Economics Discussion

[Darman]

I think we should make it that each nation has to have at least 4 regions, just to be fair.

Do the homelands need to be divided?  Or do colonies count as regions?

[Logi]

I'm thinking the homelands are to be divided into at least four regions. Colonies count as regions but not towards the requirement stated.

[Walter]

So you take the states of New York, New Jersey and Conneticut (= 10,060,983), call that 'East Coast' and dump a load of ICs in there to boost your research budget... I don't know about that. What's stopping me from doing something similar with 'South Coast' (which would be the Hong Kong Area) and 'East Coast' (which would be the Shanghai area) of similar size of New York, New Jersey and Conneticut?


... and you really have to tell me how you get to those figures, Logi. When I use the formula you gave for your example split of the US, I get $0.24 for 'Great Plains & West Coast' and $4.00 for 'East Coast', not $31. Looking at that, I would currently say that it is better to use the old N3 rules to determine research (BP based) and the costs per tech as it is a hell of a lot simpler.

[Logi]

..... I gave you the break down

-snip-
10 Pop, 20 IC (East Coast)

Then we have ($1 + $20 + $10) = $31 to spend on research, based on the East Coast region.
-snip-

10 Pop produces $1. The first 10 IC produces $2 each so a total of $20. The next 10 IC produces $1 each so a total of $10. Hence ($1 + $20 + $10) = $31.
I'm not even sure how you are getting your numbers because they seem quite ridiculous to me.

I can't find any way from the proposed rules and possible misinterpretations to your values of $4 and $0.24. Perhaps you are the one that needs to explain your math.


As for what's stopping you. The answer is simple. If you focus all your research in the Hong Kong Area, it will also be quite easy to take out your research ability and IC by entire bombing/shelling the region or taking over the region. Once someone does that, all that IC and corresponding research ability will be gone.

The whole BP based research in N3 is completely illogical and neither is it much simpler. As I demonstrated it's quite easy to calculate given the formula. I have no idea how you have been coming out with these decimal numbers.

[Walter]

You indicated that 2*IC/Pop limits the research...

With

65 Pop, 11 IC (Great Plains + West Coast)
10 Pop, 20 IC (East Coast)

I got 2*11/65= $0.24 and 2*20/10= $4.00

... but with that latest explanation you are giving, 2*IC/Pop has absolutely nothing to do with the actual calculation of the research budget.

Okay, so now that you have clearly shown how to do it, what about the 65 Pop and 11 IC of the Great Plains + West Coast? From what I understand from your calculations, those two numbers don't do anything to research yet that is not indicated in the proposal. The way I read it, the 'Great Plains + West Coast' region should also produce something for the research budget...


Regardind splitting... Like I said, I don't know about it. I can understand non-equal distribution of IC, but size-wise, it should be split more reasonably in my opinion. In your example you essentially are splitting up the US into (as I said) New York+New Jersey+Conneticut (not the east coast) + twice the pop value in IC and the other 45 states + leftover ICs which is extremely unbalanced. If you are going to split up the US into 'East Coast' and the rest US, 'East Coast' should be a reasonable sized part of the US and should look like something containing Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolona, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington DC (and looking with google, I get a population of 31,490,175 for those states and DC in 1900).

Looking at the US size, when splitting it into 4 pieces, the minimum size of a piece that I find acceptable is California+Oregon+Washington.

As for what's stopping you. The answer is simple. If you focus all your research in the Hong Kong Area, it will also be quite easy to take out your research ability and IC by entire bombing/shelling the region or taking over the region. Once someone does that, all that IC and corresponding research ability will be gone.

It was more of an example.  Still, if you do not set a proper region size minimum for splitting up a nation into regions, 10x 1pop/2IC gives the same cash result as 1x 10pop/20IC.

The whole BP based research in N3 is completely illogical and neither is it much simpler. As I demonstrated it's quite easy to calculate given the formula.

