PT Global Economy: Thoughts and Ideas

[Wu Han]

Hello everyone,

I wanted to open this thread just to have a place to discuss some of my thoughts and ideas regarding the Particracy global economy. If you don't care about my analysis and assessment of the background and issues surrounding this topic, skip to section 3 where I put forward some ideas for how economic RP could be made more interesting. I am curious to hear what people think, or any other ideas or proposals that players have. I will also open a thread on this topic on the Discord, but I am old school and like to put forward my ideas and proposals formally on the forum.

1. Background

With the death of the mechanics side of Particracy, much of the "game" element of Particracy has died, leaving just the collective writing project that the forum side represents. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and I (along with many others) have long advocated for an approach to the game that privileges roleplay over mechanics. This said, I think a major element of what worked about the mechanics was that players had to contend with somewhat randomized circumstances constraining their actions (i.e. if your party doesn't win enough seats to enact/prevent a change, you had to react by making deals with others, forcing elections, or pivoting RP, etc.). Obviously we all are aware of what the flaws of mechanics were – most notably that they did not, and could not, take RP developments into account, and often they would produce results contrary to the narrative that players had been working towards. However, that rng element is part of what kept roleplay and gameplay dynamic.

However, for economic roleplay this has never been the case, either on the mechanics or forum side. Unlike nuclear or chemical weapons, the use/development of which are highly regulated by moderation, economic development is completely laissez-faire. There is nothing preventing me from moving to a country like Istapali (a country with no forum posts nor wiki page) tomorrow and announcing the construction of a 100% renewable and state-of-the-art power grid, or a new automotive plant, or an investment in massively upscaling our semiconductor production. In a more holistic sense, these developments have very similar bearing on the overall power projection of a country, like WMDs, yet there is very little oversight or similar consideration.

It would be easy to say that moderation should take a more active stance in regulating what players can feasibly do economically, but this is obviously flawed for a number of reasons, including but not limited to:

(a) "the Moderation team generally do not have the time necessary to effectively keep track of the role-play happening in every country" (from Jamescfm on 'Nukes');
(b) this depends on the subjective determinations of moderators, which is bound to cause strain between players and moderators depending on their rulings, as well as demand a lot of moderators regarding their knowledge of global economics, and;
(c) it would likely produce a similar problem as that which existed during the "rankings" era, with players moving to a country and then repeating a similar arc of economic development RP and optimization to achieve a certain level of economic complexity/development.

What I'd like to see are moves, within the consensual framework we operate under pursuant to the game rules, towards a more dynamic, constrained, and vibrant way of approaching global economic RP – or at the very least, among those most interested in it. In other words, to "gamify" global economics in Particracy.

2. Issues in Implementing a Global Economic Simulation in Particracy

(a) Every country's economy can be entirely self-sufficient, if the player so chooses, without the need for any imports or exports (I do not need your oil, we meet our own needs domestically). Relatedly, there is no reason (other than established through roleplay and agreed upon OOC) why an economic downturn or financial crisis in one country would have any impact whatsoever on the global economy (what does it matter if Egelion is in recession? We can meet our own needs anyway), or that economic sanctions should carry any weight.
(b) As every country can produce virtually any resource, supply chains in production are rendered useless and exports worthless (why buy your iron when I can mine my own?). Relatedly, why produce any product for export if there is no market for it?
(c) Related to (a) and (b), commodity prices and values are entirely made up (and largely just carried over from the present-day real world). What is the value of oil, or gems, or iron, etc., if everyone can access a domestic supply sufficient to their domestic demand? In other words, why is oil valuable at all? Why is a sapphire valuable if they are abundant in many countries?
(d) All information or data in this game is necessarily qualitative, rather than hard quantitative economic data; translating qualitative data into quantitative data in the context of Particracy is dependent on establishing a commonly-agreed upon methodology. Moreover, since players can essentially produce any qualitative or quantitative data that they wish to present with respect to their country's economy, determining what data is "valid" or "authoritative" carries its own issues and baggage.

3. My Ideas to "Gamify" and Simulate the Global Economy

I think the primary characteristic that needs to be introduced is scarcity. Without scarcity, economics in the game are purely decorative. But how can this be achieved in a game where scarcity does not exist, and in many ways, cannot exist given the consensual framework? What follows are a few ideas I've thought about recently, but these are just outlines at this stage:

(a) An import/export and resource register with moderation oversight:

• Players write in a thread what the major imports and exports of their country are, and what resources that country has (along with the reserves – high, medium, low – of that resource, based on the country's geography, lore, RP, etc.). Moderators compile these into an "official" thread or resource map. Ideally, these should include 2-4 inherent strengths and 2-4 inherent vulnerabilities.
  
• Players can report internal developments (discovering new resource reserves, building infrastructure, opening mines, etc.) in this thread with links to their RP, and moderators can update that country's resource index.
  

Strengths:

• Players can maintain a strong degree of control over what their economy "looks like" and influence this through their RP
  
• Players can access a centralized list of what country produces what product/resource, and thus include such information in their RP (i.e. Country A produces oil, I need oil, I import most of my oil from Country A; Country B imports wheat, I produce wheat, I export my wheat to Country B), as well as gain an idea of what their major import/export partners would be.
  
• Resource scarcity becomes a narrative lever (i.e. Nation A controls a high supply of rare earth minerals, Nation B must negotiate access or develop alternatives)
  

Weaknesses:

• Requires a great deal of administration from moderators and players alike
  
• High chance that moderator discretion here generates tension with players based on rulings of plausibility
  
• High risk of running into similar issues as with rankings, where players write "optimized" RP that allows them to have a higher "rank" of a given resource reserve
  

(b) A global commodity price register with moderation oversight (possible AI solution?):

• Major resource groups (oil, metals, food, chemicals, etc.) are set at a baseline price/value (could be different for each commodity, or all set at the same to start).
  
