Making Trade Essential...One Energy + One Metal + One Manufacturing Point =...

[Cyclotron]

quote: Originally posted by Youngsun on 02-22-2001 12:37 AMUnder the resource system(Supplementary), civA,C gets more production bonus. Civs don't need to trade while it gives slight benefit of production , the trade is not essential to them.

The idea of a supplementary resource system is not to give a slight bonus. Keep in mind one thing we both agree on is that trade should be more important, but we disagree on A) How important it should be and B) How to attain greater importance for trade. A supplementary resource system would give a very sizable bonus! A slight bonus is worthless. Yes, it is true Civs do not need to trade. But, with a supplementary resource system, you would be at a sizable disadvantage if you did not, which is how the world works. By making trade absolutely necessary to the game, you actually decrease the amount of strategy involved: Everyone knows what they need and goes about doing it. A tactical decision should be made (is it worth invading my neighbor to sieze iron that would greatly enhance my armies?), and a supplementary system creates the opportunity for that tactical decision.

You gave a previous example about Hitler: You said that if he worked under a supplementary resource system he could still produce "a good supply" of tanks and planes without seizing the resources of Norway and Russia. Tell me, do you think Hitler would have gotten anywhere with a "sizable amount" of tanks? Hitler had cutting edge technology and a whole lot of powerful armies, and that made him sucessful.

I think overall you are assuming that a supplementary resource system by definition means one with small benefits. This is not true; a supplementary system refers to the fact that having the required goods is optional; but that option will cost you quite a bit. You misconception is somewhat our fault, as we do not have any benefits hammered out yet, but in time we will establish a more concrete model.

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"Any shred of compassion left in me was snuffed out forever when they cast me into the flames..."
- Marsil, called the Pretender

[Fiera]

While I think a suplementary resources model would mean an improvement over the way Civ2 handles tarde, I believe that it won't make it into Civ3.

Why? Let me quote Sid Meier. This is from the old new item "Message from Sid":

quote: We think it will be fun to be able to corner the market by specializing in the production of oil, or wheeling and dealing with other civilizations to achieve mutual economic benefits or to cut off resources to a powerful enemy.

Yopu never will cut off resources to an enemy if those resources are only supplementary. I think a resource based trade system will be in Civ3, and that resopurces will play a more important role in the game mechanics than some people here thinks...

However, that's just my interpretation of Sid's words...


[This message has been edited by Fiera (edited February 22, 2001).]

[Youngsun]

Gary

I knew you would bring "scale issue" here but that can be solved easily by weeding out some of unnecessary resources ,which represent only The Colonial period, such as sugar cane,tabbaco and tea.

We can select some resources which have been crucial to Human history. Some resources like "coal" and "iron" deserve to be in the game as they have done so in history.
Trade in civ series has been always treated like sh*t whereas military aspect of the game has been under the full spot light with colourful unit variance ranging from a warrior to an aircraft carrier. It is time for some wake up call to balance things up. Don't you think so Gary?


cyclotron7

quote: but we disagree on A) How important it should be

Yes I can certainly see that. As the title of this thread says, I want to see the trade aspect of the game becomes essential not merely desirable and that was Lancer's point after all. In fact, Trade has been desirable, ever since civ was released, by giving you extra revenue.

Strategy can be developed from thinking "what kind of balanced diet of resource should my civ have?" Eating up whatever resources available out there makes people hardly a thinker.

Under the supplementary resource system, WWII Japan will never declare war on USA. Despite the imposed Oil emargo, the Japanese army will siege more Chinese coal fields to compensate the loss of production caused by the embargo and getting stronger by days. Dutch oil wells in Indonesia doesn't attract the Japanese. They will just attack China to get more coal fields. The Japanese have no agenda ,no national interest, nothing but simple greed on land which contains any resource.

With supplementary resource system, you don't have to think and you just eat!eat!eat! You don't need oil, iron nor Uranium. 100 coal fields will take care of you good by giving you hugh bonus of production.
Because it's the quantity that matters, under the Supplementary resource system, not balanced mix of resources. Everything becomes plain and boring. Why even bother to have "coal" and "oil" when you use them as just supplementary to shield? why not just name them as "resource no.1 or resource no.2"?

