Wealth Generation

[Titanian]

To me, this new approach sounds a little strange. Why would a government make money by taxing the people it itself is actually employing? I would rather do it the other way around, that having lots of installations, whether they are actually used or not, incurs an upkeep. Which of course does not help with the problem at hand.

I guess the problem is more that starting out a bit behind in some single specific tech (in this case wealth tech) does not last long, because techs always double in cost for every level. Thus, techs you are behind in are relativly cheap and fast to research. So to keep Chinas wealth tech behind, they need to have a lower tech level in general, and less research labs so it stays that way, and thus less factories so that  they don't get new labs faster than the others. That would make them a clearly inferior opponent.

Another point is that all the productivity and wealth techs take effect immediatly. This allows to quickly research the levels you are behind in and put them to use. This is also especially apparent if e.g. a China with low wealth modifier gets conquered, and instantly the better wealth tech of the new owner of the population is in effect.
So instead of a global modifier, we maybe need this value to be a population dependant value, which can be raised by some kind of industrial project acting like some kind of infrastructure. Let's call it development points (dp). As an example: A population has 100 million inhabitants. The owners wealth tech is at max 20 dp/million of population. This population could thus use up to 2.000 dp if they were present, any more would be wasted. If only less than this limit were present, all dp could be used. Then, the owner earns wealth equal to the dp that could be utilized by the population as taxes. Producing dp could for example cost wealth only.

[CheaterEater]

Wealth accumulation is separate from wealth generation. If infinite wealth accumulation is an issue, you should restrict it. Have wealth generated by multiplied by a factor of A*(wealth generated)/(wealth accumulated) with the desired scaling factor A. If you measure in years and set A=1, if you accumulate 5 years worth of wealth you're earning 1/5 as much. This incentivizes spending wealth, as a facility or ship you bought wouldn't count against your accumulated wealth, but does allow some storage in case of emergency.

I think most nations would have a hard time accumulating significant amounts of wealth kept "free." Either domestic politics will force it to be dispersed for domestic ends or the large amounts of free capital floating around will necessarily increase inefficiencies; in any case, the wealth will be "lost." One interesting option then is for financial centers to allow greater accumulation of wealth, perhaps as more liquid investments. It makes sense to boost your wealth storage as well as your wealth generation, and losing that storage (e.g. losing a planet with financial centers) would be more damaging.

[Titanian]

Or we could shift some of our heavy industry to a less developed world, leaving more population free to work privately on our developed capital, giving us a net increase in productivity.

For that to be possible, there needs to be some kind of development index for every population, which there currently is not. Otherwise it sounds like an interesting concept, especially id it encourages to move industry to colonies. Then the button to give colonies independence might actually produce functional races most of the time, not just planets without any industry and thus without any means to do anything .

[Bremen]

To everyone talking about taxes coming from agricultural and service workers, while I agree that makes the most sense, it also completely fails at the main goal of keeping a nation with a large population but little in the way of industry (think China or India in most of Steve's games) from producing massive amounts of wealth.

In the past we had racial wealth multipliers to address this, but I gather Steve wants something that nations can organically grow out of as they industrialize, which I think is a definite improvement.

[Graham]

Or we could shift some of our heavy industry to a less developed world, leaving more population free to work privately on our developed capital, giving us a net increase in productivity.

For that to be possible, there needs to be some kind of development index for every population, which there currently is not. Otherwise it sounds like an interesting concept, especially id it encourages to move industry to colonies. Then the button to give colonies independence might actually produce functional races most of the time, not just planets without any industry and thus without any means to do anything .

See my first post in this thread.

[Garfunkel]

As long as the more mundane civilian aspects of government spending are abstracted away, it's absolutely fine that the Agricultural and Service workers provide no tax, and that some "government"-workers provide very little. Because that way you have sources of both income and expenditure abstracted away, so it sort of balances itself out.