• Every 5-10 in-game years, prices are impacted by modifiers determined through RP (i.e. Nation A increases oil production, increasing supply, causing the global price to be 12% lower).
  
• Players either report these economic developments in a specific thread with link to their RP article, or a similar scraping bot as that which is used for the ticker on Discord could hypothetically be employed to scrape and translate RP articles into impacts on commodity prices
  

Strengths:

• Players can still choose to accept/reject the set commodity price;
  
• The price can be considered by players when thinking about how to develop their economies (i.e. the global price of metals is high, thus Nation A will build a mine; the price of oil is low, I will negotiate with other oil producers to reduce production OPEC style)
  
• Particularly with automation/AI, this could have very little oversight and a degree of randomization (possibly the inclusion of randomly-generated price shocks?)
  
• Alternatively, this could be run by players who consensually join an "organization" in which the members agree to adhere to its prices.
  

Weaknesses:

• Absent automation/AI, this requires an additional degree of work/oversight by moderators (or players)
  
• It is unfeasible to keep track of the price dynamics of every relevant commodity (necessarily limited to only the most significant commodities)
  
• Emphasis on commodities/resources can limit the overall complexity and dynamism of national economies (why focus on expanding the fashion industry, in this instance?)
  

(c) A consensual global economic organization that countries join, that has a more OOC heavy component:

Outline:

• Each country gets 10 "credits" every 10 in-game years. The "credits" are purely an OOC device.
  
• Credits can be spent on economic projects which have different costs set by the players in the organization (i.e. small local projects might cost 1-2 credits, nationwide projects 4-6, major reforms 7-8).
  
• Countries can pool credits for big projects or transfer them to other countries (in the org.). IC, this transfer of credits could be explained as being in the form of loans, investments, trade, tech transfer, etc.
  
• Countries cannot carry their credits over into the next 10 year term; credits are reset to ten each term.
  
• Countries which spend all or more of their credits in one ten year term might be considered "high momentum" economies, while those who spend less than their max could be considered "medium" to "low" momentum.
  

Explaination:
The idea here is to generate constraints and scarcities in economic activity which make international trade and cooperation important and relevant, while leaving it open-ended enough that it doesn't feel constraining (nor possible to be a rank-maxing, power-playing vehicle). The "momentum" determination is intended to be read somewhat broadly as an indicator of economic activity and dynamism, but not necessarily of wealth (i.e. a country could have high momentum, but be poor overall, due to an influx of investment and so on; a rich country could be low momentum as they don’t have as much need to spend their credits and develop) in the same way that GDP growth for developing and developed countries is often very different, despite the latter being wealthier than the former.
Issues:

• Should all countries get the exact same number of "credits" regardless of base "development?" If not, how should the difference be determined?
  
• How should negative externalities, political events, natural disasters, etc., impact this model and/or the distribution of credits and the cost for projects?
  

Strengths:

• Relatively little "administrative" requirements (i.e. no need for moderator intervention, players do not need to spend time gathering and translating economic info from RP posts, etc.)
  
• Creates a "market-mechanism" of sorts for generating economic development and collaboration.
  

Weaknesses:

• Requires players to constrain their RP a bit by participating in this system (i.e. you cannot undertake economic RP that would cost credits you do not have)
  
• Requires players to continue to "buy in" to this OOC exchange and system
  

4. Summary

These are just a few of my thoughts and ideas about global economics in the game. I have thought about this topic for as long as I've played the game, but have never been able to come to a solution alone. I think my proposal under 3(c) is the most fleshed out and compatible with the game as it is, but it still would need to be tested (if you would like to be part of an informal "playtest" of this concept, please consider reaching out to me).

If anyone has any other thoughts or ideas on global economics in the game, or anything I've written in this very long post, please contribute to this thread.

Thank you!

[Doc]

Some thoughts:

Autarky in the real world is pretty difficult. Even those who claim to have achieved it OFTEN have external sponsors. This has been a problem thoughout history and has led to the rise in empires, as nations have struggled to find and acquire basic resources for themselves without having to rely on unfavorable or unreliable external trade relations with their neighbors. But also, the era where everyone just trades RATHER than conquers is relatively new: the whole "no changing national borders by force" norm is like at most 100 years old, and its not even very well maintained- In spirit, it is violated all the time. If I can just go in and steal a country's oil by putting in a friendly government, I don't have to change national borders.

So, I see it as a competing tension here. Real Autarky is relatively unrealistic, while it is impossible in this game to build empires that mean anything except on the outside chance that you have two or more players who are committed to unifying their two nations. So in practice, despite the pure consent, eliminating the possibility of autarky in PT will FORCE players to have to trade, and will necessarily give those with advantageous resources an advantage over those with poor resources. And without this force, there is no incentive for me, a lone player, to participate in the system if I have to rely on players I don't know and who don't care what happens to my country. This necessarily puts some PLAYERS (not just nations) at a disadvantage against other PLAYERS. If I happen to select a fully developed nation, and then just sit on it forever, I keep my advantage and only have to really publish an article every three months to keep that advantage and those who are forced to buy what I sell because its quite difficult for them to develop those things themselves just keep their disadvantage. I can easily see how that will be taken advantage of just like the election mechanic was in Classic.

All that consideration being a factor, I do in principle like the idea that there should be a way to do a number of economic things in this game:

1) Make our currencies actually worth something. We see all the time nations paying billions and billions for something and not even batting an eyelash. Unless their currency is absolutely worthless and they can just peel billions and billions off for something, that would have some economic dislocations both in the sending and in the receiving nations. Could you imagine if, for example, the US sent 1 trillion dollars to Rwanda, the effects that would have on both economies? But in this game I can agree that with you that something costs me 200 Billion and I just pay it like that 200 billion didn't exist and wasn't being used for something else before, and now it is being used for whatever I am sending it toward. Not saying everyone does this, but enough do for it to not be rare.

