Resources: How to handle

[realpolitic]

Limiting the production for resources would make the game more interesting instead of having all [say] 20 cities producing tanks, a player would have to choose whether to attack a far off city with oil or make do with 12 cities producing tanks and choose between city improvements or infantry from the other 8. It seems it would make the game more interesting. Since some people will disagree, you could give them the option to turn it off at the begining of the game ( as you can turn culture off in civ3).

[Sandman]

Ok.

How about a model that's somewhere in the middle between the binary 'Have/Have Not' Civ3 system, and a really complicated resource quantity system?

Specifically, instead of just two resource states (1 and 0), have a broader spectrum of resource states, say from 0 to 5.

These would be: Absent, Scarce, Adequate, Plentiful, Abundant and Super-Abundant.

Now, availability of a resource would depend on a variety of things. Firstly, the number of worked resource sites would strongly influence the availability. Having two iron ore sites would raise your supply from adequate to plentiful, for example. Secondly, the size of your civ would affect the availability of the resource. A single city civ with high technology and an oil site would have abundant or super-abundant oil supplies. But a huge continent-striding civ with the same amount of oil would only have adequate or even scarce oil supplies. Certain improvements (mass transit, for example) would reduce the effect of a large population base.

Thirdly, higher levels of technology would increase the resource yield from mined sites, although they'd also increase demand for the resource as well. Forthly, you could trade with other civs to increase your supply of a certain resource, or sell them your excess resources.

The final factor would be technology again. This time, however, it doesn't increase the output of resource extraction, but simply confers a basic benefit upon your whole civilization. For example, once you research animal husbandry (or some such thing), your supply of horses is permanently set to 'adequate', and you don't need to worry about finding a horse resource. Similarly, once you get 'organic chemistry' your supply of oil is set to 'scarce'. This means that you can still build and use units that use oil, but you're going to be at a serious disadvantage against a civ that has plentiful oil supplies.

The effect of the different levels of availability would be fairly simple. Units which needed oil to be built would be very expensive if oil was scarce in your civ, and inexpensive if oil was abundant. Upkeep costs, movement, stats, happiness, terrain improvements, etc, could be dependant on the availability of resources.

Note that having very high levels of resource availability would not be that beneficial - it would usually be more useful to trade them instead.

[Dauphin]

I'd prefer the system that has more of the resource on the map, but that would be balanced by a proportional relationship of 'resources used' to 'maintained units that use the resource'. Stockpiling (which has its downside through storage costs expressed in gold per turn) should be permitted too.

It would give more strategic depth.

[Quezacotl06]

Why should a city with lots of hills be better at making stuff than a city without, when they are both supplied with the same raw materials?

I think to understand Sid's logic, we should try and re-evaluate our perspective on what a 'shield is'. It's not a resource. Iron is a resource. Shields are a relative measurement of the flow of capital in a city towards its construction/manufacturing industrial complex.

You have uranium. It's rare, it's expensive. Who will be able to afford it? Not little rural villages. All the wealth, all the major conglomerates, are located in cities. Wealthy businessman can purchase resources, while small businesses are less able to, it takes them longer to get the wealth to purchase.

As for the mine in the grass? Rocks. Clay. Building materials used for centuries. Companies build houses. If the company has a mine, they can gather resources quicker and cheaper, making a larger profit. Profits mean businesses will expand, they will have more customers, they will have more money.

This means they (businesses, and the city on the whole)can buy rarer resources more often to build things that need them quicker than smaller businesses/towns.

Thing is, in communism, this dynamic is scrapped. Perhaps shield production is redistributed, so there is more equality (though not a lot of equality, just for balence) in productivity across your cities than other governments...

[Nikolai]

Just for the record, all suggestions in this thread so far(if I haven't missed something that is) is into the list: resources.

[ThePlagueRat]

5,60% on bananas as a resource! Nice!
We still have far to go before we win...


BTW, I'm back... I guess you weren't missing me.

[Vince278]

How about trading Resources and Luxuries on an in-game stock market?

[ThePlagueRat]

That would be very cool, vince. In a strategy game called Victoria they use a big world market with all kinds for resources, but its not suitable for Civ games. They could make one that is though... Like the one they had in CTP, and then add supply/demand pricing and tariffs in the code generating your income in realistic fashion.

[dexters]

Looks like im in the minority, but having quantities would seem to detract from Soren's simplification mantra.

It would require at least some sort of inventory system for it. Besides, Civilization is a strategy game, not a tactical game. Resource quantities would imply for example, micromanagement of resources so you can build certain units and or improvements. Feels a lot like an RTS type game.

Just imagine the micromanagement hell of having to keep track of multiple resource amounts if some improvement and or units require more than one resource to build. Very messy.


That said, I was a proponent of a feature called the 'strategic reserve' where players could store unused turns of a resource so that if a trade ends they have some in storage to use. Even then it was basically storing resources in terms of # of turns that you can use it, not so much quantities specifically. If you have a 20 turn oil deal, you could stash away 5 turns of its availability. So in this sense my idea is built around the Civ3 model and isn't exactly a quantity based model.

In anycase, I'm not entirely opposed to the idea, but it seems overly complex for a macrostrategic game like Civilization.

Edit: one interesting aspect in Civ3 regrading the resource model was that it encouraged interesting strategies and emphasized the denial or luxuries and resources as a key strategic element in the gameplay.

Those interested can check my work on the Machiavellian model to see how it is employed in my style of play.

I'm not entirely sure how the quantity model as first suggested and the variants of it could affect the inherent importance of resources. It may only act to trivialize it by making every civilization capable of having some quantity of a resource.

[Vince278]

Originally posted by dexters
That said, I was a proponent of a feature called the 'strategic reserve' where players could store unused turns of a resource so that if a trade ends they have some in storage to use.

I like that. Could add a whole new strategic element (and a new target for spies).

[Fake Boris]

Admittedly, I think the tax, science and luxury sliders should go! It doesn't make sense when you think about it. After all, if you increase tax you merely increase the amount of revenue collected that is provided in coin. Obviously if you decrease tax you are still collecting the same amount, else why does science or luxury provision increase? Why then does the population become unhappy when tax is too high?

IMO The solution is to make tax a slider, tie it to happiness, but have the science and luxury output determined by the allocation of the population to these tasks. This is overall much more consistent since we already have scientists and entertainers. This just extends the concept further so it can stand on its own two feet.

Your own conception - right in many accounts - is in fact due to a misconception brought in by Civ3. When Civ1 was made, the idea was that tiles do not produce gold, but trade arrows. Those represented generic wealth and exchange made by your people. The tax slider was about setting what would be the general priorities your empire would dedicate itself to.

Civ3 brought the idea that tiles produced tax revenues, which would be allocated by the player - as if government conducted research itself, built all facilities itself, etc. That's not terrible, but still a step backwards.

[Heffalump]

* first, improvements and units should be bought. Let's do away with blue shields and replace them with an expanded resource system. (Namely, more strategic resources and more requirements per unit)

* let's then make the price of units/improvements variable depending on the amount of access we have to given resources. For example, say we need iron for our Swordsman.
0 -1 iron resources and we pay 50 - 100% more
2 - 3 and we pay default price.
4 or more and we pay a discounted price.
or some similar logic.

In summmary, prices fluctuate according to supply. Just like the real world.