21-03-2005 05:51									#1
	How Resources should be done... Put an end to popups!

I will mainly be talking about STRATEGIC resources, but i guess it could also apply to other types.


Tiles with Resources should have a Quantity atribute, which is randomly assigned when the map is created.

Say for example you have rubber. YOu assign the quantity of 65. Then you have a second source of rubber which has a value of 25. This gives you a total of 90 rubber points per turn.

How this affects your own unit building: Say you want to build an infantry unit. Besides shields , they would also cost a certain rubber quantity. Lets say in this example they would cost 10 per unit.

What does this mean? It means you can have a maximum of 9 infantry units in production at any given time. Once an infantry unit is completely built, it frees up resources which can be used to build other units.


Another example: Lets say Marines cost 25 units of rubber per turn. Thus, you could have one marine and perhaps 6 infantry units in production at any given time.


SO how does this affect trading? This is actually one of the main reasons for this idea. For example, say you are a OIL rich country, but very small, and have only 1 resource of oil, but with a huge quantity attribute, say 200. In Civ3 you only had the option of giving away your entire resource, or nothing at all. Under this system, you could give away, say 150, and keep 50 for own production needs. You could use those 150 resources to trade in other resources you can't find in your little country.

Example, you can trade in some rubber, steel, and aluminium and start building tanks, planes and infantry. Albeit, only in a small quanity per turn.




What other uses are there?

It can also be also be applied to building buildings. As long as a building is being built, resources are being tied up .

You could also use it for Unit Upkeep. Say a tank requires 2 units of oil per turn. Or infantry requires 1 unit of steel (iron) per turn (ammo, just an example).

Besides money, resources would then also play a major role in controlling force size. See the game Axis&allies RTS to see how ammo & oil affects number of units in game.



I will let your mind wander off now with the possibilities this system would provide

Comments, suggestions?

	21-03-2005 08:16									#2
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Sounds too complicated and fun decreasing.

	21-03-2005 09:29									#3
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??

you're kidding right? Its a simple concept.


Picture a numerical value superimposed on a resource on the map. If this resource is within your boarders, it gets added to your resource stockpile, which could possible be displayed at the top of the UI, telling you how many resources you have total and how much is still available.

Ex: Iron: 35/80 Gunpowder: 20/45 etc...

perhaps replace text with icons....


I don't suppose you have an arguement against this, other than an opinion? Please elaborate on the complicity and the fun decreasing factor.

	21-03-2005 09:58									#4
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sounds realistic? completly
adds complexity,
it will add another layer of management to the game, and it has to be viewed from 2 perspectives:

the newbie, and the warlord of earth

from the perspective of the newbie, it will be frustrating at first unless it is carefully explained in a turorial (especialy if you dont know that you must mine 5 iron per turn for each ironclad for ammo and harvest lumber/coal to feul the boiler for the ironclad to move)

for the warlord, who already knows about this because hes researched this feature extensivly, will applaude this feature because they can cut their opponents off from vitial resources with sergical strikes/carpetbombing.

that being said, i lean toward the warlord side of things as this leads toward more realism.

	21-03-2005 10:33									#5
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Quick clarification before this gets to complicated.

The Unit upkeep idea was me just wandering off.

The basic idea is summarized under the first 2 bold headings. The third one, about buildings & unit upkeep could also be considered, but is not the basic idea.

The idea was sparked by making trading more 'useful' and indepth and by putting a limit on production at one time. The rest just came an i went along.

	21-03-2005 15:06									#6
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Sounds like a great idea

I do understand how this could be annoying for newbies, but I believe it'll be easy to just make it optional (in the easiest diffeculty it's off by default) and when it's off it plays the same way as in Civ3

	21-03-2005 17:18									#7
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Sounds great to me, too

Maybe this could be combined with a "total quantity",
which says how many Resource-Points you can use before the resource gets depleted
instead of the system in Civ3 where this seemed to be rather a random event, than something calculated on the real use of a resource.
For example if you have a total quantity of 5.000 of iron and could get 50 irton per turn out of it, the resource would last for 100 turns, but if you donīt use the resource to the full extent, maybe just 25 units/turn, it would last for 200 turns.

