Multiple Resources Per Civ

[Inverse Icarus]

this might have been said before but i've been in and out of the fourms for a while.

i believe that one resource should not suffice for an entire civilization. one source of rubber should not support 100 cities, and one site of gems should not make 150 cities happy.

i believe that there should be a 1 resource for 15 cities rule, or something to that effect. this would also mean you could trade a civ 2 of some resource if their empire was large enough.

-- off topic --

why can't you trade for 2 of a resource, for example, if i wanted 2 saltpeters from the french, so i could trade it with one of their enemies?

[Willem]

I've mentioned the same thing myself. Although I like the idea of having resources, I don't agree with this one site fits all approach. The example I keep using is the US, and their dependance on Mid East oil. It's not because they don't have oil of their own, it's because they use more than they can produce for themselves. It would be much more realistic, and also allow for more trading options, if the larger you become, the more of a particular resource you need to have to keep your empire running at peak efficiency.

[Tarquelne]

I'm not certain what we'd get out of it, other than more realism. I have a feeling the AI wouldn't handle it as well as it handles the present extremely simple system. The present system also very much encourages trade.

For multiplayer I think a more realistic, "scaled" resource system would be great. For single player, though, I think it would do more to highlight the AI's general cluelessness than anything else. (I'd like to be proven wrong.)

[Willem]

I don't know, it tends to build roads to any resource within it's borders, and even builds colonies, so I don't think that the AI usage would be an issue. As for what we'd get out of it, it would make trading much more dynamic. Once a civ has a particular resource, there's nothing you can do with any surplus you may have.

Plus, you would avoid situations where a civ has no resource whatsoever, and so make it more of a challenge. My last game, which I got thoroughly bored with, both the Japanese and the French were missing key resources, so my Cavalry were facing off against Longbowmen. By having a usage limit for each resource, there could be more in the game so that a civ would end up with at least one, and not be completely crippled.

[korn469]

to me the greatest part of the civ3 system is it's simplicity, however if instead of each resource supplying an entire civ i think it should supply a set number of cities and that the number of cities should be a value in the editor, with the ability to make it so that one resource supplies all of the cities, so i completely agree with you uber

that way trading and resources could be more important without the complications of an imperialism like system where each tank needs 60 iron, 20 aluminum, 15 oil and 100 shields to produce, which adds very little to the gameplay yet alot to micromanagement

[Tarquelne]

Originally posted by Willem
I don't know, it tends to build roads to any resource within it's borders, and even builds colonies, so I don't think that the AI usage would be an issue.

I don't think there'd be a problem with the AI gathering the resources within its territory. I wonder, though, about trading and the seeking out of new resources. (But especially trading.) The way the game is now the question "Do I go after another resource tile or not?" is reletively easy - not having the resource can be very bad, and once you get 1 you're set. (Though more is better, of course, for trading.) I'm not at all confident the AI would do a good job with balancing risk/gain under a less simplistic system.

As for what we'd get out of it, it would make trading much more dynamic. Once a civ has a particular resource, there's nothing you can do with any surplus you may have.

Currently, the _only_ thing you can do with "surplus" resources is trade them - which encourages trade between civs. Under the new scheme "hoarding" would be rewarded. I, at least, already tend to hoard resources even when they don't directly do me any good.

But here's an idea: It might help limit civ size. Rather than requiring an "optimal city number" limit size, a shortage of resources could help make those "extra" cities less-usefull. (Of course, there's the question: Which cities get the resource?)

And if the system were balanced such that it'd be difficult for a large civ (by map size - 1/4 of the land area?) to supply more than, say, 50% of the cities it could help put a brake on military conquest.

By having a usage limit for each resource, there could be more in the game so that a civ would end up with at least one, and not be completely crippled.

And that's a good reason.... but I'm still not confident that the game would improve, overall. I think that might be pretty difficult to balance. The number of cities that can use a single resource would need to be significantly less than the number of cities that an AI or player would normally having producing units that use the resource for the new system to make a difference. AND the number of cities that can use a single resource would need to be high enough that a civ with only a "very few" (or 1) resources would still be able to make enough units to not be "completely crippled." AND the AI will need to be taught to have some understanding of both the upper and lower bounds. (When does it have enough? When does it have a surplus?)

