Resources: How to handle

[Kuciwalker]

1. There are 2 types of resources: Named resources (strategic and luxury) and Unnamed Terrain Resources (say timber from worked forest tiles)

2. Named Resources are quantified by the rate at which they are available, rather than their total quantity. Come to think of it this is already the way Unnamed Terrain Resources work.

3. Slightly offtopic, but mentioned here: The production of shields in a city is partially informed by the availablity of Unnamed Terrain Resources at a rate dependent on the terrain and the governing improvement but this is at limited rate. ie. Important in the start game, less so later. The other source of production shields not tied to the working of tiles is determined by population not assigned elsewhere in conjunction with improvements.

To rephrase: exactly like traditional civ but production shields produced by labourers or factories etc are not tied to the city's worked terrain as a multiple or percentage increase. Thus working terrain like forests might be very important at the start of game, with limited population and improvements, and dramatically less so later.

4. The only intersection between city production and named resources is in the building of units or improvements that require it.

5. Additionally, cities can funnel production into making manufactured luxuries for local, national or international disposal.

I think that Factories should convert "raw unnamed resources" to "processed unnamed resources". Some units require "processed unnamed resources" instead, so you need factories to build that stuff.

[muxec]

Quantity vs Quality?

[Fosse]

Yeah, except in this case Quantity is Quality.



While I am at it... I am completely against modeling various "minor" resources such as wood or granite or terra cotta. Blech. T

The shield system works well for me. I just want to see strategic resources represented in a much better way.

[muxec]

Yes i'm for shields as production, but i'm against coal plants that work without coal and i'm against nuclear plants that work without uranium.

[MrMismatch]

I voted for the first option. I think that Civ has enough micro-managment as it is, and if resources were done by quanity (as in option two) you could get caught up in a great conflict things may become difficult to keep track of. It may be a challange for the devlopers to train the AI to effectivly use another system.

As in the real world, access is all you need.
Example: When you discover oil on your land, you have full access to it. Only so much comes out a time, yes, but what does come out is evenly distributed. If you can only pump 10 - 50 Gallon barrels per day, price goes up, so the cost of driving goes up. If you can pump 100 - 50 Gallon barrels per day, price goes down along with the cost of driving.

Now in Civ III terms.
You discover oil in your territory, enabling you to produce oil-based units. If you discover 5 more sources of oil, you are free to trade that oil as you see fit, granting access to others. You could choose not to trade your oil and create a monopoly on the resource (providing no on else has oil).

[Fosse]

MrMismatch, your example breaks down when you try to approach it from a Civ level though.

If you only get 50 barrels per day, but you want to field 1000 tanks and also power the oil plants in your 30 cities that have them.... then you have a problem.

Quantifying resources won't be a micromangement nightmare if it's done reasonably. If only the strategic resources found in Civ 3 were quantified then we'd be very able to keep track of what we have and in what supply.

We get lots of depth, and another layer of MACROmanagement. Sounds good to me.

[Greenwatch]

I definitely think that resources should be given finite quantities. However I believe that renewable resources (horses, ivory,rubber,fur,wine) should be capable of being cultivated, maybe after the discovery of engineering or something. Also think that recycling centers should somehow return a small amount of the non-renewable resources (aluminum, iron, oil, etc) to the city. I'm not sure how this would work, but have long thought that this should be implemented.

[Shogun Gunner]

Good point. Horses were brought from Europe to the Americas. Certainly regarding the resources you mention, it seems reasonable.... However, it would have a dulling effect on the game as everyone could have all the luxuries they would need/want. Levels the game too much. The scarcity, is what creates the tension and character of the game...

[Aqualung71]

I think we need to find a balance between the overly simplistic system currently in place, that has tended (especially with the strategic resource scarcity in C3C) to turn the game into a warmongering resource-grab in certain situations.....and an overly complicated system that will require too much micromanagement.

I think the luxury resource system, though simple, works reasonably well. It could be improved, but probably at the cost of too much complexity for what it achieves.

My pet complaint is the strategic resource system. I don't think the current system makes any sense at all and is too easily exploitable.