This would also give the resources a varying strategic value, with resources of high quantity and high total quantity having much more worth than resources with low quantity which are alsmost depleted.

You could also have a special unit named "Prospector". In the beginning you only know that there are certain resources on a certain map tile (iron, oil etc.), but you donīt know the (total) quantity. You have to move a prospector to the location to examine it before the informations about the (total) quantity are displayed. (this would apply only to certain types of resource, i.e. resources which are mined, like coal/iron/oil)
You could build a colony/city there and mine the resource even if you havenīt examined the resource yet (as you would only be able to build a prospector after the discovery of a certain technology like "advanced mining"), but until examination by a prospector you wouldnīt know the total quantity of the resource and the examination would increase the number of resource points you would get per turn as well (for example before examination by a prospector you would get only 20 Iron-Points out of it, and after examination this would be 40 iron points).

You could also have random events like "new Oilfield discovered" which increase the "total quantity" of the resource and perhaps tile improvements which increase the quantity you get per turn (for example mines increasing the quantity/turn of an iron resorce)

Last edited by Proteus_MST on 21-03-2005 at 17:35

	21-03-2005 18:09									#8
	Full PM-box? Change here!

Having a quanty for each resource (and a unit to find out how much it is) is good

One thing I would like to change in the ideas mentioned is how much oil (or whatever) you can use each turn. This number shouldn't be based on how much oil there is on the tile, but what 'type' of mine is used:
At the beginning of the game you can only build one type of mine (the cheapest). This one doesn't give much resources per turn (maybe like 5 or something). Later you'll be able to build more advanced mines which gives 15 resources per turn, You'll still be able to build the cheap mines (which can be upgraded) or you can build the advanced mines from the beginning. Cheap mines are much faster to build, so they can be useful if you're in a hurry and need some oil ASAP

	21-03-2005 18:33									#9
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quote: This number shouldn't be based on how much oil there is on the tile, but what 'type' of mine is used:

Good idea. This would also enhance the basic concept and provide more gameplay options.




The basic concept being that resources have a numeric quantity which can be traded and which are being tied up by production processes.

	21-03-2005 20:09									#10
	Increase the size of your Attachments

Independently from what I'm saying below, I'd just like to mentin first that I would prefer icons to numbers, less problematic to most players. But here's the rest, with the lastb poaragraph seemingly yummy :



Well... the thing is that unused ressources can be stocked, should it be wood or petroleum (Hitler, Saddam?). Ok, there is a limit to stocking but still the stocks can last quite a while without reaching this limit.

The problem is that normally, an economy would go towards intensivity (everything being used) while players tend to stock lots of something with the intention to use it later. This phenomenon makes Matt's idea not bad at all... But wouldn't it bring some incoherences?

Or... there could be Matt's system + the unused surplus being mostly swallowed into the economy (and of course with corresponding bonus! Civil cars instead of tanks, etc.). As a way to integrate ressources in the economy, this would be... awesome!!!

	21-03-2005 23:07									#11
	Put an end to popups!

quote: Or... there could be Matt's system + the unused surplus being mostly swallowed into the economy (and of course with corresponding bonus! Civil cars instead of tanks, etc.). As a way to integrate ressources in the economy, this would be... awesome!!!

Actually.. that is awesome.


Say, the more resources the player does not use per turn himself on unit production, will be swallowed by the local economy.

What effect does that have? Well, for one, it COULD affect the strength of the countries currency. The more resources being used by the "people", the better the currency. An effect of that could be that the tax income is better.

On the other hand, if the player decides to use up all the resouces himself, because of an impending war, the currency could become weak, thus the tax income per turn will also fall.

There are many more additions, but again, isn't the basic concept just incredibly cool?


edit: btw, i'm totally against the concept of stockpiling.