I'm sure a human would be far better at making do with fewer resources. Example: You want lots of cavalry. You can only make gunpowder units in 6 cities. So you cut Musketman production (For straight defense Pikemen are almost as good), make sure your highest-shield cities are the ones making Cav, and start the Cav. production especially early... maybe even spending some gold to shave a turn or two of the production time for each one. (Alternatively, you could build the cav. in low-shield cities, but spend lots of gold.) Simple as that is, I'm not confident the AI could duplicate it.

I'm leary of anything that would make the AI even more clueless. The relative lack-of-cluelessness in the AI is probably my favorite thing about Civ3.

Multiplayer: Again, I like the idea of being able to use multiple resources in a human vrs. human game. I think the calculations which might bring an AI to it's knees would merely be "interesting" for a human player.


Clustering: I think multiple resources should "cluster" - probably more loosly than Luxuries. A uniform distribution of many resources could easily make Strategic Resrouces a non-issue.

What about this?: Like Luxury resources, each strategic resource after the first "counts more." You might be able to get away with having fewer Resources on the map, so each one can be more important, strategically, _and_ allow a civ highly successfull at capturing Resources a large advantage.

[Inverse Icarus]

good discussion on the issue here . i hope the firaxis team still hangs around the forums, and isn't in cancun sipping margaritas and laughing about "multiplayer" and "robust editors".

[Spec]

Originally posted by UberKruX
good discussion on the issue here . i hope the firaxis team still hangs around the forums, and isn't in cancun sipping margaritas and laughing about "multiplayer" and "robust editors".

[Rimpy]

I think a simple and easy-to-understand method of implementing some way of requiring large civilizations to have more resources would be to keep stockpiles of the various resources, which you then have to draw from to build certain units. Kind of like how Age of Empires does.

For example, each rubber resource produces 5 rubber units per turn. Each time you build a mech infantry, you use one rubber unit from your stockpile. So with only one rubber resource, you could only produce at max of 5 mech infantry per turn. With two resources, you could produce a max of 10. Or you could let them collect in your stockpile and use them later if you wanted. 5 is just a number I picked out of the air, I'm not sure what a good number would be, playtesting could determine that.

I think it would also make for a more vibrant economy. You could trade units of resources that you have in your stockpile for some negotiated amount. For example, 35 surplus rubber units for 1000 gold. Then you wouldn't be trapped into making 20 turn deals, and you could profit from unused resources, even if you only had access to one source.

Wow, the more I think about it, the more I have to pat myself on the back for such a great, yet simple, idea! I think this would be really cool.

I think this method would be a lot easier than trying to figure out which of your 15 cities would get access to the rubber. But I don't think we'd ever see this in a patch, maybe in Civ4... five years from now.

Rimpy

[Willem]

Originally posted by Tarquelne
I don't think there'd be a problem with the AI gathering the resources within its territory. I wonder, though, about trading and the seeking out of new resources. (But especially trading.) The way the game is now the question "Do I go after another resource tile or not?" is reletively easy - not having the resource can be very bad, and once you get 1 you're set. (Though more is better, of course, for trading.) I'm not at all confident the AI would do a good job with balancing risk/gain under a less simplistic system.

I don't see that as a problem, it would just do what it does now. Build a road to every resource within it's borders. Mind you, it probably won't do as well in regards to building colonies, but so what. If we have to be concerned about everything the AI doesn't do as well as a human, then there'd be no point in having a game at all.

Currently, the _only_ thing you can do with "surplus" resources is trade them - which encourages trade between civs. Under the new scheme "hoarding" would be rewarded. I, at least, already tend to hoard resources even when they don't directly do me any good.

I don't think so, not if these resources were used throughout the whole game, instead of just for a short time period. I might find myself short of Iron when my empire grows, but have an abundance of Saltpeter. So I would need to establish a relationship with a civ who had the opposite situation. It would provide more opportunities for developing a long term trading relationship with a civ. If you knew half your cities would be short of Oil if your trading partner was destroyed, you'd need to make more efforts to help out. Exactly as the US did in Kuwait.

