[Economy] Add Currencies and the Stock Market

The interest of competing religions rest in its tenets.
The interest of competing cultural influence rest its civics.
The interest of competing currency would be unclear as proposed.

I know the point is open the door to build on the concept and thereby providing something valuable to defend, otherwise players would have little reason to resist a currency change.

I believe this would require/pair with a money supply mechanic: the size of your economy is limited by your money supply. Civics, gold mines, trade import/export ratio, tax rate, wealth inequality, interests, inflation, etc would all influence and be influence by the money supply that is controlled by the government through mints and/or central bank. Countefeit money would hinder an economy (potential stealth mission?). Need more money? Just print some! But be ready for the subsequent inflation that will bring back balance to your economy (and prevent growth). Borrowing the money from merchants? or from nobles? Will you pay them back, start a civil war, or simply banish/expell them (and seize their assets) ? Will you impose tariff to rectify a trade imbalance bleeding your economy dry?

Having economic hegemony would imply that your mints are supplying most of the world's currency, have entered free trade agreement with you (no tariff), have your corporations invested in their infrastructure (merchant ability to pay for a resource extractor type of deal), have certain monopoly (collect wondrous effects), have trade routes with everyone (having bought or sold everything?), etc. This would also mean that such an hegemon would have several ways to apply pressure on economically-dependent rivals through sanctions while avoiding wars. Sanctions could generate leverage if not respected.

Note that the currency itself should have "properties" akin to tenets, or have financial policies tied to it (instead of being normal civics). I think its property should follow it like tenets do for religion, but can be changed like civics are. Adopting a "superior" currency would save you the costs of implementing the reforms yourself and having to re-print the new version of your currency, but will expose you to financial woes plaguing this new currency as financial event should impact everyone using the targeted currency.

You have managed to express my ideas far better, thank you very much. I don't know what to expect from the next DLC, but I'm already impatient XD

Like in Dune: Spice War? But still good idea to implement to game i think. +1

There are some historical issues with implementing this that make me disagree with having this be a major economic gameplay mechanic. For most of history up until post world war 1, the world didn't really have issues with currency trading or economic centralization as a power over other nations since everyone was on a Gold Standard. For most of history up until the mass adoption of paper currency in the 19th century merchants would exchange gold coins of any nation simply by weighing them, since the value of the good would simply have a weight of gold as it's worth, which could be from any coin. With the invention of centralized banking, debt based economics and stock systems like those mentioned in the other comment this changed, but that wasn't until Era 6 according to the game. 

Since this concept theoretically needs a reason to not come into effect until Era 6, I think it would work a lot better as a new branch of Civics.

In the classical era: Trade method

Barter: moves axis toward Homeland, +2 Gold on Resource deposit.

Gold: moves axis toward Global, +2 Gold on trade route.

Early modern Era: Economic Borders

Free trade: -10% gold cost on traded resources (Global)

Tariffs: +10% money from trade routes (Homeland)

Contemporary era: Central Banking

Gold Standard: +2 Stability on Market Quarter (open minded)

Government bonds: enables going into debt to make purchases. -5 stability on market Quarter if Bankrupt. (Authority)

Something like this, especially the final civic would give a lot more economic flexibility in the late game while not convoluting the early game with modern economic practices. 

I never thought about the gold standard thing: That's interesting. I honestly like that civic idea too.

YaBoiJotaro wrote:
For most of history up until post world war 1, the world didn't really have issues with currency trading or economic centralization as a power over other nations since everyone was on a Gold Standard. For most of history up until the mass adoption of paper currency in the 19th century merchants would exchange gold coins of any nation simply by weighing them, since the value of the good would simply have a weight of gold as it's worth, which could be from any coin.

The Roman Empire struggled numerous times with economic/financial woes due to the fact that they didn't understand any of it but it doesn't mean it didn't affect them.

Even when everyone is on the gold standard, conversion issues persists:
- Opening a new gold mine depress the value of gold and drive prices up (inflation)
- Gold scarcity will increase its value and drive prices down, but make it difficult to deal with small transactions; people turn to other currencies or denomination (e.g. silver coins) meaning you now need to deal with converting between types of coins minted by the same government
- Trying to limit economic volatility can lead to government-mandated exchange rates, which means that most coins are no longer worth their weight
- Minting a coin involves costs that is lost if the population melt them when its metal content is worth more than the coin's face value
- People used to "shave" coins (melting the shavings of several coins gives you enough metal to form an extra one) whenever the coin's value was no longer tied to weight
- People kept coins whose metal make-up was worth more than a newer version of the coin using a cheaper alloy to save on costs, leading to people hoarding gold and dumping the cheaper coins (preventing the government from re-minting them and thus leading to gold scarcity driving its price up)
- Farmer used to pay their "taxes" by giving a % of their harvest to the collectors, but rulers eventually required taxes be paid in coins (meaning a farmer will be arrested if nobody wants to buy their food or if there is a shortage of coin due to low money supply).