Strategic resources should definitely have quantities attached to them, and certain units/improvements should require you to have accumulated a certain quantity of one or more strategic resources before they can be built (like in many similar RTS games). This will add a lot more strategy to the trade decision, and to the war decision as well. Perhaps there should also be more detrimental effects of war, to discourage resource-driven wars and encourage players to develop trade. Civ should not be predominantly a wargame, which it has moved towards with C3C. It should be designed largely to promote peaceful empire building, building economic strength and diplomacy, with war being a strategic option under certain circumstances....but still offering the ability for a complete warmonger (Genghis Khan type for example) to build an empire through conquest, though that brings with it unique problems as well.

Of course, all this sounds wonderful, but without significant improvements to the AI, it's just a waste of time even thinking about it.

[Flinx]

Clearly I am in the minority... I voted for keeping things the way they are. Option 2 just adds complexity with no benefit.

[grap1705]

Overall, the resource and luxury concept of Civ3 is excellent. But it needs to be extended.

Shield production of city squares is independant of those resources being present or not. To take clay from a hill and produce pottery doesn't require oil or aluminium presence on that square.

But on the other hand, if mere access is enough for luxury goods (other than gems!), some kind of a mine is necessary to access the resources (except horses of course!).

Having just one resource spot supplying a civilization that controls nearly 50% of world population is quite weird. Which is why I voted for the limited quantities of the resource for each spot. Some spots may have just a little bit of aluminim, and other enormous amounts that will supply you all game long. But that should also depend on how fast you use it up. Which implies that each unit must have a resource quantity specification as well.
(I would not vote for complicating with having only a given amount available per turn depending on our extraction investment, but rather to simply deduct the quantity used up from the reserve, until it is exhausted).

If you have several spots of the same resource, of course you should be able to indicate which one you'd like to use first. Obviously better to start using up border resources while you have them... just in case.

Obviously, there should be more resources.
- Natural gas for instance, for energy production (see the thread on "energy" with my idea on this, which implies using up coal, oil, gas or uranium resource depending on the power plant you build).
- Copper for electrical appliances.
And... all depends on how much complexity you want to introduce.

Given that resource are seldom surfacing, there would be need to have specialized mining workers (there was that kind of unit in Settlers n°something) looking for them. It's OK to have some appearing right away when we discover the appropriate technology, but we should be able to discover new ones through geological exploration, rather than just wait for the God AI to have some appear or go take it by force from our neighbor.

And obviously, those geological explorers should be able to search on water and therefore become amphibious at some point of technological advance.

Trading those resources would then of course negociate a quota, either a bulk buy for a given lumpsum, or that many for so much every turn.

[grap1705]

A complement on resource:

If the quantitization of resource is not taken into account by developpers, then this:

when we have only one supply of a given resource, why should we not be able to trade if we so wish? If I have only one horse spot but am building tanks and armoured infantry, what do I care about horses anymore, while much less advanced civs may be very interested in them?

And talking about horse: once we don't need them anymore for military units, can't they become a luxury good for horse race or leasure?


As for buying resources, it happened that I was not able to buy oil which I had none of, from another civ that had lots of. the only explanation I could think of was that it was because I was the only one to have discovered petroleum at that stage of the game. But why wouldn't I be able to buy oil from a civ that doesn't know what to do with it? The western world precisely built its economy of third world oil. We had the tehnology, they didn't but had the resource. So if this is the explanation of why oil wasn't available to buy, it is a very unrealistic feature.

Besides, why should I not be able to buy extra supplies of good or of a resource of which I already have at least one? this prevents buying a luxury good cheap to sell it dear to somebody else or offering to a civ we wish to tame. This prevents us from trying to develop at least temporary commercial control of a given resource or prevent a country from selling it to a civ we dislike and are competing against.

[polypheus]

Personally I would suggest using the Colonization model. Here are the advantages to remind those who have forgotten and/or are not familiar with them:

(1) Resources are quatified and can/need to be distributed explicity using physical trade networks.

(2) Resources needed to be converted into finished goods.

