Micro-economics Game - need some feedback

The game sounds fun for the students.

I'm not sure from the game description where the "demand" for resources comes from, other than upgrades. You said that teams use resources and money to build infrastructure, which they then use to gather resources. If there is no other mechanism for taking resources out of the system, you may find that half way through the game there is a glut of resources once people have upgraded their infrastructure to the point where they do not need to upgrade any more -- thus demand drops to near zero even as supply reaches an all-time high. IRL the primary reason people produce resources at all is because there is a Consumer who wants them, rather than just to build more infrastructure.

I'm not sure from the game description how the players gain income. This may be related to the point above. The teams spend money to buy technology and infrastructure, and trade money amongst themselves, but no mention is made of how they earn more money. Can they sell resources to the "bank"? That would be a possibility, but somewhat skews the supply-demand model by creating an insatiable Consumer. Or are Consumers (e.g. towns, cities) part of the Infrastructure that players can build? If they don't have an external income source, then the easiest way to win would be to do nothing and just sit on their starting money.

Assuming that you, as the teacher, are acting as the Referee for the game, you could simply make arbitrary statements about scarcity. E.g. at the start of Round 5 state "Anybody who does not have at least 1 tech level in Oil cannot produce any Oil for the rest of the game." You could choose these ahead of time, or roll a dice, throw a dart, whatever. You could also make statements about temporary scarcity, e.g. at the start of Round 7 state "There is a drought: wheat production is halved for all teams this turn."

The concept of the techologies with unique effects is very cool, but if you are only at the stage of beta-testing then this might be an extra complexity to deal with. "Balancing" multiple unique techologies is very difficult, although mitigated to some extent by putting them up for auction (auction being the poor man's game balancing). If it was me, I'd make all the technologies generic for the beta test (i.e. each technology gives +1 output of that resource), and leave the special effects for later.

I wouldn't worry about tech not being bought. If it is a pure auction with no reserve, then it will always be bought (even if just for $1).

"Most Money" works fine as the victory condition for a micro-economics game. I'd stick with that for now. Alternate win conditions would probably be more suitable for macro-economics (mixed with politics), such as introducing victory points for Influence, Power, Technology, Happiness, etc.

It is a bit hard to provide any further input without knowing how points (1) and (2) are implemented in the game.

Regards,
kos

Hi Jeremy,

This reply is a quick dash-off of initial thoughts. I haven't read kos' reply, so my apologies if I repeat anything he's said.

So, some ideas:

1. What other ideas do you all have concerning benefits gained from the technologies? There is the obvious 'increase in resource output' but I would like to add other things.

If you added some metrics to your nations, you could affect those.
Examples:
0) Wealth (you have this one already)
1) Population
2) Human capital (abstractly represents level of education, etc)
3) Health
4) Ecology
5) Information flow
6) Stability (in terms of global politics)

and so on. Different technologies would earn -- or cost -- levels in each of these areas (example: oil #2 might give big boosts to wealth and information flow while penalizing ecology and stability).

See more on this in the reply to question #4.

2. One of the primary economic concepts is scarcity. How could I reflect scarcity in the resources? How would I be able to demonstrate that a resource has run out? I do have ten, 20-sided die if that helps.

Allow each country to roll an "extraction" die, per resource, each turn. I'd recommend creating some custom 6-siders for this (one easy method is to buy blank dice and rub-on transfers, then paint over the transfer with Future acrylic floor wax for added durability).

Not knowing the scale of your game, these numbers could be WAY off, but I'd go with a curve along the lines of:

0
1
1
2
2
3

For a low-tech country.

Assuming multiple countries produce a give resource, you'll get multiple die-rolls per commodity for a nice bell curve, so "0" results, globally, should be rare, but you should sample into some nice shortages and an occasional surplus.

Tech improvements could unlock "better" dice, like

0
2
3
4
5
6

etc.

If resources are finite, dice could drop back to lower levels as extraction becomes more difficulty.

Also, if you introduce things like an ecological index, you could have high extraction rolls carry an ecological impact.

I know I'm straying well beyond micro economics at this point, for which I apologize. I hope something in here is of use.

3. What if a certain technological level is not purchased at the tech auction? Should there be some sort of game penalty for all nations involved? (I nabbed this 'tech auction' idea from Power Grid, but it has been a very long time since I have played and do not remember if there was a mechanism for that situation)

I'm used to seeing tech trees where advancement is contingent on the purchase of "parent" technologies. You could do the same, with cross-dependencies like,

wheat #2 requires oil #1 (e.g., gas-powered tractors)

Things get interesting when unlocking a desirable technology requires someone to adopt costly tech (for example, when someone purchases oil #2, everyone's ecology score drops a point).

4. Other than a total amount of money, how else could I determine a winner?

If you introduce other metrics to describe the countries, you could score based on a weighted combination of those metrics.