I don't think it is completely illogical. It was based on the industriousness of a nation so a nation with a more powerful industry would be a nation whose research department is stronger and better.

I disagree with your 'neither is it much simpler'. N3 is simpler... a lot simpler. When you look at the numbers you gave here...
http://www.navalism.org/index.php/topic,6423.msg83540.html#msg83540
... you should be able to calculate the research budget of all 8 nations you listed in less than 10 seconds  (if you use the right apporach, it should take about 1 second per nation)... and you should be able to do that without the help of a calculator.

With your proposal, you first have to split up your nation into a number of regions and then you have to figure out how many people, BPs and ICs are in each regions (which I think is going to be a bit of a pain) before you can even start with any calculations.

[snip]

Walter, how would you propose limiting research?

[Walter]

I'm not saying that the proposed formula to determine the research budget should not be used (after all you can stuff the calculations in a spreadsheet and let it do the calculations for you). I'm saying that one just can't claim "neither is it much simpler" regarding the N3 research budget calculations when it actually is waaaaaaaaay simpler (r=B/3) than the proposed idea (r=0.1*p+2*p+1*(I-p) where I =2p).


Question: in the US example, considering that the research budget is determined by a 2 IC:1 Pop ratio, I assume the research budget of $31 remains the same if you use the more realistic region population figure of 31 million I mentioned in the previous post (so you get Region 1: 44 Pop, 11 IC and Region 2: 31 Pop, 20 IC).

[Logi]

You indicated that 2*IC/Pop limits the research...

With

65 Pop, 11 IC (Great Plains + West Coast)
10 Pop, 20 IC (East Coast)

I got 2*11/65= $0.24 and 2*20/10= $4.00

... but with that latest explanation you are giving, 2*IC/Pop has absolutely nothing to do with the actual calculation of the research budget.

Perhaps you should read carefully....

Research limited by region population with 2*IC/Pop. (Only $ produced there can be used for research)

Notice I what I wrote. Only $ produced there can be used for research.

Okay, so now that you have clearly shown how to do it, what about the 65 Pop and 11 IC of the Great Plains + West Coast? From what I understand from your calculations, those two numbers don't do anything to research yet that is not indicated in the proposal. The way I read it, the 'Great Plains + West Coast' region should also produce something for the research budget...


Regardind splitting... Like I said, I don't know about it. I can understand non-equal distribution of IC, but size-wise, it should be split more reasonably in my opinion. In your example you essentially are splitting up the US into (as I said) New York+New Jersey+Conneticut (not the east coast) + twice the pop value in IC and the other 45 states + leftover ICs which is extremely unbalanced. If you are going to split up the US into 'East Coast' and the rest US, 'East Coast' should be a reasonable sized part of the US and should look like something containing Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolona, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington DC (and looking with google, I get a population of 31,490,175 for those states and DC in 1900).

Looking at the US size, when splitting it into 4 pieces, the minimum size of a piece that I find acceptable is California+Oregon+Washington.

That's nothing but semantics. You wanted me to show you how to derive numbers, I showed you that. Now you turn around and tell me that wasn't really what you wanted. You also wanted to me to come up with realistic distributions. Come on now... Do I look like the USA players to you?

As for your insistance on size of regions... I don't think so at all. Let's look at the Northeast Metropolis for example. It's less then 2% of the total US land area but it's 17% of the total US population. In 2010 the population of the Northeast Metropolis (Boston, NYC, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington D.C.) is ~49.6 million, home to 47.9% of all monetary assets in the nation and most of the top universities (6 out of 8 Ivy leagues for example). The density is over 11x that of the average density in the US, 931.3 vs 80.5.

And then we have the Great Lakes region, an area about the size you are willing to accept. It has a population of ~59 mil in 2011 but with far more area, some 6% or higher. It's also the industrial center of the nation, receiving half of the nation's population growth and 2/3 of it's economic growth.

