Is the shield concept good enough for Civ 4?

[Trifna]

Originally posted by Optimizer
Yes, Energy as a basic resource is a great idea.

Maybe one should have Food, Materials, Workforce, Energy and Information then?

Or perhaps one less...

I guess the concept of energy here isn,t limited to electricity and stuff like that. It's more the working capacity, not only in term of population but considering also happiness, education, and all what changes energy... So to build something you need materials + energy = wanted thing. It's a pretty usual formula

[Cyclotron]

Originally posted by Trifna
I guess the concept of energy here isn,t limited to electricity and stuff like that. It's more the working capacity, not only in term of population but considering also happiness, education, and all what changes energy... So to build something you need materials + energy = wanted thing. It's a pretty usual formula

Exactly. Energy would come chiefly from population points. Some structures, like universities, would increase the amount of energy produced by population (more education means more skilled labor) while some buildings like power plants would produce a fixed amount of energy by themselves.

Some examples of building effects, assuming each population unit makes 2 energy:

Library: +10% energy from population
University: +25% energy from population
Mill: Build only on river, produces 6 energy
Coal Plant: Produces 12 energy
Hydroelectric Plant: Produces 12 energy
Oil Plant: Produces 14 energy
Nuclear Plant: Produces 18 energy

Happy population units make 3 energy instead of 2, unhappy pops make 1 energy instead of 2, and WLT*D increases the energy from population by 25%.

Some buildings would still increase shields (raw materials) like factories and manufacturing plants.

Thus, with an energy and production system, a well developed city could still lack the manpower to complete a task, and you can have very large cities (with a lot of energy) that aren't developed enough (few raw materials) to be production centers.

[Optimizer]

One of the iddeas is that some things - especially industrial goods and food, should become abundant as technology advances, while all service that require a working person will cost even more.