2) Make investments mean something. One of the reasons I, as a country, do not readily invest overseas, is because, for what? Why would I send aid? Assuming 1 ever happened, that would be like me throwing money down the toilet. I invest to signal closer relations to the receiving country, but investors expect a return on their investment. And yet, we almost never play any return on our investments. We just say "I invest" and then IG years later, its totally forgotten. Meanwhile, if I invested and then pull my money out, that should hurt, but others are currently free to absolutely ignore it. Well, you pulled out investments equivalent to 7% of my GDP, but anyway... moving on...

3) Make sanctions painful for the receiving nation and expensive for the sending nation. Sanctions are costly, as costly for the sending nation as the receiving nation: The calculation is that the change in policy that the sanction is supposed to inspire is worth the cost we're willing to pay for it. That's why it is credible. If it doesn't cost me anything to send sanctions, who cares? I can flout it, and know you aren't serious, because you don't have anything at stake. The only way short of war to keep pariah states in line is sanctions, and those don't even work very often, because either the sender doesn't have the ability to get others on board to increase the pain, all while bearing the burden themselves, or the payout does not justify the pain I am bearing. It would be very nice for us to develop sanctions regimes.

I don't necessarily like IOs. They allow some players to dominate, especially those who play as a group together. The History of PT was rife with groups of players who basically did everything together, and more or less ran the game how they liked. If you were on the inside of those little cliques, awesome. If you were on the outside, there was no way to get in and you were at other players' mercy at that point. I don't know if this particular community would do that, but its not to hard to imagine it happening in the future.

I DO like us deciding what resources we have, requiring players who want to improve their resources to have to RP to develop them, and then having moderation say yea or nay, just as a break on unlimited expansion. I would like some associated costs to go with development. I would like to see resource scarcity. We should be out of oil by now, just saying. Everyone burns oil like post industrial nations, very few develop new oil resources, and some places in the world are just assumed to have unlimited oil. Think of how polluted the environment would be after 3000 years of unregulated, unrestricted petroleum usage? We're only about 150 years into it in the Real world and like a half dozen countries are already melting the ice caps. yet 84 countries have unrestricted and limitless access to petroleum? What is the cost for that?

Perhaps one way to moderate this would be to think of economics like a CP, call it an EP. This is what you have, everyone else can check it. Moderation can approve it, and Greek's API can scrape it. We can use that to develop an algorithm that classifies an economy as high, mid or low, and the only changes that can come happen after fairly extensive RP, which does require an investment by the player in terms of time and effort. Just like changing a CP does. A player puts in for a change like they do with a CP, the Mods look at relevant RP like they do with a CP, changes are made conservatively as they are with CPs, and the EP is updated publicly so that everyone can look it right up, we can develop our maps and indicies about economic activity and resources which are based on canon (i.e. mod approved) EPs, the same way we do with CPs. If the CP model works for culture, it should be able to work well for economics too. This will give new players the option to look at states and decide what fits their strategy, like we do with CPs. If I want to play China, I play Indrala. If I want to play a developing nation, I have a list of countries that I can choose from which are right now classified as low or whatever. I know who has what, I can plan my trading based on that, and if I don't have trading in place, I just don't build the thing, or I have to buy it from someone who does. But to change that CP requires investment of time and effort to increase the story telling. Not ranking, just listing.

We can then, from there go on and create a model for developing currency values and GDP that can allow us to set budgets. You can also develop a model for debt, especially as you increase FDI in your country. These things can be fairly easily tracked. if I am spending 95% of my 250 Billion dollar budget on stuff I need for my own country, I will have whatever remains for foreign investment. I am sure once we actually start tracking what we have versus what we spend, foreign aid will dry up from much of the world as will investment. So you can see then realistic financial centers rise, and they actually mean something to play with.

The Credits thing is an interesting idea, sort of as an OOC currency, but my reservations about IOs is particularly about this. Blocs of players in cliques could theoretically team up every month, spend all their combined credits boosting one country up, do it again next month and so forth until they are all equally powerhouses. In game RP wouldn't really matter, because the agreement would be entirely OOC, and can, like some organizations and agreements between players, be built entirely in DM outside the view of others, without any RP whatsoever. I know that is frowned upon, but I believe it does still happen, and the RP then is very limited to keep others from knowing what the terms of the agreement behind the scenes are or to keep others from doing anything with it. I can say I know it happens, because I have, within the last year, been party to some of those arrangements. So if I do it, I can bet others do too. if you want to do a credit thing, you have to prevent sharing them or coordination, or else cliques will very quickly form which ignore or completely sidestep having to RP anything. Within a country where players cooperate is one thing. Between countries gives all those players an advantage that others don't get and can't even comment on IC. (I think of the Legion stuff, for example, where all Legion's support from other players was OOC and hardly RPd, much of Legion's RP was ABU, and nobody could comment on the activities of a pariah state IC, but I can think of other examples too.)

If there was a way to keep players themselves from abusing the system beyond just everyone's good will, I think that would be essential to the system. Because 5 countries that all agree to just help one another, to their own detriment for 40 out of 50 years, while trusting blindly that in the 50th year, it will be there turn is as unrealistic as absolute Autarky is.

I have other ideas but this is getting kind of long.

[Wu Han]

Thanks for your thoughts and feedback, Doc.

You've written quite a bit (which I appreciate!) so I will try to address/respond/build on what you've added in as structured a way as I can.