But here's an idea: It might help limit civ size. Rather than requiring an "optimal city number" limit size, a shortage of resources could help make those "extra" cities less-usefull. (Of course, there's the question: Which cities get the resource?)

Well yes there's that as well. Rather than have crippling corruption to limit an ICS situation, it could be based on resources instead, which would be much more realistic. As for which cities get the resource, you could select priorities within the Domestic Advisor screen. The AI could just go through it's list from the first city, then on down. If all it's cities are supplied and it has some left over, it will make it available for trade. In the event that creating a few new cities leaves it short, the trade deal would be cancelled and it's own cities would have first priority.

AND the number of cities that can use a single resource would need to be high enough that a civ with only a "very few" (or 1) resources would still be able to make enough units to not be "completely crippled." AND the AI will need to be taught to have some understanding of both the upper and lower bounds. (When does it have enough? When does it have a surplus?)

Well what's the difference from how it is now? I've seen in some of my games that the AI had a valuable resource, but didn't bother running a road to it. It's not exactly "understanding" the value of resources as it is, so I don't see that it would make much difference. And with this one site fits all setup, it's much more likely that a civ won't have a single resource. If there were more resources, but each only went so far, it would be much more likely to be only partially crippled, rather than totally as it sometimes happens now.

I'm sure a human would be far better at making do with fewer resources. Example: You want lots of cavalry. You can only make gunpowder units in 6 cities. So you cut Musketman production (For straight defense Pikemen are almost as good), make sure your highest-shield cities are the ones making Cav, and start the Cav. production especially early... maybe even spending some gold to shave a turn or two of the production time for each one. (Alternatively, you could build the cav. in low-shield cities, but spend lots of gold.) Simple as that is, I'm not confident the AI could duplicate it.

I'm leary of anything that would make the AI even more clueless. The relative lack-of-cluelessness in the AI is probably my favorite thing about Civ3.

Well like I said, the AI will never do things as well as a human. But if it makes things more involving for the human player, it will be a much more fun game to play. And getting into wheeling and dealing for needed resources would make it more involved. As it is now, a lot of the time the whole trading thing for me is redundant, since I sometimes have everything I need within my borders, or nearby. So there's no point in me even bothering, in fact I'm better off if I don't trade my extra Iron or Saltpeter. I have no incentive to do so.

Clustering: I think multiple resources should "cluster" - probably more loosly than Luxuries. A uniform distribution of many resources could easily make Strategic Resrouces a non-issue.

What about this?: Like Luxury resources, each strategic resource after the first "counts more." You might be able to get away with having fewer Resources on the map, so each one can be more important, strategically, _and_ allow a civ highly successfull at capturing Resources a large advantage.

That wouldn't be a bad way of dealing with it. So each civ would have a particular resource strength, just like they do now with luxuries. And treating them like the luxuries would make sense from an economy of scale point of view. The more of a resource you have available, the more efficiently you can process and distribute it throughout your empire. So the first two would only supply 5 cities each, the 3rd and 4th could supply 10 each, and so on. That would also create a major setback if your 3rd resource was overrun by an enemy. I think it would be interesting.

[Inverse Icarus]

in all honesty, if i have 5 gems, i'm going to try to trade 4 of them.

imagine if you NEEDED 3 to keep your empire happy, or more meant mappier people.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Actually I always thought it might be nice if disappearance ratios for a specific resource started at 0, but then increased by a set amount for every city using it at the same time. For example-you have a square with oil (which you've just found). It's disappearance ratio is 0. You then build 5 mass transit systems and 5 tanks (in 10 seperate cities). Say oil has a disappearance ratio of 12/city. Whilst you are building these improvements etc, the ratio goes up to 120, meaning a greater chance of your new oil resource drying up. Having more than 1 of the resource type would obviously spread the disappearance ratio around a little!
As an additional extra, when you've stopped building, the ratio drops back towards 0 again. The rate at which this ratio drops back down would be dependant on the type of resource! To use the above example, say your 5 cities have finished building their tanks. The oil resource has a repletion rate of 1/city. So, each turn, the ratio would drop by 5/turn.

