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Big idea: regional markets, "instances" of EoS t
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Josh Millard RJ: Tex Corman CO: J. Quaff Arabica Post Rating: 43 + / - Total Posts: 167 Karma: 231 Joined: Apr 3, 2012 |
Posted on Apr 8, 2012 So, here's a big idea: regional markets.This is a long-term, pie-in-the-sky sort of idea for how growth of the EoS playerbase could be accommodated over time in a way that makes the long-term game more interesting, prevents the current single-national-market setup from being continually saturated over time, and provides established players new possibilities and challenges for expanding their businesses. 1. Regional markets. Each region is some sort of contiguous, coherent production/wholesale/retail market relatively isolated by whatever convenient plot devices from other markets. Currently, the game exists in a single "region", all of Econosia; over the long term, new regions could be added periodically to provide fresh markets for new players to have more of a gold-rush/startup market feel in (and for existing players to try and get a stake in as well). 2. Demand is local to each region; one region may at a given time be saturated with fruit while another may be underserved. Different regions may well have different balances of supply and demand depending on what businesses are set up. 3. Inter-region commerce. Just as we currently have the import/export market for trade between single-region Econosia and the national markets of other countries, regions would be able to trade goods at a premium. (This could be done as simply as just trading on B2B with an imposed 20% tariff or something; it wouldn't need to be a whole new market screen.) The cost of inter-region trading would be higher than intra-region trading, but it'd be less than current import/export rates; this would encourage diversification within each region but also provide for some commercial synergy with other businesses in different regions in the cases of a serious market imbalance, instead of forcing everything there to be resolved through more-expensive international trade. 4. Regional socioeconomic variation. Each region could have a number of local factors that affect business performance, in a way that would naturally shape somewhat the markets of that region. This could be things like: - popular demographics (is this a particularly large or small region? Rich or poor? Tech-savvy? Foodies who care a LOT about the quality of their food products?) - employment needs (big industrial worker base that makes factory jobs easier to fill? Proportionally large city population = plenty of retail workers?) - climate / natural resources (is this an oil rich region that makes pumping petro affordable? Is this is an arid region that makes growing plants more expensive?) - political / economic climate (does this region have a progressive corporate tax, or a flat tax, or even significant economic breaks for large corporations? Does it offer generous biz loan rates, or is interest steep? Are some sectors explicitly economically encouraged or discouraged?) Reduce each of these ideas to a fairly simple set of numbers that can vary from region to region. Each region ends up having some character to it, a sense of place. Folks interested in a specific line of business can think a bit about what region they want to headquarter their company in. And these attributes can be dynamic over time, as well -- economic climate might change significantly over the course of a couple decades, or even sharply now and then if the regional government (or the population) changes the law. A drought may seriously impact agribiz in a region for a couple of years. Etc. Major random events that affect single regions or groups of adjacent regions or even the whole national/global market over time. 5. And so on. Other things that could be done with this: - Introduce a voting mechanism, at a regional and maybe also national basis. Things like tax rates, loan rates, wages, inter-region import and export tariffs, etc, could all be up for a vote, maybe on a monthly basis (four years of game time). One vote per player (power to the small businessmen in terms of raw numbers) but also a lobbying function where cash can influence the votes of the robo-population (or the robo-Congress) so that big biz can, for a price, exert outsized influence on the political market. Pro-corporate policies are great for companies in the short term but maybe not in the long-run, especially if he economic climate of the region has changed. Businesses partly determining their own fates as a group. - Provide a sense of local region vs. region competition and (hopefully) some intra-regional cooperation and camaraderie, where players who otherwise don't have a relationship will be more likely to recognize the value of balancing local market competition against regional cooperation. Would help create more of a macro-economic narrative and sense of place in the game, as well, as people identify with their region. Like I said, this is very pie-in-the-sky wishlist stuff, but given that the question forever lurking on edges of a game like this is "will the game be reset", and neither "yes" nor "no" is a perfect answer, an approach like this would provide a middle way to allow permanence and persistence to long-time players and their companies while also offering a recurring opportunity to have the market "reboot" to some degree and offer newer players a less daunting market to try and break into. |
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Space Butler RJ: Space Butler CO: Space Butler Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 19 Karma: 18 Joined: Apr 2, 2012 |
Posted on Apr 8, 2012 I think this is a great way to expand the game if it gets very popular.
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Scott (Admin) RJ: Ratan Joyce CO: Ratan Joyce Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 1175 Karma: 5083 Joined: Jan 13, 2012 |
Posted on Apr 8, 2012 Lots of great details, I like it.
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