Family Possessions

[Romae Administratio]

As of right now these are the economic statistics of the four prominent Roman families:

HOUSE CLADIUS
500,000C
1 Villa
2 Wheat Farms
2 Cattle Farms
1 Fisherman Dock


HOUSE CORNELIUS
500,000C
1 Villa
2 Wheat Farms
2 Cattle Farms
1 Fisherman Dock


HOUSE GRACCHUS
500,000C
1 Villa
2 Wheat Farms
2 Cattle Farms
1 Fisherman Dock


HOUSE SCIPIO
500,000C
1 Villa
2 Wheat Farms
2 Cattle Farms
1 Fisherman Dock


It will be up to the familys to get together and stardadize the income of these products, save for the villa.

[Scipio Publius [2-167BC]]

OOC: We have been asked to come up with a standard for what the income of our properties will be. I haven't seen any comments on this yet, so i will offer a proposal. I start with a couple of assumptions, so i'll list those first.

1. Most people's wealth is in assets rather than liquid assets, say perhaps twice to three times as much assets as cash.
2. a reasonable return on an investment is between 5-10% a year.
3. Cattle and Wheat farms are of approximately equal value.


So: seeing as each family has 500,000, if we have 1,000,0000 in physical assets, let us say each farm is worth say 230,000. with the remaining 80,000 being the Fishery. If the property makes 5% a year than farms make 11,500 and the fishermen 4,000. These numbers might be slightly higher than those from previous TRE games, but while we may be dealing with more zeros I think they are infinitely more sensible in terms of how much things should cost. Romae could also manipulate the % return in order to make some years more or less profitable, etc. Another thing is with 500,000 to start with it will make economic progress slow but sensible, so we will not immediately see thousands of farms etc etc. a family with 40 farms will be very rich indeed. (this assume that there are other factors in the economy besides those things owned by the noblity. this seems reasonable to me. Perhaps the nobility could be factored as 40% of the total economy. (thus if we are economically successful, rome as a whole is economically successful, expanding our government's tax base, while eliminating much of the calculation work for the administration.)

Thoughts?

[Cornelius Titus [3-167BC]]

So your saying that for each farm you have you gain 11500 a year and each fishery makes 4000, then what is the difference between an olive or wheat? is one more profitable, what about different size fishing boats?
I'm just a little confused on the process of calculating the income we make..

[Scipio Publius [2-167BC]]

I don't know about olives. We were only asked by the romae to do these products. but my guess is if we set a base for a wheat and cattle farm ( logical staples) this will help the romae determine whether other products should be more or less valuable, there by increasing their percentage of return, or more expensive to produce, thereby reducing the % of profit owner's see. so they can decide that olives are more plentiful, so cheaper to purchase, and likewise producing less profit, or that sheep are easier to tend to, and so produce more profit. as for fishing boats, I don't know whether a fishing dock refers a dock with a number of boats, if boats come seperately, or, perhaps most reasonably, a dock charges fees for local fisherman to park their boats, and unload their catches, or perhaps local fisherman sell to the dock and the dock sells to the market. Something of that nature. I'll admit to being slightly confused as well. But we were told to discuss it, so i figured i'd kick off with a proposal to debate.

[Romae Fabulus]

Definitely sounds good, I'll be getting the economy up over the next week gradually.