As for what's stopping you. The answer is simple. If you focus all your research in the Hong Kong Area, it will also be quite easy to take out your research ability and IC by entire bombing/shelling the region or taking over the region. Once someone does that, all that IC and corresponding research ability will be gone.

It was more of an example.  Still, if you do not set a proper region size minimum for splitting up a nation into regions, 10x 1pop/2IC gives the same cash result as 1x 10pop/20IC.

Yes. You COULD split your nation into 500 pieces with 1pop/2IC regions. But that doesn't affect anything. Whether you have 10x 1pop/2IC or 1x 10pop/2IC, you're still deploying the same amount of Pop and IC. When a war comes, there is still that many vulnerable areas. You perhaps forgot that in the combat rule discussion, the current emphasis is not on province based combat, which is completely separate of these region splits.

What regions split does provide is a way for moderators to decide where the industrialized areas of a nation are, which helps in deciding what is lost or gained after a war. If a player decides that all his population doesn't live in an area that would be historically and logically reasonable and instead bunch up somewhere else, then he will risk the ire of the moderators, simple as that.

The whole BP based research in N3 is completely illogical and neither is it much simpler. As I demonstrated it's quite easy to calculate given the formula.

I don't think it is completely illogical. It was based on the industriousness of a nation so a nation with a more powerful industry would be a nation whose research department is stronger and better.

Except that's not true at all. I'm sorry but research doesn't happen near or even because of "powerful industry" in the sense of BP. Correlation does not equal causation. Nations with powerful manufacturing (which is what BP is) industries do tend to have powerful research bases, but it's not true all the time. And there are nations with powerful research bases that don't have powerful industrial bases.

Israel, for example, produces the 18th most patents in the world, close to India and about half that of France/Germany/UK etc. However it doesn't produce even appear on manufacturing lists  when France/Germany/UK produce 3-7% and India produces 1% of the world's manufacturing output.

Or let's look at Taiwan, it's ranked 12th in world manufacturing. It produces 2% or $6,353 per head of the world's manufacturing. It's per head production is far higher than any other nation in the top 20 including the US, China, etc. except Switzerland. However it doesn't even appear on patent lists, which speaks of how few patents they produce. I can say the same about Poland, or South Africa, or Indonesia, or Turkey, or Spain. In fact, there's probably as many nations that are "exception" to the rule as there are those that follow the rule.

Look even at the US we can see this. The Northeast Metropolis has almost no manufacturing, but it's by far the largest patent producing region in the US. Just New York and New Jersey produce at least three times as many patents as the Great Lakes region, which is where most manufacturing is.Clearly the link between BP and research is not as strong as you believe.

Correlation doesn't mean causation and in this case there's plenty of examples in real life to decisively prove that research doesn't follow industrial output. And they don't. Research has more to do with Cities (IC) than Factories (BP). Even then it's not the cause of research, just a precondition, which is more than can be said about the number of factories in a nation (BP).

I disagree with your 'neither is it much simpler'. N3 is simpler... a lot simpler. When you look at the numbers you gave here...
http://www.navalism.org/index.php/topic,6423.msg83540.html#msg83540
... you should be able to calculate the research budget of all 8 nations you listed in less than 10 seconds  (if you use the right apporach, it should take about 1 second per nation)... and you should be able to do that without the help of a calculator.

With your proposal, you first have to split up your nation into a number of regions and then you have to figure out how many people, BPs and ICs are in each regions (which I think is going to be a bit of a pain) before you can even start with any calculations.

If I look at a sim report with the regions split I can produce the results as quickly as using the old N3 method. Without paper, pencil, or calculators. None of the calculations are complex, in fact if you have difficulty dividing things by a half, by 10 or multiplying by 2, I'll be seriously worried. In fact if you can divide by 3 (which is a good deal harder) before doing any of the much simpler calculations I mentioned, I'll be very surprised.

Let's say I give you a region with 50 Pop, 110 IC, and 11 BP. Give me the research budgets.

