There are regions in our (real) world that neither have resources nor production capacity. Most of them belong to the world's poorest. The value they could transfer to richer regions is not significant. But you are right in north vs. south. But here we are not talking of poor regions at all. If we take a look at Spain, for example, we see an industrialized country. But we don't see a major power (at least not anymore...) Why? Because large parts of Spain's value creation goes to foreign countries (e.g. through foreign trade balance).Trilarion wrote:Actually it's sounds strange at first sight but it actually is what happens in the modern world. So there are regions which are more industrialized than others. One example would be southern germany vs. northern germany now. The modern ways to solve this are a) differing wages, b) differing consumption and c) social transfers (aka the rich pay for the poor otherwise we all may end up in communism). Did your model include regionally differing wages within a nation? And for social transfers there are many automatic systems like government paid unemployment or pensions. Or there is tourism as a possibility for those unindustrialized regions.Xylander wrote:...This is a strange idea indeed. Imagine there is a region that has no resources and no factories and no money. People would hardly survive there. There is a second region that has resources and a factory. People there would create some goods and sell them to the first region (every turn). They'd get rich this way. And the money they get comes from the very poor region where people do nothing but survive? I say no! ...
In my "model" we could kind of assume that the lowly industrialized provinces show at least some demand because of pensioners or tourists or other social transfers. However the danger is that the minor nations become completely insignificant. After all they aren't industrialized. So where should their wealth to buy anything come from?
In my model such a region would produce goods, at least cheap ones like food and sell them. It would create some profit and could invest some of it in infrastructure. But people there would demand goods they are not producing, expensive goods. And they'd buy them on the world market. This way even the small profits would 'leave' the region.
A region without any resources could have tourism, indeed. But I don't think that we'll have to model this correctly. Instead this would be a completely unproductive region without any means to value creation. In case we model a population size (e.g. to calculate how many workers a nation can recruit per turn) it could have a value, though. It could just add population to a country. And, maybe in the later game, new resources might be found there (e.g. oil).
There are diffent solutions, I think. We should not force players to start wars. There must be a way to win a game without war! I know many players who severely disklike aggressive strategies. Sure - building a large army should only be possible for nations with strong economies. But what about economic wars? What about taking heavy influence on an enemy nation's trade partners? What about price dumping? A player could just use his nation's economic power to decrease other nation's incomes. Although other nations could see this as a casus belli and got to war (and this leads to the same situation you described but the player would feel as a 'defender' what is completely different).Trilarion wrote:... So a very profitable industry should just translate to a huge and powerful army. So we just have to include sinfully expensive killer ships/tanks/canons that you can buy. What do we expect the player to do once the country is fully industrialized? Waging war of course...
Imperialism models this. I think the idea behind is correct, but it doesn't work because the effect is too small. In Imperialism you lose workers when recruiting soldiers. If you had severe losses during a war and you were forced not only to recruit soldiers for units completely lost, war would be extremely costly! Two things prevent it:Trilarion wrote:... So war especially extended war must be costly. There must be a severe risk that your economy crashes during a war.
1. Even if a unit loses 90% strength (read: 90% of it's soldiers) a player doesn't have to pay anything for reinforcement.
2. Recruitment isn't limited by population. You can produce soldiers endlessly.
So if we fixed these issues, war would become risky and costly, event for the winner! I think military units should not reinforce automatically. Instead damaged units of the same type should be joined (like in the 'Total War' series). Two infantry units with 50% strength each would give one unit with 100% strength.
And because a nation gets only a limited number of workers each turn (depending on it's polulation's size) an extended war could easily cause more casualties than worker recruitment can compensate. A player would have to reduce his workforce to reinforce his army and this way cripple his industrial capacity and his income. There is a point where he can't afford a war anymore just for economic reasons! He will accept peace even if conditions are very hard (yes, even if he didn't lose a single region during war) ...
I believe we can create a much more authentic relation between economy and war than Imperialism can. And we won't have to alter the original game mechanics very much. At least we could leave it to the player to switch 'auto reinforcement' of units on and off (difficulty settings). If a player choses to go with the latter he should not have to 'join' damaged units manually. The game should do this for him. Instead of three damaged infantry units (60% health each) the player would have one healthy (100% health) and one damaged (80% health) after battle ...