Economy Design (For those who like Railroad Tycoon, Anno, TradeWars, The Guild 2, Caesar games)

Quick Intro

What I have So Far

The Basics The player can buy or sell items/resources/goods at towns in the world.

The player can only move so much product, limited by the carts he/she own. There are a variety of cart upgrades possible. Let's face it, a cart drawn by Death Dogs is cooler than a Draft Horse, because it can improve defense if attacked by raiders.

Buildings are the fundamental building block of the economy. They represent an abstraction of the whole guild and interconnected system that supports that kind of building. So a "Blacksmith" isn't just a solitary blacksmith, it's a guild of them in a higher than average number of higher than usual quality, therefore their product would be valuable elsewhere.

Buildings either produce (a mine produces iron), consume (an inn consumes wine & beer), or consume & produce a resource (a tailor consumes cloth and produces clothing).

The number of buildings possible in a town is population based. I don't know what the number is, so let's just say it is one building per 1,000.

When a resource is produced and there is excess of it, it is cheap. Where a resource is required but not internally produced by the town, it is expensive.

Buildings which have supply of required resources and consumption of produced resources are profitable. If one of those two things aren't there, they lose.

Some buildings enhance other buildings. So if a town has an Outfitter that sells weapons, and there is a Mage Shop, some of the Outfitter's weapons will be enchanted.



What the Player Does The player travels the world discovering which locations have low prices on resources and which have high

The player can build a building (significant investment), it now operates as normal and any profit/loss is on the player. (ability to partner with an existing business comes later, need more relationship code to be completed)

The player can create some goods through rooms in their mage tower. If the player has a potion workshop, they can make potions to sell.

The lands the player owns can have workers on them. So if a player has a mine on their personal property, and they have workers, they have ore to sell.

Every trade is remembered by the NPC and affects relationship.

The player, based on a Bartering skill, gets a certain number of negotiating rounds. If you suck a batering, you get 0. If you are ok, you get 1, etc. This allows you to improve the price but has a push-your-luck mechanism. The more you ask for each round the more likely you are to blow up the negotiation and not be able to do any deal. Relationship between you and the NPC mitigates this. This makes loyalty in trade important.



Other Notes At first i expect finding trade routes and making deals will be fun. Over time it will become tedious. The player can automate the trading through the assignment of apprentices.

What do you like in Economic Play?

Hello, I'm the lead designer on the game and I'm now focused on beefing up the economy and trading aspect of the game.I need your help ensuring we make something everyone can enjoy.There are three pillars to the player's gain in power in Archmage Rises: Combat power, Economic power, and Political power. Right now I'm solely focusing on economic power. I want it to be strong enough that you can ignore the other aspects if you wish.A lot of people have played Railroad Tycoon so i'll be using it as examples.Ironically I already had the economy and trading working, it was one of the first features working in Unity, but it severely broke through rewrites and expansions in the spring so now i need to revisit it entirely.We promised it for build 9 release but I don't think it will make it in in time and i don't want to hold up that build any longer. So it will be in build 10.This is the base of the economy, without getting into how magic impacts it.So what are cool/fun things you enjoy doing in economic sim games?Do you have a story of a time when...?I need your help ensuring there is something for everyone in this feature.