When you don't need to trade, the need for peaceful co-existance with other civ drops. You don't need careful and well thought diplomacy. Your civ doesn't have any national interest since every type of resource will satisfy you. Simple & boring expansion after expansion, you will be forced to turn off the PC.
[This message has been edited by Youngsun (edited February 23, 2001).]

[me_irate]

Here's why i think trade with real resources is needed. I found civ2 to easy. I played diety. I would usually expand till i had at least 20-30 cities. I would then not build anymore and solely build them up. i would not trade a single tech, while in the beggining i was fairly week pretty soon all my cities were level 20+ and i was building parts of the space ship while everyone else was just starting to get gunpowder. At that point i could easily have killed them but i would build my spaceship completely(mostly by buying it) and would beat the game long before they even had spaceflight. If trade was required it would force me to actually interact with the computer. Thats the soul reason i want it. I don't want call to power with less bugs, nor civ 2 with better graphics, i want a more engaging and realistic game. But i would still by the latter.

[Straybow]

If anyone ever played Castles II it had four basic resources (Food, Timber, Iron, Gold) which could be traded. But to prevent anyone from getting totally screwed if you weren't in contact with anybody friendly with a surplus you could always trade on the black market. The exchange rate was lousy (1:3) and there was a chance of getting ripped off, but if you had gobs of Timber but no Iron...

Here's another idea (which can be found in the Resources section of the Trade & Econ summary in the List). Use generic shields, but they come from two distinct sources: materials (tile resources) and labor. Factories and powerplants would augment material shields while other improvements (barracks, shipyards, etc) would augment labor shields. If civ3 has specialists (a la SMAC) some could augment tiles/factories, others could augment labor.

Also, there has been considerable discussion on the number of resources worth including. This is a very large scale game (tiles are on the order of 100 miles across) and the "specials" represent unusually large resources assumed present in normal tiles. Some possibilities:

• Generic shields plus Fuel, Metal, Exotic.
• Generic plus Timber, Stone, Iron, Gold, Coal, and Oil.
• Generic plus Coal, Oil, and Uranium.

Specials could give bonus shields for certain types of production (timber double value for ships and city improvements, iron double for land units, etc), or minimum number required (10% "mast timber" for ships, etc). But as someone said, the basic model was certainly decided long ago. Only truly stupendous "I shoulda hadda V-8" ideas will change it.

[Cyclotron]

Under the supplementary resource system, WWII Japan will never declare war on USA. Despite the imposed Oil emargo, the Japanese army will siege more Chinese coal fields to compensate the loss of production caused by the embargo and getting stronger by days. Dutch oil wells in Indonesia doesn't attract the Japanese. They will just attack China to get more coal fields. The Japanese have no agenda ,no national interest, nothing but simple greed on land which contains any resource.

No, this is entirely wrong! You are't listening to me. Civ II made each resource give just a production bonus; supplementary systems don't do this. Certain resources do certain things... you obviously haven't read my above post. Iron gives you better legions, or perhaps it makes them cheaper, etc.

In addition, your historical model is flawed. The Japanese decision to attack hinged on far more than resources alone. You are oversimplifying.

quote: With supplementary resource system, you don't have to think and you just eat!eat!eat! You don't need oil, iron nor Uranium. 100 coal fields will take care of you good by giving you hugh bonus of production. Because it's the quantity that matters, under the Supplementary resource system, not balanced mix of resources. Everything becomes plain and boring. Why even bother to have "coal" and "oil" when you use them as just supplementary to shield? why not just name them as "resource no.1 or resource no.2"?

Once again, this is entirely wrong. I have no idea what you are talking about, a supplementary resource system as I have propsed does not rely on quanaty. You are describing Civ2, not a supplementary resource system. As I envision it, a supplementary resource system would give NO general bonuses for production. Since you seem to have a gross misconseption of my idea, here it is, spelled out:


Cyclotron7 Proposition of Supplementary Resources

I. COMMERCIAL VS. INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES.
A. COMMERCIAL RESOURCES. Some resources that are never used for construction or building (i.e. gold, spice, silk) will use a model similar to Civ2; that is, commercial resources will be found on certain tiles and can be used locally for trade or traded via caravans.
B. INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES. Other resources (iron, wood, bronze, oil) are industrial resources. These are also found on certain tiles, but provide certain BENEFITS (see below) rather than boosting trade like commercial resources. Industrial resources collected locally have their benefits applied to that city. Industrial Resources can also be traded, where they bestow their benefits to the city rescieving them, and the provider of the resource gains the benefits or trade bonus from the incoming commodity (depending on whether it is industrial or commercial).

