Out of curiosity, what kind of depth in economy are we all looking for? Obviously there is very little to no information on any mechanics yet, but curious on everyones thoughts. 

Personally I am hoping for one that incentivizes some level of cooperation more than "oh hey, you got spice, i got salt, lets trade" type of thing. 

Perhaps a marketplace for resources like in the Endless games? If so, I'd like to see some auto-purchasing built in, such as buying x coal per turn if the price is below y, or sell p horses per turn if the price rises by q.

I would look for some expansion in that. I could see something like that working getting towards the modern era, but in the early game, how are we even accessing this marketplace? If we look at human history for example, trading is huge, but Europeans could not access Chocolate or Tobacco until finding the New World, heck they didnt even know these things existed. Or when the europeans wanted to get spices and silk, they needed access to East Asian markets, but the Ottoman Empire blocked that land route, hence pushing for the western exploration by sea. Time of getting said resource home also changes by era/technology. 

I wonder how trade routes will work in Humankind. Even if it is a marketplace concept again, if getting whatever resource took time according to the average world infrastructure?

Okay, I just had a bit of a crazy idea. There would be "merchant" units that appear naturally, almost like positive barbarians or a neutral trade unit from Civ 6. They are ultimately trying to get the most money for themselves through trade, and whenever they are in your territory/economic districts you can buy and sell resources to them. You can also do things like selling maps or upgrades to them that allow them to travel farther, faster, or carry more using your tech or buy "investments" in them that let you get a portion of their sales to other nations. Once they are done in your territory they will journey to another nation to see if they can sell what they got from you at a profit. Building roads and other improvements will help them travel back and forth faster and thus engage in more trade.

You'd also be able to set your people's policies on how to deal with them. On one end of the scale, you could outright attack them and steal all their stuff, especially if you can have privateers or mercanaries do this out in the middle of nowhere so they can't prove you did it, but they will avoid places that are dangerous to them. You could choose to enforce a tax on them for passing through your territory, which would be especially useful if you are between two wealthy cultures, but if they can find a way around you they will. You can allow your own people to trade with them, which might decrease FIDSI from spending resources on the merchant's goods but will attract them more often, even overcoming taxes you force them to pay for the privilige. You can require that if they want to trade with you they must not trade with your enemies, effectively creating an embargo if you can get a lot of allies to help with it. There might even be a few that choose to try to get past your embargos or taxes, and tech can make it easier for you to detect them and attack them without penelty.

Other possibilities include needing to hire them in order to collect items from your direct trade deals with other empires, the ability to create ones of your own that you control directly, the ability to purchase techs from them that they had learned or purchased from other cultures, or the ability to buy and sell FIDSI from them directly. What do you guys think?

Hi,

We can't really go into details on this game system yet. I can only tell you it won't take the direction of your suggestion (we're going for something less micro intensive that's different from our previous games), but! I liked it very much and wanted to recommend Distant Worlds: Universe to you, which is a space 4X game where trade is partially automated between private and public sector (your empire being the public sector :)).

With that being said, maybe it will be along the lines of Endless Space 2, where you set up a Trade HQ, and in another location a trade subsidiary and the trade flows between them. Trade agreements between nations create similar routes.

I can get behind less micromanaging, but the thing i would look for in comparison to the previous games is that i hope it would have some life. For example, little wagons/trucks/ships traveling the route to signify the trade. Empire Total War is an example at least for maritime that i am speaking of.

Glad to hear about less micromanaging, at least when it comes to trade.

The most important things I would like to see for the economy are:

1. Breaking the cycle of "Endless Leveling"

In the Civ series and the Endless series, the economy cycle boils down to Research Tech --> Put extractor/building in the queue --> Rinse and repeat. Most of the time, new FIDS techs have no impact on my gameplay.

For example, banking in early modern Europe had an enormous impact on the ability of monarchs to finance wars. The crushing national debt of France was the major contributer to the revolution of 1789.

2. Governments and player power

Again in both game series, the player acts as a god-king, with absolute authority to build whatever improvements or buildings you please. I would be interested in seeing government choices impacting economic control.

For example, a modern authoritarian government would play the same as in EL or Civ.

A feudal government would be able to claim more territory than other types, but the player would have no control of build queues outside of the capital territory.

A democratic government would require players to purchase tile improvements, units, or buildings, but would receive an income boost to compensate.

3. Make late-game economies matter

This is especially important for any sort of multiplayer, since it seems that it is possible to collect enough fame to win very early in a game. Towards the end of most 4X games, you spend 10 turns researching a tech, another 6 building a building or unit, and you realize there is only 7 turns left on the clock. For single player games, I wind up putting everything on auto and clicking the next turn button until I've conquered the world/built the spaceship/completed the end quest.

I'm not commited to any of the examples, but I would rather have fewer, meaningful choices in the economy than many, repetitive choices.

I'm intrigued by what kind of system you guys have in mind, especially if it's going to be radically different than your previous games. Can't wait for more info!

I wouldn't mind seeing the world marketplace return in some form, but as others have mentioned it might need to take a different, limited form through the first few ages. Or only be able to access goods on the market from civs you have met. 