	21-03-2005 23:26									#12
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I have mixed feelings about the idea. On one hand, I think the current handling of resources is inadequate, but the scheme proposed here is getting complicated fast. I can see that getting closer to simulating real economies would be a neat twist, but realistically, isn't civ a game about conquest, domination, and well, civilization, and rather not about micromanaging an economy?

	21-03-2005 23:56									#13
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quote: I have mixed feelings about the idea. On one hand, I think the current handling of resources is inadequate, but the scheme proposed here is getting complicated fast. I can see that getting closer to simulating real economies would be a neat twist, but realistically, isn't civ a game about conquest, domination, and well, civilization, and rather not about micromanaging an economy?

What micromanagement?

The idea posted in my last post is all automatic and based on a simple principle. You build a lot, your tax money goes down (since you are using up your own resources). You don't build a lot, your tax money goes up (since the people are buying from you). Simple. of course the formula that would calculate the modifier for tax wouldn't be so simple and must be well balanced.



Quick summary of the entire concept:


You explore the world. You find a resource (say IRON). Once acquired within your boarders, you find out this resource has an attribute of 40 tons? per turn. You build a road to the resource and start getting its benefits. Now you can build Units that require Iron. Say swordsman. Lets say one swordsman ties up 10 iron tons per turn. This means you can build a maximum of 4 swordsman at any given time in your cities/towns. Soon you have discovered the technology "mining". Now you are able to build primitive mines. You send a worker over to the resource and build a primitive mine. Your output is increased by 20%. Now, this resource puts out 48 tons per turn.

Soon you discover your on a island with one other country. You have the only resource of iron, and he has the only resource of horses. Well, you decide you don't need 18 tons of iron and can spare that in turn for some horses. By only giving him 18 tons, you still have 30 and therefore can outproduce him if necessary. Anyway, for your 18 tons of iron, you may be able to acquire 15 tons of horses in a trade. So lets assume horsemen tie up 10 tons of horses per turn. Hurray for you, because now you can build horsemen, although in a limited number at any given time. SO you have successfully traded a single resource without giving up the benefits you enjoyed. This is not possible under Civ3.

So now we move on the the economic part. Say you don't feel like building a military force to conquer the world. You want to try a different approach - you want to dominate the world financially. Therefore, you concentrate all your acquired resources to help build your currency. You acquire lots of cash and "corner the world market" as in alpha centauri - or a similar concept.

Whats that i hear? You can now win this game in more than one way besides conquering?

Just a thought...

	22-03-2005 16:40									#14
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

OK, I have posted this idea elsewhere, but would like to rehash it here. It kind of works like MattPilots idea, but requires less player management.
Essentially, ALL resources-from iron to wheat (maybe)-will have a 'quantity number' from either 1-10 or 1-20, say. This number influences the disappearance chance of that resource (i.e. higher the number, the less chance of it vanishing).
However, the more cities you have 'connected' to the resource, the greater the chance of it disappearing. The more units and improvements you build-with that resource prerequisite-the greater the chance of it disappearing. Lastly, the more units and improvements you have that require the resource on an ongoing basis.....well, you get the picture. One of the benefits of this system is that it might well help to curb the Snowball effect-which directly links success to the amount of land you control. In my system, a relatively small nation could control very large deposits of a single resource, and end up cornering the market !
The other issue with resources is that they should not simply 'APPEAR' when you get the right tech. Instead, discovery of a resource should depend on WHERE the resource is located (within your borders, within your city radius), the size of the resource deposit, presence of terrain improvements, ownership of appropriate techs, and the amount of money you invest into 'resource discovery'. Again, I think this will help decouple success from land-possession.

Anyway, I hope that made sense !

EDIT: The link between # of cities and disappearance rate of the resources represents what was described above about resources being 'swallowed up' by the local economy.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

	22-03-2005 19:10									#15
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but that still leaves the trading problem. How would you trade a single resource without giving it up yourself?