I don't have enough time to finish this now. Next installment:

II. BENEFITS OF INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES

Please, your comments are welcome, but only on the topics I have covered here so far.

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"Any shred of compassion left in me was snuffed out forever when they cast me into the flames..."
- Marsil, called the Pretender
[This message has been edited by cyclotron7 (edited February 23, 2001).]

[Straybow]

Yikes! Multiplication of resources and ever changing roles of the resources over the millennia... that's partly what Sid is against when he says "no game within a game."

[Cyclotron]

Hmm, that could be a concern... I'll suspend the dynamic resources portion.

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"Any shred of compassion left in me was snuffed out forever when they cast me into the flames..."
- Marsil, called the Pretender

[Youngsun]

cyclotron7

However, under your model, battleships and armours still can be produced without "iron" and it's the shield which is the essential ingredient for unit production not a resource. I believe the system is not a genuine resource system at all but disguised or modified shield system. The importance of "iron" with primary resource system is far greater than with supplementary resource system and that difference will drive whether people will trade with enthusiam or not.
[This message has been edited by Youngsun (edited February 24, 2001).]

[young newbie forever]

Cycletron has the right idea. and id just like to ask you 1 thing, people who dont like this idea, did all civ build all troops exactly the same? no they used different resources, THE RESOURCES THEY HAD NEAR THEM, THUS REPRESENTING THE BASIC SHIELD. but i admit if you built a legion with iron and a leion with wood guess who would win. so supplementery is the right idea.

[young newbie forever]

double post sorry
[This message has been edited by young newbie forever (edited February 24, 2001).]

[young newbie forever]

Cycletron has the right idea. and id just like to ask you 1 thing, people who dont like this idea, did all civs build all troops exactly the same? no they used different resources, THE RESOURCES THEY HAD NEAR THEM, THUS REPRESENTING THE BASIC SHIELD. but i admit if you built a legion with iron and a legion with wood guess who would win. so supplementery is the right idea.

[The diplomat]

I would just like to add that another way to make trade important would be to make money more important in the game. A simple way to do that might be, for example, to make military units require a small amount of gold for support. If a civ needed money to support military units then trade would become more important since it would be a way to get lots of money to support a larger army than normal.
What do you folks think? It is not the only way to improve trade of course, but it is a thought. I am not against ressources, on the contrary, I am just throwing another idea out there for consideration.

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No permanent enemies, no permanent friends.

[Optimizer]

Other examples of wars about certain natural resources:

The main purpose of the Franco-Prussian war was that Prussia needed control of Alsace-Lorraine with its iron and coal deposits. During WWI & II the area proved strategic again because of these resources.

Middle Africa has mostly been neglected by the world's superpowers because it lacks natural resources. An exception is the copper fields in southern Congo (Zaïre), which played role in giving the Congo crisis impact on global politics.

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90% of the casualties in a 21st century war are civilians. Join the army!

[GaryGuanine]

Again, all modern wars...


I don't think you're looking at the scale of the game. If you have a map of the world, the resource squares do not represent individual mines, they represent major deposits. A coal square isn't a coal mine, it's the Pennsylvania/West Virginia/Virginia area, that happens to have tons of coal in it. It does not mean that there is no coal in other places. The Greeks had bronze weapons, the Eqyptians had bronze weapons, the Persians had bronze weapons. Do we have to have copper sqaures near all of them? You're going too far with this resource management thing. The history of the world was not based on hunting down specific mines and natural resources, it was based on be fruitful and multiply.

I agree with trade needing to be a more important factor in the game. Someone else's suggestion a couple above mine (apologies, I didn't do Post Reply in New Window, so I can't read the name) that was to make money more important is a great idea. My beef is with the idea that production should be based on this trading scheme. You should be able to build whatever you want, but if resources are nearby, you can build things quicker (the present Civ2 system).

Gary