Might be interesting to have the students rate the metrics, in importance, before you describe the game. Victory conditions would be determined by a simple point scale like

Each level achieved in top-ranked category = +3 points
Each level achieved in second-ranked category = +2 points
Each level achieved in any other category = +1 points

Highest point total = winner

It would be even more interesting to see if they changed the priority of these categories once they understood what the game was and how it was played, but, to quote you, "that is for another day."

This is exactly the kind of game I'd like to see more of in the classrooms. In fact, I've been mulling something similar since seeing this TED talk:

http://blog.ted.com/2011/04/20/the-world-peace-game-john-hunter-on-ted-com/

only, as a video game developer, I'd like to see this on Facebook, with whole classrooms taking the role of a country in a global community spread across a few hundred schools.

But, ahem, one step at a time. Would you object if I pirated some of the ideas here (both yours and mine) for a prototype of my own and/or bounced a few million questions off you?

Apologies if this is a re-post of other ideas; I didn't get to finish all of the other responses!

In addition to cash, could a "refined" product have an end game value?

I agree with the "set arbitrary limits" idea. Perhaps you can use current headlines to illustrate how different issues can affect a resource.

Perhaps there could be some kind of end game score multiplier depending on the global technology level. For example, iron counts double if coal and oil are both #3.

What about a satisfaction or happiness rating for the nation? I think scoring in multiple categories could work here. For example, cash, tech and satisfaction?

This sounds like another good theory to application game - I'm sure your students will connect with the concepts!

Jeremy, this sim is looking very interesting. I wish I could be there to play it.

Here are some responses to your questions:

1. Use the number on the die as a multiplier of a base level of resources that I set at the beginning of the game.
2. Each number represents tonnage or barrels (depending on the resource) in 1,000s.
Thoughts on that?

I'd go with #2, as multipliers require a level of indirection to understand. Generally, this means:

a) players have a harder time understanding their ramifications, and
b) they are harder to balance.

That said, if you want countries to have drastically different production rates, the multiplier is probably the way to go.

but I need to make sure the mechanics are efficient.
Yes, especially in a sim of this magnitude.

To this end, as a question for the game as a whole, have you considered simplifying numbers by introducing a new currency (like the "ten-buck") and then reflecting costs like this:

Oil Capital Investment: ¥65k (where I'm using the yen symbol to denote "ten-bucks").
Oil Upkeep: ¥3k

I can understand why you'd want to use dollars, as there's no conversion math involved, but it might bog down the game calculations (in my experience, kids aren't comfortable doing things like dividing everything by 10,000, doing the math, then re-multiplying, so they end up trying to manipulate big numbers).

Not a big issue either way.

I am intrigued by the idea of allowing my students to determine which metrics to use, but my fear is that a 'paper and pencil' game would become bogged down in all of the details.
That's a good point, but I think you've already designed a way around the problem.

What if you introduce a single, abstract metric called "Footprint", that represents the overall impact of a nation's production and infrastructure on its environment and citizenry? Then every one of your existing systems could feed into it. For example:

Each size of city carries a base footprint cost, say small = 5, medium = 10, large = 15.
Each piece of infrastructure has a footprint cost, maybe 1/piece.
And so on.

To compute a final footprint, just look at the board and count up the elements making up your country.

To complete the picture, you could introduce a new commodity that represents "Cultural Advancements." This commodity has no intrinsic value, but it reduces Footprint. Or, if you want to go totally nuts, you could make it tangible by allowing players to draw from an "Advancements" deck when they purchase the commodity. Think of it as the Development deck from Settlers. Mostly, you get cards like "Wind Power: reduce Footprint by 1," but it might also contain cards like "Education Reform: pay ¥10k to draw 2 more cards," etc.

Advancements should probably be finite and scarce. For instance, maybe each tech purchase adds 3 cards to the Advancements deck. I was trying to think of a system by which Advancements would get more expensive toward the end of the game, but I realized you've already solved this. Because players bid on commodities, and purchasing Advancements early slows development, there will most likely be a rush on them at the end of the game, which should drive up prices. You could exacerbate this by artificially limiting the number of available Advancements each turn to, say, 1 fewer than the total number of teams.

Finally, on the subject of letting the students suggest victory conditions, Footprint simplifies things drastically. Now it's just a matter of, "How important is Footprint relative to Capital?" at the end of the game. I can envision some interesting discussions between impassioned 10th-graders...

Man, I wish I could see all this work! Have you thought of videotaping your game sessions and posting them on You Tube?

Mark

Seems like it's coming together well.

For instance, not maintaining the upkeep of infrastructure would move a nation further into the footprint side of the chart, while new technologies would move a nation further toward/into the progress side of the chart. Does that make sense?