On currency

I agree that reforming in-game currencies would be a major positive (and if I am not mistaken, I remember you have some sort of model to that end?). For my part, beginning in PT Classic, I have always defaulted to valuing things in US Dollars if for no other reason than it provides a real-world value that players can widely understand, given the real world centrality of the US Dollar. My only hesitation – or perhaps better stated, the reason I focus more on commodity exchange than currency – is that the economics around money are both tied to the production of economies and the monetary policies of countries relative to others, among other macro factors. I think this is more complicated to simulate, dependent on determining the production of economies, and perhaps harder for the average player to engage with and understand as compared to "I produce A, I sell A, I buy B." This is not to say it cannot or should not be explored, just that it's an issue I view as being a bit more complicated in design and implementation.

On sanctions

I agree with the need for sanctions to be painful for both parties, though it runs into the issue of consent to a large degree: in previous discussion on WC interventions, for instance, I think the community has largely agreed that a country cannot unilaterally invade another, but can unilaterally apply economic sanctions. If this is the case, the issue then emerges that the "sanctioned party" may not explicitly agree to the impacts of being sanctioned.

Assuming both parties consent to sanction/be sanctioned, though, I think there should definitely be more emphasis on the effects for both parties. However, the unclear relations of individual countries to each other and the global market makes determining what those impacts are problematic.

Take the recent Luthorian and Egelian sanctions against Temania, for example: these countries have not established what – if any – economic exchanges exist between them, yet we still RP them as being significant developments, at least on the Temanian side given its dependence on commodity exports (presumably including to richer countries, etc.). This is not to say what I have done in this arc has been effective, but on the contrary, that it underscores how muddy the global economic ties between sanctioning and sanctioned parties make such RP.

On resource scarcity, oil, and climate change

I agree also with your note re: oil and climate change, though I think that it is a related though distinct topic (how should we think about the scientific fact of climate change in our fictional world which is tethered to current tech, etc., but with 3000+ years more history?). I think the practice to date, and for the foreseeable future, is that it should be assumed that new reserves are continually discovered and extraction technologies improved, while other reserves diminish. It might be useful to think of the environmental externalities of these activities in terms of "pollution" and ecological disruption limited more to the sites of production and refinement, with players forced or otherwise compelled to include them as part of any new development of these resources, but this solution is not ideal nor does it encompass the multi-scalar and complicated impacts of industrial production on global ecology. I have no good solution here... perhaps this would be another interesting topic to discuss elsewhere?

On proposal 3(a): Resource register, or Economic Protocols

I like the EP idea, and think that's essentially what I am proposing in 3(a). This said, I do think that this is somewhat restrictive in a way that players have historically resisted ("who are the Mods to say I cannot be the leading global producer of semiconductors, photovoltaics, uranium, oil, gold, steel, rare earth minerals, and lumber?!"), but it is a decent approach to at least determining who has what, and who imports what from where, to some degree. Absent the degree of automation we both mention in our proposals, however, I see this as pretty onerous on the Moderation team (though they can feel free to weigh in!) and players alike in terms of having to submit proposals, review proposals, debate proposals, and implement proposals, in order to undertake a certain economic RP arc. Given the current turnaround on Cultural Protocols, I see this as a major limitation of such a system – particularly when global economics should, at their best, be rather fluid and dynamic.

Nevertheless, I think what you say about developing budgets and GDP figures on the basis of such a system is interesting, and would like to see that idea further flushed out (as with currency generally); I find it conceptually interesting and possibly preferable to anything I've proposed, but I have resisted trying to think of particracy economics in "hard figures," so to speak, considering their contested nature and what I wrote earlier re: currency. In a similar way to the problem of climate change, I think determining a country's GDP over at least 5000 years of development, and into the future, would be difficult (if it is assumed that a country's economy generally experiences positive growth over an average decade or century, does this not scale unrealistically over time given the scale of time in game?)

On 3(c): "Credits Proposal"

I do think what you describe as being a risk from this proposal ("players in cliques could theoretically team up") already occurs in various degrees throughout the game, particularly in geopolitics, and in large part contributed to by the destruction of the World Congress as a more singular authority for diplomatic endeavours, or at least centralizing the "international community" in some sense. I simply don't think this is a dynamic that can be removed from a game that is inherently social. I similarly do not like IOs much, but it's hard to otherwise have a system implemented that everyone agrees to abide by, given the principle of consent in the game, and given that my credit system is a bit of a "game within a game," I think this is particularly relevant.

But I will also note that, at least as far as my credit proposal is concerned, I don't necessarily see this as an issue. Are there not already "cliques" and "alliances" within the real global economy, and the distribution of global resources? Do some trading blocs not already exist, and prioritize exchange with its members internally before those external to it?

I also see the issue of "cliques" being similar under the EP-based system, in that I could choose to only trade with preferred countries/players, or sell my resources well below market rate (however that is determined) to an ally, and so on. To the extent this becomes an issue, I am not sure on how it could be resolved within the context of the game as it is, though I will say (perhaps naively) that I have a degree of faith in our now very small community that perhaps I would not have had in earlier iterations of this game.

I think giving players equal credits ameliorates the deleterious impact of "cliques" to some degree. Under my proposal, a country could spend 100% of their credits internally, and still be classed a high-momentum economy. Similarly, highly-developed economies will be penalized for failing to spend their credits (and assuming they are highly developed, they have fewer places to spend them internally and among each other) by being classed "low momentum."

This model is a bit new as an innovation to the game, and so I can only hypothesize about these things of course, but I would like to play test this or something similar in the future just to see if it's a worthwhile way of approaching things in the first place. Finally, as a general note, I want to add that I think the initial term of 10 years is rather long in real-world terms; I just chose it arbitrarily. This term could be much shorter.