(3) Resources & finished goods need to be combined in fixed numbers to build stuff. (Ex, need 100 tools to build cannon, etc)

(4) The concept of labor disbribution/specialization.
You assigned a certain number of carpenters, blacksmiths, etc and they would build finished goods at a rate proportional to the number of people assigned to work on it. MUCH BETTER THAN THIS "SHIELD" CRAP in CIV!!!

Personally, I hope (but is probably not going to happen) is that Civ 4 use the underlying Colonization model rather than the underlying Civ 1 model. It was in many many many ways way SUPERIOR.

[Panag]

hi ,




the civ III way


have a nice day

[Lord_Davinator]

fixing quantaties on resources might be ingenuos... but I fear that it will drag the game... could also disbalance the whole thing...

[realpolitic]

Limiting the production for resources would make the game more interesting instead of having all [say] 20 cities producing tanks, a player would have to choose whether to attack a far off city with oil or make do with 12 cities producing tanks and choose between city improvements or infantry from the other 8. It seems it would make the game more interesting. Since some people will disagree, you could give them the option to turn it off at the begining of the game ( as you can turn culture off in civ3).

[Sandman]

Ok.

How about a model that's somewhere in the middle between the binary 'Have/Have Not' Civ3 system, and a really complicated resource quantity system?

Specifically, instead of just two resource states (1 and 0), have a broader spectrum of resource states, say from 0 to 5.

These would be: Absent, Scarce, Adequate, Plentiful, Abundant and Super-Abundant.

Now, availability of a resource would depend on a variety of things. Firstly, the number of worked resource sites would strongly influence the availability. Having two iron ore sites would raise your supply from adequate to plentiful, for example. Secondly, the size of your civ would affect the availability of the resource. A single city civ with high technology and an oil site would have abundant or super-abundant oil supplies. But a huge continent-striding civ with the same amount of oil would only have adequate or even scarce oil supplies. Certain improvements (mass transit, for example) would reduce the effect of a large population base.

Thirdly, higher levels of technology would increase the resource yield from mined sites, although they'd also increase demand for the resource as well. Forthly, you could trade with other civs to increase your supply of a certain resource, or sell them your excess resources.

The final factor would be technology again. This time, however, it doesn't increase the output of resource extraction, but simply confers a basic benefit upon your whole civilization. For example, once you research animal husbandry (or some such thing), your supply of horses is permanently set to 'adequate', and you don't need to worry about finding a horse resource. Similarly, once you get 'organic chemistry' your supply of oil is set to 'scarce'. This means that you can still build and use units that use oil, but you're going to be at a serious disadvantage against a civ that has plentiful oil supplies.

The effect of the different levels of availability would be fairly simple. Units which needed oil to be built would be very expensive if oil was scarce in your civ, and inexpensive if oil was abundant. Upkeep costs, movement, stats, happiness, terrain improvements, etc, could be dependant on the availability of resources.

Note that having very high levels of resource availability would not be that beneficial - it would usually be more useful to trade them instead.

[Dauphin]

I'd prefer the system that has more of the resource on the map, but that would be balanced by a proportional relationship of 'resources used' to 'maintained units that use the resource'. Stockpiling (which has its downside through storage costs expressed in gold per turn) should be permitted too.

It would give more strategic depth.

[Quezacotl06]

Why should a city with lots of hills be better at making stuff than a city without, when they are both supplied with the same raw materials?

I think to understand Sid's logic, we should try and re-evaluate our perspective on what a 'shield is'. It's not a resource. Iron is a resource. Shields are a relative measurement of the flow of capital in a city towards its construction/manufacturing industrial complex.

You have uranium. It's rare, it's expensive. Who will be able to afford it? Not little rural villages. All the wealth, all the major conglomerates, are located in cities. Wealthy businessman can purchase resources, while small businesses are less able to, it takes them longer to get the wealth to purchase.

As for the mine in the grass? Rocks. Clay. Building materials used for centuries. Companies build houses. If the company has a mine, they can gather resources quicker and cheaper, making a larger profit. Profits mean businesses will expand, they will have more customers, they will have more money.

