How Resources should be done...

[TechWins]

Originally posted by Fosse
No no... yuck. That'd be awful. You would just need so many units of oil to "support" particular units. If you require 20, but you have only 18, then one of your units gets stuck for the turn (I don't know which one, the one deepest in enemy territory, the one farthest from the front lines, whatever). This is less horrible than units simply disbanding like in the past! OR, using discrete numbers, "unsupplied" units could suffer the same kind of "Rare Resource" penalties you outlined earlier. What I'm really getting at is that I don't understand how you imagine the vague amount of a resource should be determiend.

What if instead of that unit becoming disabled for the turn, since that would obviously cause a lot of problems, 2 gold would be taken for each resource point being used that isn't available. All new production of tanks would be disallowed because you don't have any available resource points.

I didn't particularly look into the idea, so I can't say whether I agree with it or not, but it would be ridiculous to see a unit becoming non-functional after it's already been built. That's why I think some sort of madndatory, monetary payment for the unavailable resource would work better. Basically there HAS TO BE a simplified system or else the strategy it adds becomes tedious and too complex.

[MattPilot]

GUys.. you are sidetracking here!

This discussion wasn't ment to be about unit upkeep. Although, it was suggested as an added feature, but not necessarily required. Personally, i think upkeep would be to much of a hastle.

Then again, look at Hearts of Iron 2 (free demo). It has the best upkeep system i've yet to see in a strategy game.

Anyhow.... Getting back on topic..

The idea was to have a visible number AVAILABLE per turn to BUILD units - forget upkeep & storing for a second.

......
Again, i'm just talking about abstract numbers. Say you have available 50 oil per turn to use to build units. 1 tank will cost 10 oil and 10 iron (# just examples). To build Tanks, you a need IRON and OIL, unfortunately, you don't have iron. But your neighbor does, and as luck would have it, he needs oil.

So you and your neighbor decide to trade 20 OIL units for 40 IRON units. SO now you have 30 oil per turn and 40 iron per turn available to build units. You could, for example, build 3 tanks now.
.......

Forget upkeep. Forget storage. Yes, those would be nice features, but lets first talk about changing the basic model to something more flexible. As for unused resources per turn? To bad you didn't use it. Who cares? Nothings lost. Either factor unused resources into the TAX revenue as suggested earlier, or just drop it. No biggie...

[wrylachlan]

Again, i'm just talking about abstract numbers. Say you have available 50 oil per turn to use to build units. 1 tank will cost 10 oil and 10 iron (# just examples). To build Tanks, you a need IRON and OIL, unfortunately, you don't have iron. But your neighbor does, and as luck would have it, he needs oil.

So you and your neighbor decide to trade 20 OIL units for 40 IRON units. SO now you have 30 oil per turn and 40 iron per turn available to build units. You could, for example, build 3 tanks now.

Having to keep track of multiple different resources to build units would be ridiculously unfun. The beauty of the current system is that if you have iron, units that require iron show up in your list of options to build. If you don't, they don't. Really simple. There's no, why can't I build a tank in City A when I could in city B?

With your system you would have to add a screen to track where each resource was being used. Say a good producing city finishes a wonder and wants to start producing units again. Since all your oil is being used, you have to scroll through the cities figuring out which one to cancel so that your good city can get going. You could cancel city A that just started, but is itself a pretty good producer, or you could cancel city B which isn't a great producer but has already invested 15 turns into building a unit... that's a micromanagement nightmare!

And for what? It really won't effect military strategy - resources are already a strong military target. It might make diplomacy a little more nuanced, but you could achieve that goal in a lot of other ways.

[Sandman]

Are you asking for a system in which the numbers are below the hood?

More or less, yes.

[Xorbon]

One alternative to the hard production limit caused by a shortage of a resource is to have a soft limit. Once the limit has been exceeded, instead of not allowing additional cities to produce units using that resource, the amount of time required to build that unit would increase in all cities instead. If you're barely over the limit, the penalty would be small (say +5% or less to the build time). For some cities that have high production, this might not even be noticeable. If you're way over, the penalty would be quite large, up to some maximum such as +400%.