[Doc]

In response:

On Currency:
Yes, the idea was to develop the USD as the base currency, but as a synthetic base which was worth +/- .05% (or 5/100 of a percent) the USD, so it wouldn't be exact, and you would only see major diversions in very large numbers. Then In game currencies could float against that based on two vectors: monetary policy of each nation (which we can set up as variables that players could select based on how they want to play it- Does it float, is it moderately controlled, or is it tightly controlled,) and the second which is Economic RP, which we could probably develop an AI analysis to show countries that are aggressively trading, growing etc. A number of economic policies produce stronger or weaker currencies depending, and I think we could code for that. High demand creates a stronger currency against a benchmark, low demand/convertibility tends to drag a currency down. Often the value of a currency is not in control of the issuing country, despite what they might like to argue, while a country can pretty easily strengthen or weaken its own currency by fiscal policy.

Point is, once we set a benchmark, and let currencies float against it, we can determine easily the moment by moment exchange rate between any two currencies. The important thing is establishing the benchmark currency. I have argued that that should be a synthetic currency, external to anything players can themselves affect to make it fair to all players. Selecting an in game currency gives that currency and therefore the player that controls that currency an advantage. And if we want to do this without requiring strong consent from every single nation, we can just all agree that a synthetic currency based on the USD (or whatever one we want to pick, I think lots of people use the USD as comparison for IG costs) is the neutral benchmark against which our currencies float based on our own actions or inactions, then we can make it an objective measure that we can influence by our RP. I have some ideas, including a market where players can select which international currencies they are trying to buy, which ones they are trying to sell, which ones they allow in their country, and which they reject. All of those can provide variables for the Economic RP aspect of currency that can help us get an in game handle on currency which is both objectively determined and also dynamic. And in turn, this feature can be considered in what countries can and cannot do. If I have a currency that is worth .00013875 of a LOD, for example, because my RP has been to do things that are only inflationary and not very responsible, I at least know what I have to put together to buy Lodamese stuff, as well as every other country's stuff.

On Sanctions
Yes, the consent issue is a very sticky subject. You wrote "I think the community has largely agreed that a country cannot unilaterally invade another, but can unilaterally apply economic sanctions." I think the issue we are grappling with then is that the country may do something that will, if we RPd the results of that out, my country or my interests would be hurt. I can easily ignore those results and instead level sanctions in retaliation, and the sanctioned state doesn't even have to acknowledge that I have done that at all. Even if you approach them about the RP, and they say, "nope, no way," or even if they do agree to the sanctions, but then never ever RP any pain at all or even a change to the policy, then the sanctions may as well not even exist.

And then, yes there is the issue of "I don't even trade with you, so sanction what?" That happens very frequently in this game. Its not good or bad: It assumes a world that is as economically interconnected as the Real world is, but 1) that is not a safe assumption on any level, and 2) even in the real world that situation exists: The US can't really very effectively sanction a place like Somalia, but serious sanctions against Mexico would be devastating to both the US and Mexico.

Then there is the issue of just inactive players, or players who post once in a while. Yeah, they could agree to the RP, but then if they only post once every other week, it sort of makes the consent pointless. Again, no judgement, it is what it is and it is how some have to play the game, but it also does neutralize the RP almost completely.

At this point, if we rely on pure consent, sanctions do not mean anything. Without some mechanism to bring some actual pain economically, which doesn't necessarily rely on players having to do anything specific other than give their consent. There will always be players that say "I get to do x, y and z, and you can't do anything about it, even though it is very irritating to you, because I explicitly do not consent to any of your retaliation to me..." I know I have done that myself. I can think of a handful of others as well. That's an annoyance and really undermines the realism of this simulation, because in the real world, actions have consequences that we often cannot foresee and so this simulation is not a very good simulation of the real world on that point. However, if you do agree to the RP, there should be some mechanism for carrying it through whether I do anything with it or not. If we don't want to do that, we should simply say sanctions are not a thing.

On resource scarcity, oil, and climate change
Agreed on all points.

On proposal 3(a): Resource register, or Economic Protocols
About this issue: ""who are the Mods to say I cannot be the leading global producer of semiconductors, photovoltaics, uranium, oil, gold, steel, rare earth minerals, and lumber?!"" I think I responded to this in the discord: The people who say what I have done and what I have are the players themselves, backed up by their own RP. At the time the EP would be written, it would become canonized and enforceable. We can bring in a measure of dynamism in once we figure out the currency situation, but for the time being we rely on RP already, so this would be a good basis I think as a starting point.

The point about imagining what a GDP would be in the year 5700 would be resolved by the comparison against a benchmark currency: You build this "growth" into the value of "One Synthetic currency unit". So theoretically, in 5700 the TMU (which was the term I used, terran monetary unit) is worth 5000 what ever the USD was in 2026. That means that all GDPs measured agains that inflated TMU are similarly and relatively inflated. If my GDP is 6000 TMUs, (just a number) then it is still worth 5000 times whatever that was in 2026 USD. Sort of a handwave but conceptually it works, because the TMU is the standard that all others are compared to. And theoretically, nominal GDPs do not grow geometrically, but arithmetically, so this relative comparison should work as a concept. Real GDPs have the potential to grow geometrically.

On 3(c): "Credits Proposal"
On the point about nations teaming up in the real world so we should expect it here was well made. My only counter to it is If I am part of a circle of 5 countries, in game there would be nothing that forces me to only help the others a little. I, and 3 of my cliquemates can put all our credits to a 5th member this year, and they will ostensibly have 50 credits to spend then, rather than the 10 that everyone is normally allotted. So they can really boost their economy this cycle. Then next cycle, we pick another winner in our clique, put all our credits to them, and they get to expand dramatically in a very short time. And so forth... And meanwhile, I have 40 years of zero credits using in my own country, with no real cost to my country except opportunity cost, but I trust that when its my turn, I'll get astronomical growth too.