Many of these suggestions are intriguing, but they run into the issue that the problem of economy modelling is just pushed back to another step - and there's no point to completely rework the economic system of Aurora at this stage if we actually want to get to playing it at some point

I like the sound of the changes and testing will show if they are getting us in the right direction. I would like to keep a wealth cap of some sort, because even with the changes, it can be possible with a conventional Earth start to accumulate massive hoard of wealth - plus robbing NPRs shouldn't give you near-unlimited funds for years.

[the obelisk]

In your proposed system, income comes from 2 sources. Government mines, refineries and financial centres, and civilian traders and mining complexes.
Realistically, no one is going to build more mines or refineries than they need just for a bit of wealth, and you have no real control over civilians aside from stopping them being shot down and establishing colonies. Therefore, the only real game choice when facing a lack of financing is build more financial centres. While there are some more nuanced options, it will basically always come down to that.

I'm in agreement with this.  I think that if the goal is to have a greater number of interesting player decisions, giving the player more ways to influence the empire's economy/wealth generation is the way to go.

Something I don't think has been pointed out yet is that another source of wealth generation, civilian trade, is also significantly governed by population, since population has a very direct role in determining what trade goods are relevant to a particular colony, what the demand is, and if I'm not mistaken, how much is produced.  While less direct than taxing the population, this system as is continues to reinforce the large population = strong economy issue.  Giving players a way to interact with this, such as if the production and demand were influenced by the availability of TN minerals in the civilian economy relative to the population (maybe giving TN minerals produced in the same system extra weight) could lead to more interesting game play and help unify the economic elements of Aurora.

To everyone talking about taxes coming from agricultural and service workers, while I agree that makes the most sense, it also completely fails at the main goal of keeping a nation with a large population but little in the way of industry (think China or India in most of Steve's games) from producing massive amounts of wealth.

They could simply generate smaller amounts.

In the past we had racial wealth multipliers to address this, but I gather Steve wants something that nations can organically grow out of as they industrialize, which I think is a definite improvement.

I don't think building more financial sectors constitutes as organic growth.  It would be more interesting if there were factors other than research and a specific type of building that determine to what extent the population generates wealth.

As long as the more mundane civilian aspects of government spending are abstracted away, it's absolutely fine that the Agricultural and Service workers provide no tax, and that some "government"-workers provide very little. Because that way you have sources of both income and expenditure abstracted away, so it sort of balances itself out.

It largely limits you from creating a colony to generate wealth, since you'd NEED to divert construction factories to the creation of financial centers for that colony.  The only advantage the new colony would have is a faster growing population resulting in a faster growing worker base.

[Rabid_Cog]

My vision of the tax income from Agricultural and Services sector would be that the income is low. As low as it is now, or perhaps even lower, or is instead just counterbalanced by all unemployed workers incurring a "welfare cost" that directly counteracts your income.

Financial Centers on the other hand represent what happens when siginificant capital investment is done to grow the economy beyond the base level. They have large employer requirements, but provide massive tax income multipliers to all its workers.

So a massive rural economy would have a large service/agriculture sector that provides a low level income, but without the industry to keep their large populace busy, they would have significant unemployment bringing their wealth down. Also no financial centers to compensate.

On the opposite end, you have a big industrialized economy that also has a large service/agriculture sector to provide a low level income. However, this time, they have very little unemployed population counteracting that income. Instead, all that population is economically active in producing things, which also costs wealth, but at least gives them something for it. To keep up, they are reliant on also having a bunch of financial centers that helps to keep their populace out of unemployment and gives quite a lot of tax income.

[Father Tim]

. . . If the goal is to have a greater number of interesting player decisions. . .

My goal is to not lose my Financial Colonies.  If Planet Sasketchewan has no TNE minerals, but room for six billion people, I don't want to be stuck with the "interesting decision" of either shippping in TNE by the megaton in order to get wealth from those six billion, or leaving Sasketchewan as a 'breeding hive' that produces nothing but people.  The 'breadbasket of the empire' deserves better than that.

[Hazard]

About the only useful thing of a planet with no TN industry if the general population produces no wealth is the population and the trade goods it craps out for the civilian lines to ship around.