As for the overall system, I'd like to see something a bit more organic than the systems in EL and Civ. Those tend to be focused on building "economic" buildings/districts and ambiguous trade routes  between cities. It would be cool if economies were based more on the actual resources (or goods) available in each city. So if I have 2 cities with the exact same landscape and same luxury and strategic resources then trade between those cities wouldn't be particularly lucrative. However, if there is a trade route established between cities with vastly different resources then it could benefit both of them exponentially.

In this way we would be encouraged to seek out unique resources and terrain types rather than just focus on building commercial related buildings in a vacuum. To take an example from Civ 6, if I build a market I get a flat +3 gold. But why would a city have a lucrative market if it doesn't have any particular goods or resources to trade there? It just turns into a game of how can I most efficiently turn my production into gold. It would make more sense to say if a city has 2 or 3 resources desired by neighboring cities, then building a market there would give a bonus multiplier to the organic demand for trade.

In addition to this, based on the organic economy developing in your cities based on the flow of resources, you can enact specific economic policies or edicts to complement them. Perhaps I have a ton of forests, and my neighboring empire lacks wood to build their ships. I can make an edict to expedite wood exports and profit off this situation. It doesn't need to be quite as granular as that example, but that kind of supply and demand flow between empires would be very interesting. Furthermore, I hope to be able to trade and interact with the economies of minor factions as well. I think minor factions are great in EL, and would like to have even deeper interaction with them in Humankind.

I completely agree that the economy shouldn't be so focused on building economic districts/improvements. I'd actually like to see the economy in 4X games elevated to the same (or nearly same) status as combat. Given the direction that Humankind seems to be going it would be nice if economic choices had profound impacts on gameplay. One way to do this would be to remove the "dust"/gold production from working tiles, and putting more of an emphasis on trade/plunder. I guess Civ 6 went in that general direction too. But I would really like to see a more in-depth trading mechanic, where there are strategic choices to be made - instead of just picking which cities the trade routes go to.

Zypher14 wrote:

My biggest thing besides making trade lively is to make it strategic. Dont have iron for your army? Well then you better work on buddying up with the guy that has a surplus, or find a place to conquer/settle that does. That brings up diplomacy which is a whole different monster, but I have always felt like this worldwide marketplace concept especially in the early game is just too easy to make up for those shortcomings. Especially if this game is using the whole "what if" narrative, the world would be so much different if oil was much more scarce, it would be different if everyone was closed off and not willing to trade and kept everything for themselves.

Its hard to balance what everyone wants, and stick it somewhere between realism and arcade, and appease everyone mechanically from the entry level to the veteran. Cant wait to see some more details.

To build onto Zypher14's point, perhaps we could also have a feature in which civilizations with the lack of certain resources/means to exploit them can use alternative means to make for it's absence, for example the mesoamercians civilization with their use of obsidian blades and the German's coal liquifaction attempts in World war 2(to overcome supply shortages)

T2blue wrote:

First, a limited quantity of fossile ressources, i mean not a max amount by turn but a total amount by extraction field ?

I have mixed feelings for this. Gameplay wise, a limited stock of resources creates a situation of how to manage what a person gets vs what gets put into the marketplace available to buy. I am assuming there will be a marketplace since Endless Legends and Space both had it. Reality wise, there are not many resources to this day that we have "run out of", although we are in danger of eventually doing so of some (fossil fuels and helium come to mind). Once again, I do not know how things would work for a marketplace, but I think an interesting way of doing it would be many of the resource tiles would be finite, but there would be a low number of infinite ones. This would allow some nations/cities to have a chance "burst" of the resource bonus of whatever, but lead to the cities with infinite access to be more strategically important. What comes to mind in history are those cities that sprung up for gold or other mining, and when there was no more to be found they were practically abandoned. I dont think ghost cities should be a thing though (except maybe in a nuclear incident, which is a whole different topic). On the flip side, there are cities such as in Greece that have been used to mine marble since Classical times.

As far as Climate Change, I agree it should be included to some degree, since they have clearly come out and said they want to deal with the major issues of humanity, including the "darker" parts (for example, slavery). I believe I have read somewhere they were going to include Climate Change, but I cant recall for certain.

Zypher14 wrote:

Out of curiosity, what kind of depth in economy are we all looking for? Obviously there is very little to no information on any mechanics yet, but curious on everyones thoughts. 

Personally I am hoping for one that incentivizes some level of cooperation more than "oh hey, you got spice, i got salt, lets trade" type of thing. 

An implementation I'd like to see is one that marries diplomacy (to an extent) & global economy. I think it'd be interesting to only be able to make economic deals with other nations that have a trade route connecting them. Also expanding on what can be traded; trading strategic resources for food per turn, for example, and only being able to trade in resources with cities you're connected to instead of the entire nation.

It would also be cool to have to manually establish trading posts in other nations that requires some level of negotiation; maybe the nation can allow the post in exchange for a certain cut of goods passing through? They could also shut down posts to prevent trade going through their cities to cities of enemy nations.

jhell already mentioned that it will be similar but different to the economy systems in the Endless games, and something like the above I don't think fits in. It'll be interesting to see what they come up with.

T2blue wrote:

Second : usage of fuel increasing global warming ? I can’t imagine a story of humankind without it. This would be the root of the game i am waiting for since CIV II.

I think it must be wery weakly connected because global warming is mostly connected with volcano activity. There must be "ice ages" and "warm ages" with different strength and length (and some effects such as low/high yield or sea level