In the real world, countries are not altruistic, on any level. Even those who would like to be simply cannot afford to be. Because it costs money to keep what I have built. And as I build more, those costs continue to go up. If you had a maintenance cost built in, like each country gets 10 credits to spend, but before they can spend them, they need to pay for what they have, they don't just get to keep a 10 AC carrier navy for 50 years without having to spend astronomical sums to maintain it, and if they are the leading economy this year, they have to spend their credits to maintain that, rather than helping others, or they just lose status, or more perniciously as in Classic, when they go empty for 100 years and then its just assumed that when players return they just pick up where they left off, that would be something that I would be more interested in, because it prevents people gaming the system.

For example, if I do happen to get a benefit from having a clique who all donate their credits to me one year and I blow up economically, I would have to pay more than 10 credits a year to maintain 50 credits of economic development, which would put me in a deficit. I either have to make up that deficit somehow, or it all falls apart. This way there is no incentive to taking 40 credits from others if I can't possibly afford to maintain it. Additionally, there would be no incentive for me as a member of the clique, to give someone else all 10 of my credits that year, because then I would have nothing to maintain what I do have myself.

Countries are egoist first and foremost. They are all self interested, and then if they have resources left over then they help others. This is what realists describe as the self help world. Where we can only really rely on our own selves, and if we get into a situation where we trust someone, and it becomes in their interests to do so, we can expect to be stabbed in the back, even by our friends. Its stark, but only the wealthiest countries can afford the privilege of offering significant and regular foreign aid. I think building maintenance costs into the model would go a LONG way at reducing this sort of collusion and increasing trust that the system will be fair to all players, thus increasing the potential for buy in by others.

I think that's all the points. Thank you for hosting this discussion. I agree that we need to improve our economic models, and I think these are reasonable approaches to do that.

[Wu Han]

On currency:

I like that proposal and it comes across a lot more clearly now that it’s broken down practically than it had seemed on the surface. It’s reminiscent to me of a proposal I made in Classic that didn’t attract much interest (and which, admittedly, was worse): there would be a “Universal Standard Dollar” or USD (pegged to the USD) that all currencies would be valued in relation to; countries could set an exchange rate in USD or peg their currency to a real world currency other than USD; additional modifiers could be added at regular intervals reflecting the economic performance of that country as judged by RP (if I peg Hanzen’s currency to the Thai Baht, it could be impacted by a modifier of +/- X.XX% depending on RP). Again, not ideal, but my thinking was that at least it would be something to replace the inherently broken currencies in Classic (relatedly, I was going to propose pricing commodities in a similar way – pegged to RL prices in USD, with in-game modifiers – though I feel this is even more problematic...).

This is all to say: interesting, I’d like to see this work. I think with the game's new approach to AI integration and so on, your model is both better and a bit more feasible long-term.

On Sanctions:

Generally agree with everything you said, and I think to an extent we’re just repeating the same view. But I found this point more interesting for further discussion:

However, if you do agree to the RP, there should be some mechanism for carrying it through whether I do anything with it or not

I think this is also something I alluded to in the Discord: perhaps it would be useful to provide a sort of “guideline” for players as to how this sort of RP should be conducted, best practices, things to consider, etc.? Of course, I would not want this guideline to be prescriptive necessarily (I.e. “if you want to do sanctions, do X, Y, and Z for it to be recognised as good RP”) but simply to aid players in thinking about how to make this sort of arc as effective as possible, and indeed, perhaps outlining what could be part of an agreed-upon sanctions arc ("if you agree to this sort of RP, X, Y, and Z are fair game). I know you’ve written similar guides before (Jamescfm used to highly praise your “kayfabe” analogy for RP in a guide you once wrote), which is not to say “hey Doc, give it a go,” but that perhaps you – and others, of course – might have some useful advice or thoughts to this end which could be compiled into such a guide?

I also think this topic somewhat bleeds into another related though distinct area I've sought greater clarity on in the past, which is (a) whether companies are free to invest in other countries, and to what extent this can be the case prior to or without the explicit consent of a player in that country (likely dependent on the laws of a given country), and; (b) how we understand the base state of global trade (do nations import/export products from other nations without this explicitly being stated? Would it be fair to assume, for instance, that a fair amount of high-quality Hanzenese silk ends up in the fashion houses of Kalistan?). 

On resource scarcity, oil, climate change:

Since we’re in agreement I have nothing to add, other than to underscore that I do genuinely think this would be an interesting topic to further explore and discuss… It might be nice if the game had a more “official” stance on certain issues like this so that current and future players can be on the same page about our world – similar to how there's an official line on technology like nuclear fusion. On the one hand, climate change in-game cannot be at a catastrophic rate, despite this being the most likely scenario given PT world history, but on the other, it shouldn't simply be hand-waved away nor unaffected by human action in the game world. Perhaps some sort of authoritative "degree of warming" metric could be published, and could be adjusted up or down depending on state actions? Could be pegged to current rate of pre-industrial global warming, with modifiers?

On proposal 3(a): Resource register, or Economic Protocols

To be clear, my stance on matters such as these is generally: let's just try it and see where it goes. That said, I am still hesitant to enthusiastically support this proposal, if only because with our current state and limitations, I think it would cause more headache than it’s worth and probably generate some player resentment in its implementation. Of course, these objections do not delegitimize the proposal on its merits. As I suggested in the Discord thread on this topic, in the short to mid-term, I would strongly encourage the more widespread use of the Wiki and specifying these things in “Economy of [Country]” articles to at least begin to publicly publish some information on the products/resources imported and exported into a given country, as per the player's determination. To my mind, this would make the eventual project of building out EPs/Resource Registers easier.