This means they (businesses, and the city on the whole)can buy rarer resources more often to build things that need them quicker than smaller businesses/towns.

Thing is, in communism, this dynamic is scrapped. Perhaps shield production is redistributed, so there is more equality (though not a lot of equality, just for balence) in productivity across your cities than other governments...

[Nikolai]

Just for the record, all suggestions in this thread so far(if I haven't missed something that is) is into the list: resources.

[ThePlagueRat]

5,60% on bananas as a resource! Nice!
We still have far to go before we win...


BTW, I'm back... I guess you weren't missing me.

[Vince278]

How about trading Resources and Luxuries on an in-game stock market?

[ThePlagueRat]

That would be very cool, vince. In a strategy game called Victoria they use a big world market with all kinds for resources, but its not suitable for Civ games. They could make one that is though... Like the one they had in CTP, and then add supply/demand pricing and tariffs in the code generating your income in realistic fashion.

[dexters]

Looks like im in the minority, but having quantities would seem to detract from Soren's simplification mantra.

It would require at least some sort of inventory system for it. Besides, Civilization is a strategy game, not a tactical game. Resource quantities would imply for example, micromanagement of resources so you can build certain units and or improvements. Feels a lot like an RTS type game.

Just imagine the micromanagement hell of having to keep track of multiple resource amounts if some improvement and or units require more than one resource to build. Very messy.


That said, I was a proponent of a feature called the 'strategic reserve' where players could store unused turns of a resource so that if a trade ends they have some in storage to use. Even then it was basically storing resources in terms of # of turns that you can use it, not so much quantities specifically. If you have a 20 turn oil deal, you could stash away 5 turns of its availability. So in this sense my idea is built around the Civ3 model and isn't exactly a quantity based model.

In anycase, I'm not entirely opposed to the idea, but it seems overly complex for a macrostrategic game like Civilization.

Edit: one interesting aspect in Civ3 regrading the resource model was that it encouraged interesting strategies and emphasized the denial or luxuries and resources as a key strategic element in the gameplay.

Those interested can check my work on the Machiavellian model to see how it is employed in my style of play.

I'm not entirely sure how the quantity model as first suggested and the variants of it could affect the inherent importance of resources. It may only act to trivialize it by making every civilization capable of having some quantity of a resource.

[Vince278]

Originally posted by dexters
That said, I was a proponent of a feature called the 'strategic reserve' where players could store unused turns of a resource so that if a trade ends they have some in storage to use.

I like that. Could add a whole new strategic element (and a new target for spies).

[Oncle Boris]

Admittedly, I think the tax, science and luxury sliders should go! It doesn't make sense when you think about it. After all, if you increase tax you merely increase the amount of revenue collected that is provided in coin. Obviously if you decrease tax you are still collecting the same amount, else why does science or luxury provision increase? Why then does the population become unhappy when tax is too high?

IMO The solution is to make tax a slider, tie it to happiness, but have the science and luxury output determined by the allocation of the population to these tasks. This is overall much more consistent since we already have scientists and entertainers. This just extends the concept further so it can stand on its own two feet.

Your own conception - right in many accounts - is in fact due to a misconception brought in by Civ3. When Civ1 was made, the idea was that tiles do not produce gold, but trade arrows. Those represented generic wealth and exchange made by your people. The tax slider was about setting what would be the general priorities your empire would dedicate itself to.

Civ3 brought the idea that tiles produced tax revenues, which would be allocated by the player - as if government conducted research itself, built all facilities itself, etc. That's not terrible, but still a step backwards.

[Heffalump]

* first, improvements and units should be bought. Let's do away with blue shields and replace them with an expanded resource system. (Namely, more strategic resources and more requirements per unit)

* let's then make the price of units/improvements variable depending on the amount of access we have to given resources. For example, say we need iron for our Swordsman.
0 -1 iron resources and we pay 50 - 100% more
2 - 3 and we pay default price.
4 or more and we pay a discounted price.
or some similar logic.

In summmary, prices fluctuate according to supply. Just like the real world.