Advertisement

Industrial revolution strategy (post mortem and ideas)

Started by November 26, 2013 11:58 PM
58 comments, last by Acharis 10 years, 11 months ago

Well, I mean it can be pretty straight forward (or not so pretty)

transportation cost is 100 for one province, 200 for 2 province ....

or

you set three province type (50 for flat (?) , 100 for normal , 200 for mountainous)

I mean you put a fixed cost not a function of population or industrial activity.

mostates by moson?e | Embrace your burden

Well if you have transportation then you could create hubs that act as gathering places for resources and people. With low per turn transport times then people have to live near manufacturing centres and resources can take several turns to travel long distances. But if you build rail roads or cannals then people can live further from the centre and create new hubs in much the same way that the rail road transformed London and allowed people to live outside of london and still work in london.

Hubs also could give you a nice clean way of visualizing supply chains and their connections, much like the one below:

PUMA-supply-chain_DL-v2.png

Advertisement

I think I will ignore transport completely, maybe make something extremely simple like Unduli said. Transporting stuff is simply not what's the core fun of that game.

The main difference between provinces could be the natural resources.

Factories is one thing, you can build these anywhere (as long as there is enough labour available) but each province will have a different set of ores (coal, iron, tin, copper), forests (wood), pits (clay). Also farming, but that's a separate can of worms.

I think resource deposits should have 2 parameters: richness (how much stuff one mine can dig here; forest should not have this variable?) and size of ore deposits (how many mines you can build in that province). You would have a (limited) option to send prospectors which can discover more deposits (+X to max number of mines), and some technological advances (deep mining tech) would allow more mines. Forests can not be enlarged, so only trade is an option here in a long run.

Next land, that one is more complicated. I want a separation of agriculture, it's special. Every province has ALL unused land assigned as wheat farms from the start. You can increase efficiency of farming by technology, but over time the farming are should be reduced by cities and factories. So, you don't build "farms", by default everything minus number of factories & mines & houses is a farm.

Now the problem, what about sheep? There need to be wool, absolutely. So, there must be some option to assign some part of the land for sheep instead of wheat. How to do it? In addition, in reality (not that it needs to be done realisticly, it's just an example) sheep were shephered in areas where farming was not possible (mountains, hills). Not sure how to appoach this...

Labour

Right now it's quite simple, each building/factory requires X workers, based on shortage/abundance of labour the wages are set (the premise is they work overhours if needed and that the factory always run at identical efficiency), when the shortage exceeds x3 the option to build more factories is disabled (they can't work harder, at that point you have to bring more workers).

The population migrate between provinced based on wages in the province.

So far so good (OK, maybe the identical efficiency of factories regardless of workforce is a bit lame), but I have a problem with farmers. Farms are fixed, they require X farmers, everyone above is automaticly converted to labourers. Farmers are NOT effected by wages and you never pay them anything, they are FREE (it's to simulate the traditional agriar society, they are easy to please, require nothing and so on, and you want to make them convert to labourers). But it does not work so well with the wages system of labourers...

How to solve/approach those?

Stellar Monarch (4X, turn based, released): GDN forum topic - Twitter - Facebook - YouTube

If population migrate based on wages then won't everyone leave the farming provinces to the place that has too many factories? I would have thought there would be advantages to specialization of provinces, and historically job migration only happened in times are extreme hardship and not for a small wage increase.

I'm not sure about just building factories even if I don't have enough people for them. Why is everyone willing to work triple overtime? Would you work 18+ hours a day just because there are jobs available? During the industrial revolution people worked unpaid overtime because there were not enough jobs to go around rather than there being too many. It makes more sense that efficiency or output drops at the factories. If I build 3 factories but can only support 1 should get triple the goods at a slightly higher cost I should get a third from each.

Land I think is easiest done with plots. Each province has a fixed number of plots initially undeveloped. There could be different base types of plots some suitable for farming others for mining or forestry. Building a mine might require 1 plot, like wise a village might take 1 plot, but town might be 5 or a city 12. Unused land is available for farming. Each farmer can only work 1 plot and produce 2 food but as technology improves you can increase the number of plots a farmer can work and the amount of food they can produce per plot. So food production would be based on farm plots and farmers.

You could always just make everyone who doesn't have a job in a mine or factory a farmer. Or you could even have tradition bonuses, maybe people level up in a province for doing a job for long enough.

I think I will ignore transport completely, maybe make something extremely simple like Unduli said. Transporting stuff is simply not what's the core fun of that game.

The main difference between provinces could be the natural resources.

Factories is one thing, you can build these anywhere (as long as there is enough labour available) but each province will have a different set of ores (coal, iron, tin, copper), forests (wood), pits (clay). Also farming, but that's a separate can of worms.

I think resource deposits should have 2 parameters: richness (how much stuff one mine can dig here; forest should not have this variable?) and size of ore deposits (how many mines you can build in that province). You would have a (limited) option to send prospectors which can discover more deposits (+X to max number of mines), and some technological advances (deep mining tech) would allow more mines. Forests can not be enlarged, so only trade is an option here in a long run.