Anyway, I'd be interested to know what people think of that idea.

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker

[Tarquelne]

Originally posted by Willem


I don't see that as a problem, it would just do what it does now. Build a road to every resource within it's borders.

(I said I don't think there'd be a problem with resources within "it's territory" - I meant it's borders. It's the resources outside - those that'd probably require military or diplomatic intitiative - that I'm concerned about.)

If we have to be concerned about everything the AI doesn't do as well as a human, then there'd be no point in having a game at all.

True - but lets not forget that the actual amount of "AI suckiness" (I think that's the technical term) generated by a new rule does matter.


Hoarding:

I don't think so, not if these resources were used throughout the whole game, instead of just for a short time period.

I think that'd help.... it is pretty unrealistic for many (most?) resources, but I wouldn't mind such a realism decrease.

But I don't think it'd help enough. But maybe it's just me. I'm well known for being a ruthless bastard in trading games. I don't like it when a game encourages hoarding, but I do it as much as possible.

How about having the resources still become obsolete so far as creating buildings/units goes, but they're still worth something? A significant amount of gold, or shields or something. (1 shield per city per resource - but only for the first?) So while there might be hoarding of the Resources needed by the current tech, there'd be motivation to trade "obsolete" resources.

If you knew half your cities would be short of Oil if your trading partner was destroyed, you'd need to make more efforts to help out. Exactly as the US did in Kuwait.

A good real life example, but unless the Civ3 diplomatic system is considerably improved (which I greatly desire) I'd be prone to just grab a piece of Kuwait myself. (Real life has far more "brakes" on blatantly aggressive behavior than Civ3.)


Limiting civ growth:

Well yes there's that as well. Rather than have crippling corruption to limit an ICS situation, it could be based on resources instead, which would be much more realistic.

I'm dubious about Firaxis's ability to pull this off, but it'd be nice. What sort of figures do you have in mind? (Resource frequency, resource "yield" - number of cities that can use 1 resource tile)

As for which cities get the resource, you could select priorities within the Domestic Advisor screen.

I think you'd also need a rule that prevents a player from freely changing which city gets a resource, or the player could just "shuffle" the resource from city to city, using tedious micromanagement to vastly increase the usefullness of a single resource. This wouldn't help in a situation where you want to maximize the production of a particular unit, but it'd be a factor the rest of the time.

What about just having resource availability be based on distance and the transport net? Cities need to be within X if connected by road, X+Y if connected by rail, or X+Z if connected by sea. Simple, vaugly realistic, and I think it'd add some strategic (or tactical) depth. (That's my conclusion after 5 seconds consideration.) Trading might be a problem.... I think you'd have to allow a player to choose which city is recieving the traded resource.

(Or you could have a very generous # of cities per resource AND a generous distance limit.)

(I think I'm pining for Imperialism II's "transport capacity" here.)

The AI could just go through it's list from the first city, then on down. If all it's cities are supplied and it has some left over, it will make it available for trade. In the event that creating a few new cities leaves it short, the trade deal would be cancelled and it's own cities would have first priority.

The extra being available for trade is good.... though if there's often an excess then the system hasn't changed much.

AI cluelessness:

Well what's the difference from how it is now? I've seen in some of my games that the AI had a valuable resource, but didn't bother running a road to it. It's not exactly "understanding" the value of resources as it is,

Have you seen it do that when it didn't already have access to the resource (maybe via trade)? (In my experience the AI has been pretty good about supplying itself.)

so I don't see that it would make much difference.

If my fears are correct it'd magnify the AI's lack of intelligence. This is overly simplistic, but: A resource system that is 5 times as complicated would yield an AI 1/5th as challenging. The inverse of the increase in complexity of the resource system is surely too dramatic, but the multiple-resource system would require that the AI make many more military and diplomatic decisions based on resource concerns. That's many more opportunities for the AI to do something less-than-optimal. Each individual decision would certainly matter less, but each one is also somewhat more difficult - I think the final result would be a significantly less capable AI.