	22-03-2005 19:44									#16
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I do like this idea, it would add some more realism and strategy, as well as flexibility, to the resources. Does it really make sense that one source of rubber or aluminum could supply an entire continent, or even more?

But about the resource upkeep idea, I can't say I'm a huge fan of that, as it adds unnecessary compications, many of which could be unexpected and fun-ruining...You have you huge-friggin' army on the enemy's doorstep, and that turn it happens the RNG gods dislike you...oops, there goes your only oil supply. Now that I've just declared war, I have a pile of scrap two tiles away from their nearest city waiting to be pumelled. Unless, of course, they eliminated the random disappearance of resources, but then that might reduce the strategic balance...

	22-03-2005 22:56									#17
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quote: oops, there goes your only oil supply. Now that I've just declared war, I have a pile of scrap two tiles away from their nearest city waiting to be pumelled. Unless, of course, they eliminated the random disappearance of resources, but then that might reduce the strategic balance...

i've thought about that. And i agree, the resource upkeep isn't that a good of idea. Unless it is done in a way where units requiring upkeep are not useless. Like vehicles moving only 1/2 distance.

But i guess it would be best if resource upkeep were kept out.


ANyhow.. how does one go about to get the devs to read and comment on this?

	03-04-2005 04:35									#18
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Your ideas are great.
This rationalizes why I need to occupy more strategetic resources of the same kind.
It's crazy/unreasonable once I can access to just one source of oil, i can supply to the whole empire.

To sum up yours and add mine, the new concept of strategic resources(SR):
Depletion Issue
- Depletion is something which is within our expectation, and controllable. We know when we will use up all our valuable resources. So we can develop a sense of thrift.
- so depletion should not be guided by merely random. It should be highly predictable and controllable.

Max Supply Amount
- Every SR pile has a total amount of supply
- When it drops to zero, the SR pile will disappear.
- Another SR pile will reappear in somewhere else.

Max Supply per turn(spt)
- there's a spt base value (Man! We need time to extract, say, oil)
- so even you have tons of oils, you cannot produce tons of units (which needs oil for production) all of a sudden.
- the supply value can be raised by various means (eg building terrain improvement, tech advances)

City Screen
In the city screen, it will display your total amount of a parituclar SR, and its spt.

Resource Manager
- Your resoucre mangager will help you to do reports and present nice tables about your state of SR - when will it be depleted based on your current usage, and so on.
- What you need to do is to make strategic decisions. No complicated calculations or micromanagement.


Storage Place
- Storage facilities are city improvements.
Function:
People who suffer much from the limit of spt may consider extract and stock SR, so they can use some more SR over spt when needed in war-time.
Also you may trade the extra stock to your opponent for money :-)

- they needs considerable maintenance, and have storage limits
- when you decide to utilize your stock, you cannot use ALL your stock at once (ie in 1 turn) because we need time to transport and process the resource, though we can use some more [ie by raising max spt (eg +10 spt)]
[Note: it's to do with game balances]
Eg:
You have 25 spt from the oil pile.
You start to pile-up some oil for storage (eg 200 units)
Later you decide to use the stock. The max. process rate is 20spt.
That's mean we can use 45 spt (25spt from mines; 20spt from storage)

- some wonders may be created to help with the above (eg unlimited storage amount :P)


Trade
- It makes the trade of reosurces more sacrificial
- Not only you gives benefits to your opponents, but also you will lose your valuable amount of SR
- In Civ3, a really costless SR deal can be made when you trade, say iron, to a far-away country where you will not attack the country in the near future. Only a few gold pays!
- The trading unit is no longer in terms of pile (rather unlreaistic, right?), but the supply amount. It can be traded in lump-sum (if stock is available) or per turn.

Last edited by Wai_Wai on 03-04-2005 at 05:04

	03-04-2005 04:58									#19
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so would we nee to build "special storage facilities"
to keep these resources for trade/ latter use?

