Re: My Olympia wish list (and gripe list).. LONG

From: srt@aero.org (Scott "TCB" Turner)

Date: Fri, 22 May 1992 17:26:50 +0000

dirque@cmu.edu writes:
>My current complaint right now is that part of the amount of money you
>spend on persuading men should be used to maintain them. I just got burned
>by persuading some men, have them swear loyalty to me and then lose them
>again in the same round. And personally that just plain sucks. It makes
>terrorism much more efficient than persuasion in almost all cases.

What's the problem with doing:

persuade 1117 50
	pay 1117 50

The pay won't happen unless the persuade is successful.  If necessary,
you can explicitly declare yourself neutral to 1117 to assure that it
won't work.  And if the persuade does work, the unit will get the
money.

This may be a little awkward, but it's better than letting units keep
the money used to persuade them, which is open to all kinds of abuse.
Though I suppose you could argue that if a unit didn't have its
maintenance cost, the unit would be smart enough not to blow the first
part of the persuade money on song and women, so that it would have
enough to pay the maintenance at the end of the turn.

>Next on my list is assisting people to build things like ships.

I've suggested that the value of the ASSIST should be dependent upon
the difference in skill levels between the supervising unit and the
assisting unit.  So, for instance, if the supervisor were using a
Level 3 skill, then each 5 Level 2 workers would be equal to 1 Level 3
worker, each 10 Level 1 workers would be equal to 1 Level 3 worker,
and each 15 Level 0 workers would be equal to 1 Level 3 worker.  You
wouldn't be allowed to assist more than 3 levels difference, and there
would be a limit to how many people you could supervise.  (Personally,
I think this is a major problem - you can have 1 person with a Level 5
skill supervising 250 people with Level 1, and the whole acting like a
250 person Level 5 unit?  Not.)

As far as the argument "people with no skills could help dragging wood
around" and so on, I think Olympia already assumes that the working
unit has as many of those peons as it needs.  ASSIST is supposed to be
skilled assistance, which is why Rich made it require at least 1 level
of the assisting skill.

>Also this lets me be able to suggest my next idea. If all these units
>sitting in the cities are WORKing at manual labor, shouldn't other units
>be able to hire them to build a ship, be stagehands in a world class theatre
>production, go fortify some building. This is a pure cosmetic change.
>
>>Group of slaves[1196]  works for 7 days building Tony's ship[765]
>>Supervised by Joe [500] with a level 3 in shipbuilding.
>>Group of slaves[1196] earned 200 coins building Tony's ship[765] which is
>>86% completed.

That's a neat idea.  If no one is USEing skills in the province, you
could generate some random tasks: digging ditches, repairing city
walls, mucking the sewers, collecting the dead, street sweeping, and so
on.

>Actually I'm pretty confident most of the people with entertainers have
>probably lost their units via disloyalty by now.

The entertainment change has only been in for, what, two turns?  Even
if you can't pay your maintenance you shouldn't be losing 30 loyalty a
turn.  If you've already let your units run down in loyalty, and don't
keep enough money in reserve to pay them for a few months while you
find a better market for their skills, then you deserve to lose them.

>[Trading]...On your first leg, you make let's be generous... 25% profit.
>You make 625 coins. Add this an reinvest on your trip back and make 781.
>for 1406. Minus 300 to pay your men. 1106 for 2 months trading with 25 men.
>
>Let's say you just made same 25 men sit at home and WORK. You get an average
>of 2 gold a day. For 60 days. 3000 coins. Minus the 300 for wages. 2700.

This is definitely a problem.  Not so much because of the money
imbalance, because neither WORK nor trading are amongst the best ways
to make money.  Those are and always should be the use of trained
skills.  This is more of a problem because trading seems to be a big
attraction of Olympia, and right now it isn't feasible.  Everyone hopes
that the addition of a market economy will help correct this.

Incidentally, I think that WORK is way overpaid.  Throughout history, the
lowest end of the wage scale has always paid maintenance costs and maybe
a little extra.  Assuming that WORK represents this bottom end of the
scale, I would have it paying 2-5 gold a week.

>I thought a courier service would be a mondo cool thing to have for
>various people who use it.

Speaking for myself, I saw three problems with Starlight Courier.
First, most people have their units in relatively compact formations.
They don't need to send things long distances.  Second, there's no
reason to trust you, or believe you can do what you claim.  Heck, you
couldn't even protect your units from Seldon the Avatar.  You had to
resort to complaining in the Times and putting a bounty on his head.
Who's going to trust you with a large amount of money after that?
Third, you were charging way too much for the service.

Personally, I'd be a lot more interested in a remote buying service,
so that I could put in an order with you for certain goods and a month
later you'd deliver them to my doorstep.  But could you really deliver
plate armor to the New World in a timely fashion?  Could you offer
competitive prices?  You'd have to prove you could do it before I'd be
willing to risk any money.

-- Scott T.

References

My Olympia wish list (and gripe list).. LONG
eh1s+@andrew.cmu.edu (Edwin Huang)
Thu, 21 May 1992 23:42:13 +0000

Referenced By

My Olympia wish list (and gripe list).. LONG
eh1s+@andrew.cmu.edu (Edwin Huang)
Thu, 21 May 1992 23:42:13 +0000