Yes, it does. There's one aspect I'm not understanding, though. If I do no development and just let time pass, I'll fall further and further into the "Footprint" side of the graph, but that seems strange -- as my infrastructure gets reclaimed by the ecosystem, I would expect my footprint to go down.

My expectation as a player would be for footprint to rise as with increased population, resource harvesting, and most technological development. I would expect it to fall when players invest in particular kinds of technologies.

I agree that it's important to keep it simple to track. An easy-to-calculate "footprint index" could do this. Something like:

Count every city as 5 FP (footprint points). Every infrastructure link to a city counts as 1. Every resource field counts as 3.

Then players can just point at the board and count to get his teams' footprint. It's as easy as counting VP in Settlers.

If you allow players to buy down their footprint via special commodities (i.e., developing special technologies), they can just deduct the number they've purchased from the total.

(By the way, I love your graph idea -- it's very simple and clean. If you haven't already seen this TED talk:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/geoffrey_west_the_surprising_math_of_ci...

it might help with inspiration on that front.)

How does one go about winning?

I agree that a point system is attractive, and I agree that it's clunky (was thinking of the same kind of system myself).

How about using Settlers' model? Establish "achievements" like "highest standard of living," "smallest footprint," and "largest production," and award VP for them (like Settlers' "Longest Road" and "Largest Army"). Allow players to bid on draws from a "development deck" that can contain additional VP ("public education") or commodity windfalls ("roll and extra production die next turn"). Seems like this would let you reward the best performers as determined by the various numbers without having to exactly crunch all the numbers at the end.

Jeremy, you're working at light speed! It's inspiring -- time to get off my butt and work on my prototypes!

The die-and-chart solution is great -- maybe even better than custom dice in that the chart is something everyone can see simultaneously. I've seen some big foam dice -- like 5" on a side -- that everyone could see simultaneously when rolled (though the same is true of a good old-fashioned craps die, now that I think of it). So it might be overall better for your requirements.

Would you cap the footprint for each nation given the three indicators above, or would you introduce a variety of variables that emerge randomly that would increase a footprint?

Tough call. I respect your discipline in streamlining the game, so I hate to introduce complexity. On the other hand, I've wondered about having a "Footprint deck" that players may be required to draw from when developing certain technologies. For instance, maybe firing "wood 3" requires a single draw from the Footprint deck. Draws would usually result in an extra footprint point or two (Air pollution: +1 footprint) but might have cash penalties ("Superfund clean-up: pay $30k) or global penalties ("Global heavy metal distribution: all teams gain 1 footprint") for variety.

I think it could work either way. Having some additional source of Footprint keeps things unpredictable, but requires more tracking by the players and more up front work in your prototype.

Here is a list of ideas I came up with to reflect levels of development as well as standard of living:

Love all of your dev cards.

I think we're envisioning it the same way: some lower footprint, some count as a VP, some might be both.

> I could keep the benefit hidden until the development card has been purchased and then there is a reveal after that to show everyone what that nation won. (I kind of like that idea).

I like that idea, too.

> There are all sorts of fun ways to do this. Here are the first that jump to mind:

All of these sound good. Originally, I was thinking "live auction," but since you're already using that for the marketplace, it might be neat to do #2 or #3 for a change of pace. At first, I wasn't too excited by #3 because it's the most structured approach, but after thinking on it more, it might have the best long-term game play in that it prevents the wealthiest nation s from dominating that portion of the game.

In short, I think any one of those would work well, so it's really a question of how you want to nuance the game as to which one to use.

Mark, you had mentioned in an earlier reply about using some of these ideas...please do!
Thanks so much! I've been itching to work on something like this for awhile, but lack the economic theory to make a decent simulation. When things calm down for you, I'd be grateful if you could recommend a good primer for "game economics."

As for the videotaping goes, sounds like you're plenty busy without that! I also realized that, in Texas as least, videotaping kids in school requires jumping through a lot of legal hoops, so it was an impractical request in more ways than one.

> I have epic-soundtrack type music playing:

This is fantastic, but unfortunately I'm weak in this area. My first instinct was to research some world music, but this game feels like it needs something harder, as it's about building nations. Dunno -- what have you been thinking for music?

> I am going to finish things up today and tomorrow, utilizing everything we have discussed and then I will post some sort of 'finalized' version

Excellent! Looking forward to it!

> For music, I have actually been listening to the Civ 5 soundtrack and I like it a lot.

From your description, sounds perfect. In fact, I'm going to look for it as it sounds like something I would like.

> something along the lines of a French Salon during the Enlightenment, kind of intellectual/academic/philosophical yet occasionally snooty and with a bit of randiness.

This is probably my favorite music critique, ever. Makes me wish I'd been in one of those salons...

Good luck with the game! Hope you'll have time to post a debrief after the session.

Mark