Ok, by my rules the research budget is 5+50*2+60 or 165.
What's 11 divided by 3? It's going to be close to 3.33.... so 3.33 + 1/3 or 3.66? Oh look at all the decimal places.
Calculating that DID take me the same if not more time, which even then was about 1 second.

Alright, let's assume we didn't divide up the nation. What issues will be run into?
When in combat, you have no idea what is the objective because you don't know where the industrial base of the enemy is distributed. After wars you also have no idea how to resolve the who gains/loses what issue. How much should the Dutch look for losing in the Pacific War the island of Brunei? Who knows, there's no distribution at all.
Or when you split up nations for moderator reasons, you don't know where the industrial distribution is so you make extremely a-historical choices.

[snip]

Keep it civil gentlemen...

[Logi]

I went too far there, so I'll withdraw what I said.

If you're unsatisfied with the system as I've explained it, I'm going to make two proposals to you.
1) No research limit at all
2) Research budget limit as defined by IC with a corresponding Pop. (i.e. 76 Pop & 31 IC means the budget is determined by those 31 IC.)

I favor the first, but what do you want?

[snip]

I went too far there, so I'll withdraw what I said.

If you're unsatisfied with the system as I've explained it, I'm going to make two proposals to you.
1) No research limit at all
2) Research budget limit as defined by IC with a corresponding Pop. (i.e. 76 Pop & 31 IC means the budget is determined by those 31 IC.)

I favor the first, but what do you want?

After thinking about it, I would like to put forward a possible third option based on your second.
3) Research budget limit as defined by one half IC over the regional Pop. This would be cumulative of all regions. No penalty for regions with Pop>IC.

Now, this would need two things to work. First, we would need to have regions that are fair and have some way of guesstimating the Pop of said regions. Second, a distribution of IC such that the regions come within horseshoe range of OTL economic centers and peer review of the distributions at start. I think it gives several benefits over the other two proposals.
---It does impose some sort of limit along the lines of developed vs developing as historical as opposed to unlimited.
---It does not make increasing IC in a underdeveloped region a automatic choice. If you need a greater research capacity, you have a choice to make.

Thoughts?

[Darman]

After thinking about it, I would like to put forward a possible third option based on your second.
3) Research budget limit as defined by one half IC over the regional Pop. This would be cumulative of all regions. No penalty for regions with Pop>IC.

Now, this would need two things to work. First, we would need to have regions that are fair and have some way of guesstimating the Pop of said regions. Second, a distribution of IC such that the regions come within horseshoe range of OTL economic centers and peer review of the distributions at start. I think it gives several benefits over the other two proposals.
---It does impose some sort of limit along the lines of developed vs developing as historical as opposed to unlimited.
---It does not make increasing IC in a underdeveloped region a automatic choice. If you need a greater research capacity, you have a choice to make.

Thoughts?

i think its a rather simple, elegant solution that tries to maintain the historic integrity of disposition of national assets (concentration of population and income centers), and it provides players with a choice: increase IC in economic centers for research or in underdeveloped regions for income. 

[Walter]

Research budget limit as defined by one half IC over the regional Pop. This would be cumulative of all regions. No penalty for regions with Pop>IC.

...
... I'm sorry but you completely lost me there. :'(

[Darman]

England has 30 pop and 70 IC.  I have 40 more IC than pop, half of the excess IC is 20.  My limit for research is now $20. 
Ireland has 4 pop and 8 IC.  4 excess IC divided by 2 equals $2 more to my research limit, which is now $22. 
India has 400 pop and 25 IC.  I have no excess IC, but there is no penalty for having provinces with more pop than IC. 

[snip]

England has 30 pop and 70 IC.  I have 40 more IC than pop, half of the excess IC is 20.  My limit for research is now $20. 
Ireland has 4 pop and 8 IC.  4 excess IC divided by 2 equals $2 more to my research limit, which is now $22. 
India has 400 pop and 25 IC.  I have no excess IC, but there is no penalty for having provinces with more pop than IC.

A great example.