Your points on GDP calculation are worth exploring, but I think are dependent on the implementation of the currency model in the first order – and at this stage I’d rather see currency before producing somewhat abstracted macroeconomic figures. I also think there is some risk that GDP also becomes a form of “ranking,” with players seeking only to produce RP which maximizes their GDP per capita "rank" relative to others, and using that for force projection/power playing/etc. Otherwise, I think your explanation and emphasis on how these are measured relative to the in-game unit makes sense, though in practice I still don't quite see how absolute GDP figures over millennia couldn't still reach massive scales that feel unrealistic if anyone tries to map them loosely onto real-world economic intuition. Moreover, unless everyone agrees on the TMU’s scaling and relative value, comparisons could become inconsistent, especially for players joining mid-game or for historical records over the thousands of years of game time. I’d also be interested in your thoughts as to how we address GDP figures in inactive countries (take Istapali which I reference a few times): if a country goes inactive, should its GDP decline or stay the same? If a country have very little activity overall, should it stagnate, decline, or be assumed to modestly grow? Though to return to my first line in this section, perhaps I just need to see it in practice.

On 3(c): "Credits Proposal"

I think I understand your point about “cliques” a bit better in this practical example. I would just note that I intentionally use the vague term “momentum” than “growth” per se, and that this system isn’t intended to generate hard macroeconomic figures (i.e. GDP) taking the game more as it is now than as it would be with the effective implementation of any of these other ideas.

I do think you raise a good point though, and I think the model probably needs to account for costs, returns on investment and diminishing returns for investments (particularly in highly developed economies). This is a bit difficult since the model is intended to be as open as possible for interpretation of how the spending of credits materializes in RP (since the credits are more symbolic and OOC), and as simple as possible given its aim to incentivize collaborative RP than to directly model financial/economic exchange.

Some loose thoughts on how this model could be improved:

• Specialized credits: create different classes of credits and identify countries according to their specialisation(s) (i.e. a country with a large financial sector has more “finance credits” whereas a country with a large productive base has “manufacturing credits,” and so on; certain projects require different combinations of credits/inputs).
  
• Caps on transfers: no more than 50% of a country’s credits can go to one recipient, or a combination of external recipients (arbitrary percentage, can be adjusted).
  
• Reconsidering the 10-credit reset: to more accurately simulate capital accumulation and accomodate for the introduction of maintenance costs, a country could get 1-3 extra credits in addition to their base 10 for completing and/or investing in a productive project, relative to the scale of their investment and where that project is located, over a fixed term.
  
• Diminishing returns: thinking more critically about how "momentum" is calculated, the concept of diminishing returns on investments in highly developed economies could be considered so that the super-charging of similarly placed economies couldn't quite proceed as you identified (i.e. an investment of 5 credits in a low development/momentum economy could be multiplied by by 1.2, resulting in a momentum score of 6; an investment of 5 credits in a high development/momentum economy could be multiplied by 0.7 resulting in a momentum score of 3.5).
  Maintenance costs: maintenance costs could be integrated into the distribution of credits per term (Maintenance Cost=Base Size×Momentum Multiplier; A 6-credit national project in a highly developed economy might cost 6 × 1.5 = 9 credits in upkeep, reducing by a certain amount over a fixed term). This could also produce debt-like conditions and the financing of debt by global partners?
  

I think I have to go back to the drawing board a bit. I still like this proposal in theory and think it could be made workable but you’ve given me stuff to think about. Note: modifiers, exact numbers of credits, costs, etc., are not final.

[Doc]

On 3c Maintenance costs

ONE way, maybe not the best way even, would be to create a menu of options.

X, Y and Z

X costs a credits to build, b credits to maintain, and either gives you c credits in benefit, or if you cancel it or don't maintain it, it creates d credits in damage to your economy, to give you an incentive to maintain it.

Y costs some other a... etc.

This would make it so you could pick and choose what sort of economic activities you want to do, and determine up front how much you are willing to pay to keep the benefits of those economic choices. When they stop being proftiable, then you start worrying about them just not wrecking your things: Ie, I built a nuclear power plant which has paid for itself in terms of me being able to cut out coal plants, but now I have to spend all this to maintain it or it will melt down. I can't just stop funding it... Or am I willing to pay to decomission it? Etc.

That might be a way to do this. You could then build a borrowing models into this, where other players can set terms with you, and if you default, they just get screwed but also you don't have any credit anymore...

That might be actually a little too realistic. XD

Something along those lines. At any rate, it would be a mechanic to attach costs to choices, which I think is what the original proposal was aiming to do.

[Zanz]

I am following along and trying to keep up - but I admit I'm struggling. I don't know that I have too much to add at this point, but I'll make a couple of observations.

1. I like the general thrust of this effort. I've only really found it fun to play in countries that are RP'd as fairly underdeveloped, and from my vantage point in these nations, nearly everywhere looks incredibly economically powerful with little focus on RP around the drawbacks of development. In spirit I support the aim of making it easier for players to build more a realistic and believable world.
   
2. I consider myself a fairly bright guy, but I get entirely lost when we start talking about currency exchange, credit markets, etc. I recognize that those are realistic tools and I could and probably should know more on these fronts, but I just don't. Two specific pieces of feedback on this front:
   • Anything you propose here is going to have to be all but entirely automated for me to be able to use it meaningfully. I do not understand how trade works, how currency cost works, etc. If you want me to use these things as RP devices, you're effectively going to need to slap me in the face with how I'm supposed to do that. This isn't necessarily me saying "don't do this", this is me trying to give you a realistic read on where at least some of the rest of the community is on this, which is square zero. You could implement currency exchange perfectly and I still wouldn't be able to use it to tell an interesting RP story.
     
