The Wealth of Ancient Nations: How to make a realistic and engaging economic system
Population, and why its important:
The MEIOU & Taxes mod for EU4 has probably the most realistic depiction of pre-industrial economies in a historical strategy game to date. It can serve as a good model for a realistic and engaging economic system in AE.
Basically, income in M&T is rural population * a small modifier + urban population * a much larger modifier + income from controlling trade routes. Historically, most people before the Industrial Revolution lived at a subsistence level, without much economic surplus that could be squeezed out of them. Per capita income could only increase significantly in cities, and then only for a small subset of the population - but this small subset could be taxed much more efficiently than any rural population, which meant that cities were as good as gold mines from the point of view of the state.
You might think that this system cannot be extended to AE, which lacks a population system, but it's easier to model population than you might imagine. Population growth was very slow before the Agricultural Revolution, including during the period AE covers. Static, or almost completely static, values will work just fine. And we already have a feature which represents the agricultural productivity of a region, which also means how many people a region can support by farming (i.e. rural population). Fertility can be straightforwardly linked to rural population, i.e. high fertility = high population, low fertility = low population. To make a realistic rural economy, all that needs to be done is to tie virtually all non-urban income to fertility, even that which isn't related to farming, and then to make fertility much more static (with seasons providing income modifiers instead of fertility modifiers). Historical and plausible alt-history cases of population growth can be handled by events or rare buildings that increase fertility.
Urban population can be modeled simply by the level of each urban settlement, with it being assumed that the highest tier is a golden age Rome of 1 mil+ people, and that the lowest level is a respectable regional city of a few tens of thousands. All forms of non-rural income would receive large modifiers with each level of the city, to represent the greater output of larger populations.
Urbanization:
There should be a sharp difference between urban and rural regions, based on the main settlement. Urban settlements would be direct upgrades from each rural main settlement line, allowing the different types of of rural settlement types based on form of local government to be maintained, and their differences extended to city-level settlements. Realistically this is fitting, because urbanization, as long as it can be supported, is always desirable. You can only develop the countryside so much, and the most developed countrysides are those around cities. The rural settlements could be renamed to equivalents of "village", "small town", and "large town" to represent the increasing level of development and urbanization in each region as you upgrade.
Urban-level settlements should be absent at the start of the game outside places that historically had notable cities, like Italy, Carthaginian areas, the Eastern Med, Mesopotamia, and Iran. Upgrading rural regions to the city level should be hideously expensive, as should upgrading from one urban level to another. Realistically, urban infrastructure is expensive, and it should be in order to make urbanization both a difficult end for the player to achieve, and a worthwhile sink for the huge amounts of money that large factions make.
The limiting factor on urbanization, besides money, should be food. Normally, cities will be limited in size by the local food supply, tied to fertility. This can be represented by making food production 100% tied to fertility, and only letting the main settlement produce food. With the large cost in food for larger cities, this will naturally throttle urbanization past the point at which a region should not be able to support it. However, food import harbors should be available in coastal cities that give large amounts of food. This should be necessary for very large cities outside of anywhere but Egypt.
Changes to other buildings:
Buildings need a big change, at least economic buildings. Different building lines should represent different strategic choices.
Farming: As food would be derived from the main settlement, farm buildings would represent a choice between cash crops, intensive food cultivation, or plots of land given out to small soldier-farmers. Cash crops would decrease food but give a good amount of money. They would be a sort of alternative to urbanization, requiring lower upfront investments but giving lower returns. Intensive food cultivation could serve as an alternative to food imports, but be much less effective. Soldier-farmers would give lower recruitment cost, more morale for soldiers, better public order, and/or more recruitment slots, but reduce income and food moderately as small farming is less efficient than latifundia. Some cultures could also build horse farms, which would work like cash crops but also give bonuses to cavalry.
All farm income will be a function of fertility, as should bonus food, as well as bonuses from the soldier-farms, if possible.
Industry: The only industry building available in rural areas should be mines/quarries. These should reduce food, as rural people are working the day in mines instead of tilling the fields. Again, like cash crops, a cheaper but less effective alternative to urbanization. Cities will have access to more types of industry. If possible, many trade goods could be detached from geographical locations, and be produced by different industry lines (horse farms and cash crop farms could also function like this). Also, some types of cash crop farms could be upgraded to an industrial level if a city is present, namely olive oil and wine. Different types of industrial buildings should make similar amounts of money, but provide different ancillary effects. Many of the somewhat superfluous non-economic buildings could be scrapped to make way for more complexity in industry.
Trade: As mentioned above, many trade resources could become a result of regular urban and rural industry. This would make trade more interesting, as it becomes more a product of player choices. Certain strategic resources should remain region locked, of course. High-level urban centers should give big bonuses to trade income, giving yet another reason to pursue urbanization, and giving Carthage a good boost early on.
The grand vision:
How would this change the game? For one, highly-populated and highly urbanized areas will become prizes to fight over. Planning conquests will become more interesting as more strategic geography gets added to the map. There will also be more difference between different starts, because unurbanized tribal societies will have a much different set of challenges than more built up factions like Rome (to make up for having much less income, tribal societies could get some bonuses to recruitment cost and upkeep, at least of low-level soldiers).
Players will have a new goal that will last for the entire campaign: urbanizing their society. I'm serious when I say that urbanization should be hideously expensive - tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands for each city level. This kind of massive cost will give players something to work for at the beginning of the game, and something to sink their money into late in the game. 100 turns in, a Roman player might still be watching their spending so that they can undertake a massive urban building campaign in Gallia. Industry should also be expensive, but affordable compared to urban upgrades. Something like 10k to a few tens of thousands for each level. More of an early-to-mid-level goal and money sink.
Finally, planning out our building schemes will be more engaging. It won't just be about profit maximization, minimizing public order, and enabling recruitment or other specific bonuses. You will always try to maximize income, so the buildings that maximize income will come with other bonuses that you can choose between. You always want to have positive food, so provincial food will become a resource instead of a looming penalty - something you spend to either urbanize, or gain lesser but more immediate provincial benefits. And we will have more freedom to make use of all the non-economic buildings if we don't feel forced to build farms (sometimes multiple farms) in every single region.
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Originally Posted by druchii7