So, instead of suddenly not being able to build a unit, you'd find the production times start to increase.

[MattPilot]

excellent idea Xorbon

[Proteus_MST]

Xorbons approach sounds good IMHO.

It would somehow take into account that even if your territory lacks a resource you might be able to get it on the black market (such as Uranium) or might be able to produce it from other available resources (for example oil, which can also, although to a higher price, be refined from coal)

[TechWins]

Originally posted by MattPilot
excellent idea Xorbon

Agreed.

It would somehow take into account that even if your territory lacks a resource you might be able to get it on the black market (such as Uranium) or might be able to produce it from other available resources (for example oil, which can also, although to a higher price, be refined from coal)

I'm not sure if I agree with this, though. If a Civ doesn't have any units of the resource I'd rather have it so the Civ couldn't build any units at all that require the resource. I don't want the concept being too abstract.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by TechWins

I'm not sure if I agree with this, though. If a Civ doesn't have any units of the resource I'd rather have it so the Civ couldn't build any units at all that require the resource. I don't want the concept being too abstract.

You could make it more complicated.
For example by having some kind of "Black Market" where you can buy all the resources you want, but to a much higher price than natural, and only limited quantities per turn.
or by being able to build certain city improvements such as a plant that can turn coal into oil or can create artificial rubber (which probably needs oil) [of course, all plants need a great amouint of cash to convert resource a into resource b, but would be cheaper than the costs to acquire a resource on the black market)

[TechWins]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST


You could make it more complicated.
For example by having some kind of "Black Market" where you can buy all the resources you want, but to a much higher price than natural, and only limited quantities per turn.
or by being able to build certain city improvements such as a plant that can turn coal into oil or can create artificial rubber (which probably needs oil) [of course, all plants need a great amouint of cash to convert resource a into resource b, but would be cheaper than the costs to acquire a resource on the black market)

Hmmm maybe once you had a stock exchange in your capitol you could buy a generic amount of resources for X amount of turns. It would represent the idea of a world market well.


...I'd elaborate more, but I must write a pretentious response to my 400-500 word (what a joke!) paper on speech anxiety for communication class, so I can actually get to bed here soon.

[MattPilot]

Hmmm maybe once you had a stock exchange in your capitol you could buy a generic amount of resources for X amount of turns. It would represent the idea of a world market well.

hmmm no.

For someone to buy a resource, another country must first sell it. You can't pull X resource out of nowhere from some market.

Perhaps Have a entity (market) where countries can sell their products to, without having an immediate buyer, thus lowering the price overall (to prevent overselling).

Every resource has a average/standard price. If it is overstocked, it drops, if it is requested, it rises.

But this is getting a little to deep for a civ game.

[TechWins]

Originally posted by MattPilot


hmmm no.

For someone to buy a resource, another country must first sell it. You can't pull X resource out of nowhere from some market.

Perhaps Have a entity (market) where countries can sell their products to, without having an immediate buyer, thus lowering the price overall (to prevent overselling).

Every resource has a average/standard price. If it is overstocked, it drops, if it is requested, it rises.

But this is getting a little to deep for a civ game.

To rip a phrase from the 'Nuke' thread: This is Civ not Resource Tycoon. So again "Hmmm maybe once you had a stock exchange in your capitol you could buy a generic amount of resources for X amount of turns." Civ is meant to be abstract to a certain degree. The stock exchange idea was to make Proteus_MST's, whom my comments were directed to, idea seem less abstract and more plausible in realistic terms. I appreciate your gracious sincerity in pointing out the obvious to me, though, by the way.

[Proteus_MST]

And IMHO it sounds good.

You can expect that not every resource unit is confiscated for production by the state, but some of it will be mined, bought and sold by private companies and threfore can be acquired by other states (with few exceptions such as uranium which probably will be sold only in secrecy)

So yes, why not have some kind of small wonder like a stock exchange where also resources can be bought.