   • I do not understand why the "old way" of treating currency - where 1 LOD = 1 USD - is functionally any different than what you guys are discussing re: a TMU. I get that there's a cache attached to tying a specific country's currency to "be" the USD, but aside from that concern, it feels to me like we had what you're describing once already and it obviously was not the Eden we're seeking. What am I missing? (Hard mode - explain to me what I'm missing in terms I'll understand)
     
3. On AI: I think we need to be very cautious when we pin our hopes on AI as the crucial factor in making things that have always been hard in this game less hard now. We're at risk of doing on a micro scale what is happening macro right now: betting on the promise of AI without reckoning with the reality: who's going to do this stuff you describe? AI won't just set itself up, and (no shade to Greek) we've got plenty of other work for Greek to do before we could reasonably hope for him to make progress on this net new ask. It's a matter of triage - do I think someone clever could make AI do post monitoring and active classification of events in game - yes. Do I think that should be Greek's focus right now, when we have a bunch of work already on his plate? I am not sure.
   
4. On asking Mods to enforce stuff like EPs (or any concrete proposal): I am on board. We're volunteer and have lives, so anything that relies on us must not be TOO onerous. So long as a proposal keeps this in mind, we are open as a unit to proposals on how to make the game better. If you bring us a specific thing you want us to enforce, and the community is given a chance to voice feedback, I'll certainly be arguing in favor of it in mod discussions.
   

Hopefully something in there helps advance the conversation.

[GreekIdiot]

From my understanding of this entire conversation, we're looking to tackle the lack of friction that should generally accompany both sides of the same scale (autarky vs globalism).

Basically, it's fine if you do either, but:

1. There's an EP guide for resources, based on RP - same logic as CPs
   
2. There's a commodities/currency tracker (AI augmented) - simple logic of demand/supply, which can also take care of the trade aspect
   
3. There's a maintenance model built-in - base idea of RP continuity
   

As Zanz said, I like the direction, as well. The fundamental issue seems to be a balance between roleplaying and mechanics. Our answer here is simple: roleplaying comes first, comes at the center. RP is what defines what's happening, and mechanics - back/front-end - simply help visualise the landscape so that roleplaying becomes even more grounded on what roleplaying itself actually shapes.

However, to me there's a slippery slope of complexity here (I'm with Zanz). As I said on Discord and annoyed Wu with it, this is a political simulation game, not an econ one.

But I will continue to maintain the notion that PT is inherently multiplayer, which means there's already an inherent difficulty to sustaining power on the international field simply by the merit of having to continuously work with numerous players, different goals, constantly shifting circumstances and, of course, the need to stay ahead of the curve on all of the above.

~

So, having said all that:

1. I'm very much in favour of EPs ~ by my understanding, they're essentially the resources list we had now transformed under the same principles as CPs. You can change it, but you need to roleplay the hell out of it, first.
   
2. Our AI-augmented commodities/currency tracker should remain a visual thing ~ so, I'm pretty much against pegging everything to a unified currency. Let the derived demand/supply from roleplaying itself fluctuate things, as it's already doing. We just need a visual thing to remind us that there's an inherent scarcity that's actually based on EPs.
   
3. Maintenance model, I honestly don't know. I know first hand how extremely hard it is to be internationalist and globalist and after all, things are based on consent. As an example, we all technically know Hutori RPed 4 aircraft carriers a century ago, but how would a maintenance model change the fact that if we engaged with Hutori, it'd already be outlandish to consider 4?
   

~

To add a little something, I do have a contextual vault from our current integration, though it just simply sits there for contextual prompting purposes like the digest.

And I have to say that for a while now, if contextual econ is considered as discussed on this conversation, Luthori and Egelion are currently superpowers, Xsampa has massive trade deficits against all of its trade partners, Lodamun is no better than Amudim, Kalistan is actually the same as Kundrati, N&D is a mess of a political battlefield and Vanuku hangs by a thread as a war economy with no war.

(these are some of the flags of OpenAI's vault)

~

My point is, it seems that the question isn't the models themselves, by how they are implemented. If the EPs, the tracker and maintenance are a collective measure, then roleplaying can continue to flourish in a primarily political direction. If we're doubling-down on the nation level in terms of autarky vs globalism, I'm afraid there will be far more consequences than intended for players, simply because:

1. Notions are not backed up by multiplayer RP and/or
   
2. Notions are not actually sustainable in a global world
   

Either because players don't know econ, or they have a false sense of how their econ generally stands in the collective of econ RP. Not to mention ideology's impact (capitalism, socialism, communism).

~

Is econ realism a guiding tool based on the roleplaying, or a foundational tool for the roleplaying? If the former, I personally think EPs, trackers and maintenance models can be absolutely amazing devices.

So it's important to make a distinction on which one you guys really want.

[Doc]

Kalistan might actually be the same as Kundrati if we just go off explicitly economic based RP. I find economic development RP quite boring specifically because it is so unrealistic in a RP-only scenario where I can say I can produce whatever I want and don’t have to realistically acknowledge any real costs.

To the point of the OP, I would, and have, quite literally preferred to watch trees grow.

To Zanz, all points well made. Just on the 1USD equals 1 LOD. The issue is that gives the LOD the same primacy in Terra that the USD has. It’s like being locked into Bretton Woods for 3500 years. Great for Lodamun, and assumes Lodamun has the most stable currency regardless of what it does good or bad. Not so great for every other currency which only depreciates against it. Conceptually It creates a world of one USA and after 3500 years 83 Zimbabwe’s on stereoids.

It shouldn’t be the LOD because Lodamun should have to float against the USD like every other currency does. The only reason it was the LOD was because Siggon developed the calculator. It wasn’t even supposed to be that. It just became that.

Otherwise these are things we need to also consider for sure.

[GreekIdiot]

I'd like to propose this:

Let's add some data collection points (post-launch, so no rush). Let's see what the AI-augmented contextual data is telling us based on specific markers discussed in this thread.

Right now I'm the only one with access to the AI repository and I can tell you with 99.9% certainty it will surprise most, if not all players, on what the AI's POV is about their RP and their nations.

So, my question is: what do we want to collect?

i.e. a -1 to 1 weight flag on a specific list of resources