I wolud like the option of opt in/out approach

	03-04-2005 18:29									#20
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initially, i was against storage, but i do like the way Wai_Wai puts it. LIke only having a max 20 output from storage.

Storage could be based on building a Warehouse (like the granary). Although it should not store more than a SMALL amount (and never be unlimited). All it should do is, for example, give you a boost for say 10-20 turns during war time. Ex... You have 200 stored, and by switching to "MOBILIZATION" you get a 20 boost per turn for 10 turns.

	03-04-2005 19:20									#21
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Limiting the storage is artificial. The reality is that no one starts storing everything because it can be rentabilized by USING it. Should it be by trading it... or incorporating it in the economy (cheap fuel for citizens, lots of rubber/metal consumer products...).

	04-04-2005 01:43									#22
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I like Wai_Wai unified model

	05-04-2005 13:38									#23
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I like it, but I do tend to dislike the hunt for resources all over the planet...

	05-04-2005 20:07									#24
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What's the point?

And I don't mean that to be sarcastic - I'm asking what you think this system achieves, because I think there are much simpler ways of doing this.

Another way of looking at it is - what gameplay decisions does it create?

The current strategic resource system already creates the land grab decision. Do I attack you for oil? It also creates the diplomatic decision - Should I cozy up to this nation so I can trade for some oil? This is the stated purpose of "Strategic" resources. They give specific parts of your nation greater "strategic" value than others (to make war more interesting), and create an incentive for trade and diplomatic relations. Modelling resources is NOT the goal.

What decisions does this new sytem create that weren't there before?

Use now vs. stockpile for later? - What effect does this have? It makes you decide between building a lot of units and having a standing army vs. a small standing army and ramping up quickly for war... But wouldn't you achieve the exact same end by just increasing the upkeep on units?

A more nuanced decision about trading some of a resource...? Well you can already do that. If you have 3 iron, you can trade 2 of them. The problem is that this isn't really a decision, because there's no upside to owning multiple resources. That would easily be fixed by a percentage gold discount on units that use the resource. So you have 1 resource, now you can build tanks. 2 resources, you can build tanks at 95% cost. 3 = 92% cost. 4 = 90%, etc.

Another way to think of this is, "How do I expect the player to act different with this system in place? What would he build differently? Where would he move units differently? How would this effect the timing?" and then ask yourself - "Is there a simpler way to effect this change in behavior?"

And note nuance is not necessarily strategy. In chess a knight either moves 2,1 or it doesn't move at all. No nuance necessary. What do you achieve by being able to trade .23463 of a resource versus trading in whole resource blocks?

	05-04-2005 20:44									#25
	Increase Your PM Length

It just makes it more interesting
It's defently more interesting than the discount on units idea

With the old method when trading a resource you can't set any limits to the other nation. If you sell oil to the enemy for 20 turns the other nation can build as many tanks as his cities makes possible during those 20 turns. With the new method it would be possible to limit this so the enemy only will be able to build a max of 2 tanks simulatiously (sp?) while you'll be able to build 2 tanks less (at any time) than you would if you didn't sell it

	05-04-2005 23:13									#26
	Remove this text

Is it really necessary to have resource quantities measured to the nearest ten, hundred or thousand? Instead of extracting 50 oil a turn, and trading 20, why not earn 5 per turn and trade 2?

I'd like a system whereby each resource has an availability rating for each civ, rather than a discrete amount. The availability rating would be absent, scarce, adequate, plentiful or abundant. Finding resources or (in some cases) raising your tech level would boost the rating for each resource. Researching, say, stirrups, would guarantee an adequate level of horses, whatever your resource situation. Researching advanced chemistry would guarantee a scarce level of oil, as long as you had an adequate supply of coal.

	06-04-2005 00:34									#27
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How would having "adequate," "scarce," or "abundant" levels affect play and trade?

There have been proposals with numbers that contain a direct translation of amount to use (10 units of oil is enough to power two battleships, with two left over to trade, for example). How would you suggest something like that be provided?