Next land, that one is more complicated. I want a separation of agriculture, it's special. Every province has ALL unused land assigned as wheat farms from the start. You can increase efficiency of farming by technology, but over time the farming are should be reduced by cities and factories. So, you don't build "farms", by default everything minus number of factories & mines & houses is a farm.

Now the problem, what about sheep? There need to be wool, absolutely. So, there must be some option to assign some part of the land for sheep instead of wheat. How to do it? In addition, in reality (not that it needs to be done realisticly, it's just an example) sheep were shephered in areas where farming was not possible (mountains, hills). Not sure how to appoach this...

Labour

Right now it's quite simple, each building/factory requires X workers, based on shortage/abundance of labour the wages are set (the premise is they work overhours if needed and that the factory always run at identical efficiency), when the shortage exceeds x3 the option to build more factories is disabled (they can't work harder, at that point you have to bring more workers).

The population migrate between provinced based on wages in the province.

So far so good (OK, maybe the identical efficiency of factories regardless of workforce is a bit lame), but I have a problem with farmers. Farms are fixed, they require X farmers, everyone above is automaticly converted to labourers. Farmers are NOT effected by wages and you never pay them anything, they are FREE (it's to simulate the traditional agriar society, they are easy to please, require nothing and so on, and you want to make them convert to labourers). But it does not work so well with the wages system of labourers...

How to solve/approach those?

Actually, I think transportation adds depth but its up to you. Transportation let you decide optimal place to put factory (proximity to market and supply)

For mining, you might also consider mining deeper with more cost as it may become viable in time (like it was in peak in oil prices)

For farming, you may consider adding pollution (urban and factory related) affecting farm output. And for default farm , it is not realistic if there won't be enough people to sustain them. If I were you, I'd rather introduce "meadow" for sheep as well and make it default instead of farm.

And for labour, farm output ie wheat is a commodity as well and a survival one, so you simply can't convert population to all workers, as wage is a function of "wheat" in this era.

Btw, better take a look at Harris - Todaro model (glad I had enough thanks to getting "Development Economics" 4 times :) ) , it gives you some ideas

Actually why not read an entire "Development Economics" book :) , I unintentionally got many for my game project.

mostates by moson?e | Embrace your burden

"During the industrial revolution people worked unpaid overtime because there were not enough jobs to go around rather than there being too many." - I think unemployment was more of a XX century thing. Plus, a society that makes 4 year old children work 14 hours a day does not sound like one with too much spare workforce...

Anyway, the gameplay dictates that the player has a shortage of workers and needs to struggle to allocate them as best as possible. Unemplyment would not be playable.

"If I build 3 factories but can only support 1 should get triple the goods at a slightly higher cost I should get a third from each." - But then the gameplay would degenerate. You have 3 workers, you bulit 3 factories and then... you can't do anything beside waiting for population growth to give you +1 worker. I don't see it being playable...

"You could always just make everyone who doesn't have a job in a mine or factory a farmer." - Well, that's almost how it works now, but the opposite. Everyone who can't have a farmer job becomes a labourer. That's assuming fixed ratio (1 farmer per 1 plot of land). But I wonder if it wouldn't be better to have it non linear (5 farmers per 5 plots = 5 grain, 2 farmers per 5 plots = 4 grain), it would allow gradual conversion of farmers to labourers...

My general point is that there are 2 classes of people, villagers and citizens. Villagers (farmers) live in villages, you don't need to provide houses for them (they have these already) nor food and very low amount of consumer goods. Citizens (labourers) live in cities, you have to provide them housing, city infrastructure, food, heating during winter, a lot of consumer goods. Villagers are self sustainable (they produce what they need, they go to a nearby forest to gather wood they need and so on), citizens require a lot of effort, logistics and preparations.

I feel that maybe villagers/countrymen should be a separate clas of some sort. Then, if the labourers are far better of than they, they would start converting to labourers?

And that's before we think about educated people (like teachers). With the current system, when you build a university it will use up X labourers... One day they were working in mines and suddenly today they teach quantum physics :D It does not feel all right to me at all...

Stellar Monarch (4X, turn based, released): GDN forum topic - Twitter - Facebook - YouTube

Advertisement

a society that makes 4 year old children work 14 hours a day does not sound like one with too much spare workforce...

And that's before we think about educated people (like teachers). With the current system, when you build a university it will use up X labourers... One day they were working in mines and suddenly today they teach quantum physics biggrin.png It does not feel all right to me at all...

It doesn't feel right, because I'm pretty sure it isn't right - though you may well decide to stick with it for gameplay reasons.

There have been very few civilisations with a significant labour shortage, and all of those are do to environmental factors that heavily limit maximum population (i.e. shortages of food during harsh winters or on small islands). For a society well on their way into an industrial revolution, such a shortage would be laughable.