Furthermore...
- I'll also mention that several European kings had financial issues and forced their merchant community to give them loans only to expell them from the country when those come due. This was the fate of a lot of Jewish communities, as it was easier to make the general population accept the harsh decision if it only targets a minority. Note that other communities were expelled for various reasons, but I wanted to underline how this relates to economics.

- Not using currency (barter) means that any transaction must be an exchange, which prevents accumulation of savings and debts. Any surplus of financial activity would be wasted (unsold goods spoiling) and any economic crisis would imply famine (the concept of insurance requires the ability to save for the future). Note that if the value of a currency falls too low and cease to fulfill its role as a support/medium for facilitating trade, people will naturally fallback to barter (or switch to a better (foreign) currency).

- The concept of debt & currency existed during the Bronze age and the concept of "commodity money" was already there, it's just that it wasn't using coins. Bundle of cereal, shells, cattle, salt and metal ingot were used before coins were invented. China even used small metal knifes before using coin-shaped currency, and their coins had/have holes for convenience given the pressure for efficiency that the scale of their society warrants.

- The rise of banking was helped by the fact that Europe was splintered compared to what the Roman Empire was, but each little country had the same financial issues and woes that the Romans had and would attempt to fix them similarly; this led to widespread debasement of currency and causing merchant to need to convert coins in larger volumes while being under increased scrutiny as kings don't like being scammed. Some specialized into these kind of financial services and that got called banking. In other words, many financial institution were invented/created as a solution to financial problems at the time and it'd be interesting to shine some light on those instead of ignoring them until they get replaced with the more familiar modern problems.

- I'll also add that people losing faith in your government will cause them to lose faith in your currency, depecrating its value to the point where people may choose to melt their coins instead of exchanging them. Note that requiring that people pay their taxes in coins can dissuade them from disposing of all their coins.



I'm not sure adding a Civic branch to the Culture screen is the right way to implement this, but then again it all depends on the level of accuracy & depth desired. I could see the Civics approach work as a free update to the base game, but replaced by the more religious-looking approach initially suggested with a dedicated DLC.

P.S.: Sorry if this comment is a bit disorganized, I put in my ideas during work breaks ^^'

Maybe the "1st economic tenet" shouldn't be about currencies, but about barter? Mh... no, maybe it would just be nice to have like an event (similar to the Polytheism/Shamanism) about barter.

Suggestions for tenet "themes":
- Commodity currency type (food/livestock? metal/horse/strategic resource? gold/gem/luxury resource? value derived from necessity, usefulness or scarcity)
- Main source of taxes (Tribute, harvest, tariff, wealth-based)
- Major sales/contracts (negotiation, auction, regulated)
- Currency control (no control (individual are free to introduce more money in the economy if they find commodities in the wild), mint, standardized prices, multiple denomination)
- Conversion (no standardized rule, merchant barter over conversion; standardized rates; conversion done in government-controlled custom houses)
- Standardization (central banking, anti-fraud markings, gold standard)
- Transaction (private, public (sales tax), regulated (transparent block-chain))

Note that you can have up to 8 choices per tier if it is implemented as tenets, but need to stick to 3 if they are civics. You should be able to "reform currency" to respec your currency to make different changes, but it should cost you and involve a transition period (effect on all cities due to confusion about old vs new currencies). Or have this "currency tenet" system be an hybrid between tenet and civic, where you can actually change "tenet" like civics (would also allow more than one currency using the same "tenet").

The above choices would involves bonuses & penalties to money, food, industry, stability, currency adoption pressure/usage, but also in relation to new metrics (money supply and/or inflation). Some choices will bring short term benefits at the cost of increased risk of "inflation". "Inflation" event triggering would represent a financial crisis hitting your currency (affecting all cities that adopted it, foreign or local) where all yields (especially gold) are reduced for a turn (or more), or maybe this could be refined into several different event causing different effects.