I also like the idea of certain techs influencing the amount at your disposal, but this could easily be applied to many of the discrete number (horse tile provides three, high chance of vanishing, when you discover stirrup it provices 10 with a minimal chance of vanishing).

	06-04-2005 09:23									#28
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I like this idea.

I posted a very similar idea to this in another thread quite a while ago. I think unit upkeep would be a good part of the system. It would be similar to how gold upkeep is done now. However, instead of disbanding a unit once a resource is cut-off, the unit would suffer some sort of penalty. The penalty could vary from unit to unit, or even better, from resource to resource. So, for instance, lack of iron could cause an attack penalty while lack of oil could cause a movement penalty.

	06-04-2005 22:22									#29
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quote: Originally posted by Fosse How would having "adequate," "scarce," or "abundant" levels affect play and trade? There have been proposals with numbers that contain a direct translation of amount to use (10 units of oil is enough to power two battleships, with two left over to trade, for example). How would you suggest something like that be provided? I also like the idea of certain techs influencing the amount at your disposal, but this could easily be applied to many of the discrete number (horse tile provides three, high chance of vanishing, when you discover stirrup it provices 10 with a minimal chance of vanishing).

A civ with a scarce level of oil would have trouble building and operating units that required it, a civ with an adequate supply wouldn't. A scarce civ's tanks would only be able to move 2 squares a turn, an adequate civ would move at 3 squares. Plentiful or abundant civs would have some bonuses to construction, but not such a huge bonus as to make trade pointless, and they wouldn't have a movement bonus.

Why ten units to move two battleships? How does the game benefit from giving each unit a distinct resource usage? You'll need a calculator just to work out moves; "Let's see, two tanks at 3 oil units is 6, plus one mech inf at 2 units make 8, plus 3 cruisers at 4 units makes 20. Oh wait, I only have 19 units available..."

If you go for discrete resource values, just keep it at one resource per unit, without any exceptions.

	07-04-2005 03:00									#30
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quote: Originally posted by Sandman A civ with a scarce level of oil would have trouble building and operating units that required it, a civ with an adequate supply wouldn't. A scarce civ's tanks would only be able to move 2 squares a turn, an adequate civ would move at 3 squares. Plentiful or abundant civs would have some bonuses to construction, but not such a huge bonus as to make trade pointless, and they wouldn't have a movement bonus.

But where is it determined if a resource is plentiful or rare? If it's number in your land, or number being traded for, then how do you prevent the Civ 3 goofiness in which a single bit of iron can supply the world's largest nation for thousands of years, but doesn't provide the excess to trade a bit to the one city nation next door? Unless you put in discete numbers someplace you're going to have some level of funkiness. Are you asking for a system in which the numbers are below the hood?

quote: Why ten units to move two battleships? How does the game benefit from giving each unit a distinct resource usage?

First, I'm just making up numbers to serve as examples. But what I mean is basically the same as other people have said: some units would require a resource upkeep, like how settlers used to need food. Each tank, then, might need one oil unit in order to keep moving that turn (it doesn't "use up" the oil to move in the same way that a unit in Civ 3 didn't "use up" shields for support, they just took them out of the build queue).[/quote]

quote: You'll need a calculator just to work out moves; "Let's see, two tanks at 3 oil units is 6, plus one mech inf at 2 units make 8, plus 3 cruisers at 4 units makes 20. Oh wait, I only have 19 units available..."

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.

So you wouldn't have a pool of oil that you burn when you move units. This has been explained much better in the past (probably above, even), and I'm two minutes from leaving work.

quote: If you go for discrete resource values, just keep it at one resource per unit, without any exceptions.

There have been lots of complaints about it costing the same to support a warrior as a nuclear missle. It does make sense to have different units cost different amounts to keep up, but this is tangential to the discussion here.

I think almost everyone wants a system that isn't binary supply/not supply like Civ 3 though.

I'm going home.