up with a way to infact make it possible.