And with this one site fits all setup, it's much more likely that a civ won't have a single resource. If there were more resources, but each only went so far, it would be much more likely to be only partially crippled, rather than totally as it sometimes happens now.

I don't see "not even a single resource" of as much as I problem as you clearly do. First, I like it when _I_ have to take some extra effort to aquire a resource.... but I think we're most concerned with the AI-players, right?

First, I havn't seen this happen very often. Hmm.... actually, I can't think of a single time I've seen a civ with more than a dozen cities lacking a critical resource for a "crippling" amount of time unless it lost its supply due to warfare. The civs seem to be pretty good about trading for it.
And I think a civ (AI or player) can "ride out" the lack of a resouce. Iron and Oil are difficult to do without, but I like that.

How often do you see it?

Well like I said, the AI will never do things as well as a human. But if it makes things more involving for the human player, it will be a much more fun game to play.

I agree, but only up to a point, and that "point" might be distance from yours. I thought SMAC and MOM were very involving and a huge amount of fun.... untill I realized how poor the AI was.

And getting into wheeling and dealing for needed resources would make it more involved. As it is now, a lot of the time the whole trading thing for me is redundant, since I sometimes have everything I need within my borders, or nearby.

That used to happen to me too often. I decreased the resouce frequency a bit (probably an insignificant amount), and started playing on Arch. maps more, and made offensive units much more expensive - so I couldn't get a large, resource rich territory as easily. I'm also very willing to quit once I'm confident I'll win.

OK - so maybe my objection really is: "The problem isn't the resouce system, it's that seizure of territory is too easy."

Strategic resources cluster and increase in "yield" much like Luxuries:

I think it would be interesting.

Yea, and for all my objections, I certainly would like to try out multiple resources system. And I agree with korn that it's simplicity is one of civ's strengths, but I'd enjoy considerably more complexity in the Resource system (and the Cultural rules too, btw.) As long as the AI wouldn't be degraded too much, of course.

Something that might, from my point of view, save a multiple resource system is that it might be fairly easy for the programmers to come up with some effective and relatively unobtrusive "cheats" for the AI to use.

[Tarquelne]

Originally posted by UberKruX
in all honesty, if i have 5 gems, i'm going to try to trade 4 of them.

A couple of times I've had only 1 powerful rival that happened to have access to few Luxuries "domestically." I'd give that civ very good deals on all my excess Luxuries. Then I'll get it to go war with me against everyone else, and then I'll refuse to renew the Luxury trades. I don't care that I don't have any trading partners left (I'll eat the small fry later), I like watching the other civ fall into stagnation or disorder.

Personally, I'd be thrilled if the military unit-shuffling of the civ series stayed pretty much the same while the diplomatic/trade/espionage systems became more and more detailed, complex, and powerfull. In general, I strongly prefer starving my foes.

[Willem]

Originally posted by The_Aussie_Lurker
Actually I always thought it might be nice if disappearance ratios for a specific resource started at 0, but then increased by a set amount for every city using it at the same time. For example-you have a square with oil (which you've just found). It's disappearance ratio is 0. You then build 5 mass transit systems and 5 tanks (in 10 seperate cities). Say oil has a disappearance ratio of 12/city. Whilst you are building these improvements etc, the ratio goes up to 120, meaning a greater chance of your new oil resource drying up. Having more than 1 of the resource type would obviously spread the disappearance ratio around a little!
As an additional extra, when you've stopped building, the ratio drops back towards 0 again. The rate at which this ratio drops back down would be dependant on the type of resource! To use the above example, say your 5 cities have finished building their tanks. The oil resource has a repletion rate of 1/city. So, each turn, the ratio would drop by 5/turn.

Anyway, I'd be interested to know what people think of that idea.

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker

Not a bad idea, but I think the way you've described it would be rather complicated, both in trying to program it and for the player to understand how it works. It would be much simpler if it were based solely on the number of cities. After all, people use Iron for more than just making weapons, so there's be domestic comsumption to consider in the disappearance ratio as well.