About "management":
(snipped)
Its hard to have a discussion with someone who mostly ignores your points, even when they cite them. For example, you never deal with my example about Civilizations, with which you could elucidate how you think describing it as a management game doesn't 'add much analytical value to the discourse'. I could similarly make the same claim about claiming a game is fundamentally about multiple disparate things, none of which you can do in isolation.
Or you could deal with my description of the purely creative version of DF that I mentioned like a page ago, an example which concluded DF would be less fun if it was just about designing a fortress and placing the parts, even if you were playing for the creative aspect.
Finally, I didn't make the distinction between management and economic, praguepride did. I would say economic is a subset of management. I would also make a similar recommendation to you as I did to praguepride - go watch some professional starcraft games.
Upon additional reflection, I might stipulate that management games require the *creation* of something. (wealth, railroads, cities, ...; something). Pure military games without a resource/production side seem distinctly different. Maybe you'd prefer the term Logistics to Management?
Why do people like poisoning the well so much?
It is not "poisoning the well" much less "like to do so", which is your way of victimising yourself, it is in fact answering you sort of in style (strong and uncompromising opinions elicit confrontational replies; if you want to avoid this you have to change your writing and argument style).
It is poisoning the well. It is attempting to dissuade future arguments by denigrating them before they are even made. That's the textbook definition of the fallacy. Calling out fallacies for what they are is exposing such rhetoric or argument for the sham it is. I am hardly the victim, an argument is the victim of a fallacy.
And I'm sorry I bother to back up my claims with citations and argument. A claim is only
opinion if warrants are not provided for it.
Probably your writing style (and the world view you seemingly espouse) invites dislike. Absolute certaintym entrenched stubbornness and unyieldingness even when proved wrong (as f.i. about science and physics). It is unsightly in that particular way one wants to address even though it would be better and saner to stay the hell away.
We never actually had that discussion about science because one notable post of yours was obviously trolling. It would also probably be pointless as I am a realist and you are clearly a postmodernist. It would devolve to a fundamental disagreement about axioms, which isn't very interesting, especially since we'd never be able to agree as to what constitutes evidence in such an argument.
Should you disprove my warrants or demonstrate a contradiction in my reasoning, I will happily concede. (Of course, in some cases, different axioms can prevent an agreement on what constitutes proof. But in a disagreement within agreeable axioms I most assuredly follow the evidence.)
And I imagine you dislike my writing style because it asserts, with evidence, claims that you probably believe are socially constructed, or what not.
Ok, as *not* a professional programmer, I can think of a fast implementation. I can't imagine a S/D economy adding more than 1% additional time to world gen.
Never, ever make this claim.
Um, huh? I've written code far more processor intensive than that which took less time than I could measure. I do matrix manipulation as part of data analysis. I'm not a programmer, that doesn't mean I don't use some basic programming as part of my work.
Could I prove it? I'd need to have better world map output than is currently possible, i believe. Which is why I phrased it as opinion rather than fact.
About fun and economics: more is not always better. The key here is "realism". By being a meta-simulation of a hell of a lot of various things DF invites all kinds of appeals for "further" realism. Medically inclined individuals believe that proper simulation of all human physiological functions down to the mitochondrial level would make the game better. Medieval fight buffs believe that the game would be better if it implemented the collected corpus of all German Fechtbücher (medieval military manuals). Some in the spoken magic thread would quite argue that a magic system where you manually have to repeat "owrds of power" or your wizard would forget them would be fun. Ecologists, geologists, zoologist etc wants DF to simulate convection, fluid dynamics, plate tectonics, evolution and natural selection etc etc as unconditional as possible. Would one of these make DF a better game? Possible. All of them? DF would be a friggin' nightmare.
I would say that there's an easy bright line test to determine what level of detail any given element would ideally be handled in. I'd say that bright line is dictated by Scale. The first important scale is unit of focus. DF handles (or intends to handle) from the level of individual dwarves to fortress government to 'national' government, including interactions between such entities (trade, diplomacy, and war). Those are the relevant scales. Biology too far below that scale is irrelevant and can be ignored. Markets are *part of* that scale and are thus important. The scale at which the player participates is local government, which is why one step up and down in scale are relevant - those are the scales he interacts with.
The second scale is time. Evolution doesn't happen in short enough timespans for most organisms for the player to notice, so its not especially relevant (although there already is natural selection amongst megabeasts and civilizations). Cellular events happen too rapidly to model. Market forces happen at the scale the game occurs in.
Basically, markets are scale appropriate for the game.
Then we have to talk about what they add. I think they add to depth, immersion, versimillitude, and game logic. I also don't think this is just a 'realism' claim. Resources are limiting, people do want things they don't have and engage in trade. S/D should follow naturally from that, no matter how unrealistic the game otherwise is. It would be like 2+2 not being 4.
More specifically about economics: anyone that remembers Master of Orion III? The two first games were marvellous. The expectations on the 3rd instalments were sky high. New developer, though... They decided to listen to the fans, and listen they did. One fan wanted more of that economy, another of that. All was provided. The game blowed. It was less of MOO and more of an excel spreadsheet. Nobody want to play a second job.
Ok, I never played MoOIII, but i imagine part of the problem was a scale miss-match. At DF we deal with the production and sale of individual goods. That's so far below the scale of a MoO I or MoO II game that tracking good-specific supply and demand is ridiculous. The classic MoO production model abjures anything about actual market forces and simplifies it for the higher scale the game occurs in.
Any voluntary/recreational game is about fun. And quite unlike claimed in one of squirrel's posts above, I seriously doubt very many play DF for the management of it. The management aspects is just a tool to the rest of the game, the Rorschach inkblot test underneath.
Of course, I actually made an argument about why it was true. You can't just dismiss an argument with a wave of your hand - deal with the argument or conceed.
Perhaps what the OP wants is just some tweaks under the hood, but it appears he wants the game to revolve around economy. That smells MOO3. That smells dull.
I honestly think it would be more like some tweaks under the hood from the perspective of most users. They'd interact with it three times per year, and some players might need to reign in particular egregious strategies of overproduction, but given the game specifically wants you to produce individual items of clothes for your dwarves so they can replace clothing as particular pieces wear out, this is actually less micromanagement than that (since you get specific information on what types of goods are currently 'short' in the world market from traders, not having to keep checking your stocks to see if you need more dresses or mittens).
Basically, its less of a hassle than some things the game already wants you to do, and more rewarding than those things as well. (At least, I don't find having to specifically order socks, trousers, and hoods particularly rewarding).
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Topic: Modelling a Global Supply/Demand Economy (Please!) (Read 14515 times)