[the obelisk]

. . . If the goal is to have a greater number of interesting player decisions. . .

My goal is to not lose my Financial Colonies.  If Planet Sasketchewan has no TNE minerals, but room for six billion people, I don't want to be stuck with the "interesting decision" of either shippping in TNE by the megaton in order to get wealth from those six billion, or leaving Sasketchewan as a 'breeding hive' that produces nothing but people.  The 'breadbasket of the empire' deserves better than that.

If it weren't abstracted, I'd imagine the transportation of TN minerals in the civilian economy would be done by civilian ships, but if people don't want that, the entire transportation of TN minerals could be abstracted, with TN minerals entering the civilian economy from civilian mines simply automatically affecting your entire empire (and maybe affecting the colonies in the same system as the mine a bit more than the colonies outside the mine).

[Garfunkel]

It largely limits you from creating a colony to generate wealth, since you'd NEED to divert construction factories to the creation of financial centers for that colony.  The only advantage the new colony would have is a faster growing population resulting in a faster growing worker base.

Only if you don't have shipping lines. You will still get tax revenue from colonists being shipped there and from there, as well as money from the trading goods. The overall income from such a colony would go down but it wouldn't become useless.

[MarcAFK]

Like a few others I don't see any realistic reason why you should make income from the people working in factories making weapons and facilities for the government, that stuff costs money, and should be a drain on your economy.
I think whats needed is a more robust civilian sector that builds upon what already exists without a complete game changing overhaul as proposed.
Actual numbers would need to be tweaked and tested, but my proposal is that you should basically be balancing 2 types of economy, First is your wartime physical economy, building factories, ships, training people, moving stuff around etc.
This stuff is expensive and is the primary thing most people spend their time on none of this stuff should make you any money, but rather you trade money for its productive output.
The other half is the monetary economy, producing a robust civilian economy that can provide the liquidity for employing the vast amounts of people and resources needed to run production. This is commercial enterprises, right now only CMCs, fuel harvesters, civilian trade, and taxation. As of now CMCs and harvesters build up slowly, trade can take a long time to get flowing smoothly, but population can easily reach the point where hoarded wealth becomes irrelevant.
A wealth cap was suggested, I don't remember the specifics suggested, but it seems to me that people should be encouraged to balance the economy, right now theres a major crippling disincentive for reaching a deficit (which I believe should be heavily reduced) but theres no system encouraging not reaching a surplus. A wealth cap would do this since having extra wealth is just wasted, perhaps there could be a tax rate which could be set exchanging higher population growth or something for less or more wealth generation.
All population shouldn't produce tax income, the service industry should have the highest wealth output but it shouldn't automatically produce income. Rather than having a flat percentage of population is "service industry" anyone not employed by the factories etc should be considered unemployed and generate no wealth, your service industry which does pay taxes should slowly grow based on things like trade, morale (not having ground battles taking place on the planet etc) and so on, in any rate the service industries should never grow to a higher percentage than the number of people employed directly by the player, consider this the trickle down effect of the wealth from government jobs being spread around.
Then finally financial centers should help to raise the wealth cap, help increase the percentage of the service economy, increase trade, etc.

[King-Salomon]

Thinking again, I would leave the wealth-changes (other than the cap and additional research you already did Steve) aside for the first version of C# ...

There are so many changes in C# that I don't think anybody can foresee how they will work together and what the effects will be - other than your testgames that is...

So I would wait till C# 1.0 is out and after 2-3 monthsof  feedback you (and all the people who are making suggestions) will have a really good feeling how much wealth is really needed through all different kind of gameplays and how much is generated in a lot of different gamestyles...

I am not saying it shouldn't be changed but I would plan the changes for the first update of C# - together with the inevitable balancing adjustments...

to change too many thinks altogether for the new version might result in some complications nobody is aware of at the moment...

[Graham]

the service industries should never grow to a higher percentage than the number of people employed directly by the player, consider this the trickle down effect of the wealth from government jobs being spread around.

This would again remove the ability to make money from worlds with little government industry, and IMO doesn’t make a lot of sense.