Okay so I''m in the process of designing a Turn Based Strategy game about the Cold War. Essentially the player can play certain nations both communist and capitalist and try to win the "cold war" for their side through diplomacy, espionage, proimity wars, threats and so forth. The game will be played on a "grand scale" similar to Civilization or Shogun or Europa Universailis in the sense that the player will have a large map to deal with. Now I want resources and economics to play a part in this game - as they did during the real cold war for instance "the great game" which was a compitition between the US and the USSR for oil in central asia. To that end I want to design two different economic systems for the capitalist and communist nations. Many games feature factions with different ideologies and such but they seem to always have the same type of economic system, use the same resources in the same ways and build structures in the same way. I want my game to feature a different play style for capitalist and communist nations the only problem is I can''t come up - as of yet, with a good idea for what the differences should be. So far I have decided that Communist nations should feature a play style similar to the standard strategy game which gives the player full control over resources, buildings, unit production and so forth and the capitalist nations should feature a slightly more "automated" economey where the player must use certain options to persaude an AI that runs the economy towards particular behaviours - but I don''t know if this is a viable option that would be fun and simple to impliment. So I would like people to add any suggestions for what I can do to design distinct economic systems for Communist and Capitalist nations in my strategy game.

Hmm this seems like an interesting game.


Capitalism:
Generates more revenue but takes more time, can also re-generate revenue(which means that the player re-invests money in the economy, sort of like the dutch did when colonizing).

Communism:
Generates less revenue but does it faster (due to corruption).

Well just a couple of ideas, this is sort of what you have already done I quess.

Good luck!


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http://www.uziana.com

I''d think that corruption would slow construction, but have no money costs since you tell them what to do. You just need to worry about resources. But you also control that, so you just go and mine it. All research is done in the private sector.

A capitalistic government would produce more, and you have the advantage of contractors bidding for the contracts. So instead of getting the resources, companies would do that part, and you pay them to do something. You''d also have to manage taxes. A good amount of research would also be done in the private sector. And you''d also have to fund some parts of it.

I was thinking of a similar system where in communisim the player would have to construct every building manually.

For instance if they wanted to build a Copper Mine in Siberia they''d have to manually find the resource, select the mine from some menu, allocate the proper number of people to construct and operate the mine, and then click to build the mine which would cost a certain amount of specific resources.

Once the mine is operational then copper is produced and added to some sort of inventory or stockpile and the player can use the copper to build structures or units that require copper.


Under Capitalism I was thinking that all resource gathering would be done "behind the scenes" by private companies. The player would still need resources to construct but the resources would have to be purchased from these private companies with money (they wouldn''t automatically dump into a stockpile once gathered). The private sector would automatically develope mines, factories, foundries, etc. once a resource is located. However I wanted to go beyond that and add in a system of Supply and Demand. The private sector isn''t just going to develope a copper mine if the demand for copper is extremely low. I wanted to have a system in capitalist nations that monitored the public''s demand for certain materials (based on a number of factors which I haven''t decided yet). So if the public has a strong demand for timber then timber production (Supply) will rise (depending of course on the availability of timber for the private sector) to meet the demand. In this scenerio if theres a lot of forest for the private sector to chop down there''s goign to be a lot of timber piling up because of the strong demand and a strong supply, the government will be able to purchase the timber relitively cheaply. However if the demand rises very high but the nation is located in a desert with no timber and no way to import timber then demand will be high, supply will be low and the price of timber will skyrocket.


Essentially capitalism will have fluxtuating prices for contstruction. Sometimes things will be cheap to build sometimes they will be very expensive. Communism on the other hand will always feature a relatively stable price of construction - but will involve the player to do more managing of resources which in capitalism the private sector would do any ways. These are just thoughs about how this might work, I want their to be more differences then just that however.

Well, a government contract would always motivate a company to get the resource. And if you really want to go all the way, you could add environmentalist groups, strikes, etc. that would affect resources and building. And by the cold war, labor laws had already been in effect for 50+ years, so you can''t just roll in the military and make them work. Communism, on the other hand, may do ask they please. They may find "new ways to motivate" the workers. Commies could also ration out food to the workers.

Also, you must point out that in communism, the government decides what businesses, etc. are set up, the prices are set by the gov''t, etc. There is no free enterprise

Capitalism, everything could be controlled by the user.

I''m assuming that the user is the government. The citizens is AI.

Yeah the User basically leads the nation, in effect they are the government and the citizens would be AI.

There would definately be riots and strikes in the game - one of the ways to lose the game is if your national government is overthrown my citizens who support the opposite ideal (Capitalism or Communism) in a revolution.

Check out a gaem called Balance of Power, i remeber that being a very similar game to what you have mentioned.