Industrial revolutions even tend to vastly increase the available workforce, given that manufacturing previously performed by skilled craftsmen can now be handled by unskilled labour.

Tristam MacDonald. Ex-BigTech Software Engineer. Future farmer. [https://trist.am]

I remember playing tropico several times and often a worker shortage was just that you're buildings stopped working efficiently and all you could do was turn off buildings or wait for your work force to grow in size. You might also need to either hire expensive foreign workers or wait for your people to become educated enough to work at some buildings. Since something like hospital required a university educated worker and you might not have any in your population so your hospital does nothing but waste money until someone graduates from university.


And for labour, farm output ie wheat is a commodity as well and a survival one, so you simply can't convert population to all workers, as wage is a function of "wheat" in this era.
Exactly. Food is critical and you need it first, so the player can't just go around depleting farms workforce. Maybe make farmers traditional like stubborn pops that stick to farming in excessive quantity, so the player want to convince/force them to switch the job but never will face shortage of them? I don't know...


Industrial revolutions even tend to vastly increase the available workforce, given that manufacturing previously performed by skilled craftsmen can now be handled by unskilled labour.
Yes... I like the concept of converting already existing population... But how exactly handle it?


I remember playing tropico several times and often a worker shortage was just that you're buildings stopped working efficiently and all you could do was turn off buildings or wait for your work force to grow in size.
I was thinking about Tropico model for a while as well. But there are 2 major incompatible characteristic.

First, in Tropico there is this INSANELY high pop growth rate, all this immigration and an option to order experts from abroad. You start at 50 pops and end up with 500. such huge growth would be very unrealistic for the industrial revolution era game.

Second, it's realtime, so if they worker has not reached the factory yet you don't sweat and just wait a bit longer. Now imagine turn based, you built a factory and the worker has not reached it yet next turn, you would start to sweat, think you did something wrong... Such system would not work that well in turen based game.

I can think of 3 solution for population:

1) Allow the player to "produce" population. In Imperialism you could produce infinite number of workers (by pressing a button) by spending 1 canned food + cloth + furniture. Althrough in practice you were capped by food available.

2) Give the player a lot of unused or not optimaly used population reserves (like farmers, craftsmen) that can be converted to desired workforce.

3) Make workers shortages non devastating, like make the factory efficiency formula non linear (1000 workers = 100% output, 500 workers = 80% output)

Stellar Monarch (4X, turn based, released): GDN forum topic - Twitter - Facebook - YouTube

Population & factories

I was thinking about it, tell me if it makes sense/if you have a better idea/if it should be altered. Also there are some questions.

BTW, I know it sounds like a communistic planned economy since the state pays all the wages and everything, but I concluded I want the player to have a lot of control, so I was willing to sacriface that part of realism.

Make everything (factories, mines, farms) "production structures". Instead to creating classes of population (labourers, miners, farmers) on province level let the population occupy a certain production structure and then those who are inside farm are farmers, inside factory labourers. Instead of wages calculated on province level make them separate for each production structure, those that have not enough workers will auto set high wages and those with a lot low wages (plus, the wage will depend in the player selected priorities, like "give more wages to coal miners" option would increase wages in all coal mines everywhere).

There would be a special category "unemployed", all new born in a province start here and then quickly start to find some job (there is no "delay" or "resistance to change occupation" for unemployed class, they all will try to find any job (inside a province) immediatelly).

Population would first migrate between provinces (based on the average wages in all production structures inside a province plus housing in a province) and the migrate inisde a province between production structures (much faster than changing a province).

Consumption

The money earned by population is spent on food and consumer goods (that you as government sell). I guees, if there is not enough/too expensive food it should reduce the population? But from which production structure? And there should be some "morale/happiness" (but for the whole nation, for a province or for each production structure separately)?

Farmers as a bit special category

Since I try to simulate the shift from agrarian to industrial society I think farmers should behave a bit different. Like, they need no housing (they use their own countryhouses, they don't need to rely on player build houses inside cities). Also they have low consumption of consumer goods (the assumption is they can do a lot for themselves in their villages or simply don't need a lot since they love to lead simple life). Therefore, farmers would be the least demanding class (they have always perfect housing, and halved consumer needs (except food) and are content with rather low wages).

Education?

I'm not sure how to fit literacy here. I plan 4 education levels (illiterate, basic, advanced, expert), you can increase these by building schools and universities. But how to relate this to population? I mean, farmers should be iliterate (no problem) but factory workers should be at least basic literate also there should be some advanced/expert engineers that supervise a factory (so 90% basic and 8% advanced, 2% expert would be optimal for example)? But how to do it? Add literacy levels to each "production structure"? Quite messy since there are migrations and changing jobs...

Stellar Monarch (4X, turn based, released): GDN forum topic - Twitter - Facebook - YouTube

This topic is closed to new replies.

Advertisement