Controlling Economic State

Wolverine sent me a pm saying he wanted to look at the controls in Canada Bound. I figured I would save him the search and put it all here for everyone else's benefit also.

Problem
Scenario builders that want to depict an historical situation often feel a need to program the economy so that the experience is reproduced. I agree to a point, but I don't think the economic state should be so tightly managed. Uncertainty is an essential ingredient of economic strife!

Solution
I put loose controls on the economic status so that at any time it could be at one of three levels.

Example: Canada Bound
During most of the scenario, there are three possible ranges for Economic Status (ES). The value of Game Variable 3 (GV3) is the ES for the middle of the range. Depression thru Normal is the range allowed when GV3=1. Recession thru Prosperity when GV3=2. Normal thru Booming when GV3=3. There is one forced depression event that is triggered on the historical date of some riots unless there was a depression before that. Once the depression is on, you can potentially come out of it improving to Recession or Normal, by random means; but to do better than that you have to wait for an increase in GV3. Throughout the scenario there are events that cause changes to GV3 that are triggered by date and / or player performance.

1. initialise (in this example I start with ~Recession)
start of scenario
do not test against players, companies or territories
Dialog: warn the player about poor economic conditions
Condition: TRUE
Effect: Set Economic Status to 1
Game Variable 3 = 1

2. recession
beginning of month
Newspaper: announce continued recession
Condition: Game Variable 3 <= 1
and Economy State > 2
Effect: Set Economic Status to 1

3. depression
beginning of month, one time only
Newspaper: angry words, bad news
Condition: Game Year-Month = 183811
or Economic State =0
Effect: Set Economic Status to 0
Set Earthquake Light to TRUE

4. normal
beginning of month
Newspaper: announce continued nomal
Condition: (Economy State = 0 or Economy State = 4)
and Game Variable 3 = 2
Effect: Set Economic Status to 2

5. prosperity
beginning of month
Newspaper: announce continued prosperity
Condition: Game Variable 3 = 3
and Economy State < 2
Effect: Set Economic Status to 3

Events involving Economic Status and Game Variable 3 include lines 101, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107 (responsible govt triggers normal), 206&215 (free trade agreement triggers prosperity), 306 (goods only score during FTA), 315 (Yanks half-happy, it only matters during FTA), 315.1 (Yanks unhappy, kill FTA), 315.2 (Yanks happy, keep FTA), 406 (report goods status only during FTA), 601 (explains the function of each variable).

[Wolverine@MSU]

Thanks JayEff. I like the idea of uncertainty in setting Economic State within a range of conditions. I never did like the way I have programmed it for my Michigan map (which should be in the beta section soon).

One thing I noticed, and maybe you have too, is that when the game automatically changes the economic state, and a programmed event resets it, the financial indicators, such as stock price, company cash etc, track the automatic setting for a month, even if the Economic State is reset by an event. If you make a transaction such as buying or selling stock (haven't checked company issue of stock) the prices reset themselves based on the current economic condition that was set by the event. Have you seen similar behavior? Is there any way to overcome it?

Dividends are distributed at the start of months divisible by three. That is why there is a change in company cash and stock price.

Economic state changes at the end of the month before. I used to think it was only Feb and Aug, but I have seen it at the end of May also.