Trachymer, if you still want this e-mail me.
mainly i'm pulling the bit off of <A HREF="http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum28/HTML/000018.html">
CITY INTERFACE</A> and <A HREF="http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum28/HTML/000008.html">
OTHER</A>. hope the the other thread masters don't mind.
This thread is about resource managment, who the three (or more?) types of resources are gathered, distributed, stored and used. I'm suprised that this thread had not been made earlier, as to me this is the fundamental aspect of the game.
SUMMARY FROM THE THREADS
Most posts in the resource managment area have been on [b]pooled resources[b]. This means that the resources of a nation or region are pooled and redistributed as seen fit by the player.
(Trachymer, shining1, mindlace, Travathian, ember)
REIGONS:
After you have developed your social choices to a certain degree, you have the option to build a 'Reigonal Headquarters.' Once a city has built a reigonal headquarters, you select a certain number of cities (possibly dependant on social choices) that must be linked by roads/rr/water. Radius for the Reigon is determined the same way that Borders are determined, just internally as well. Then you name the reigon.
These cities are now in a reigon. When you click on the Reigonal Headquarters, the city screen shows a reigonal map instead (probably have to be expanded).
Production, Economy/Trade, Food, and research are aggregated. New buttons allow you to automagically switch citizens over to tiles/specializations that maximize one of the above for the reigon. You may use the 'scroll through cities' arrows (like SMAC) to see the traditional city screens, or click on a non headquarters city (right click-'show reigon'), or right click on the headquarters city to get 'show city'.
PRODUCTION:
The build queue splits into 3 parts (someone else's idea) and you may place things into those queues and assign percentage priority to those queues. Rollover production follows standard rules, but goes to the highest priority queue first. When units are produced, you select on the reigonal map which city they are 'assembled' in. When improvements are built, the cities without the improvement are flagged, and you may not select a city that already has it.
Wow. Some great ideas arriving here.
The regional thing is something I've been trying to figure out for a while, and it works with some of my own ideas too. Being able to bring up a 'regional' map of the area - within the city menu - and then be able to send resources (up to a certain limit) to another city or move straight to that city's city menu without having to exit the current city and click on the new city from the maing screen.
This implies regions would be limited in size geographically - no bad thing. I suggest a radius of around 8-12 squares, depending on what works best for the regional map.
The idea of building a regional government is what link it all together properly. This government would form the regional centre (i.e always centre of the map for that region) and would be the main place to coordinate global build orders such as frank suggests.
Incidentally, the build orders idea fits well with the barracks one - allowing you to mothball production of one unit type and move to another - done by setting the slider scale to zero. I suggest a limit of three 'incomplete structures' per city. Units, however, will be different, in that you can't mothball production of one unit chassis (e.g barracks legion) to switch to another unit of the same type (e.g barracks archers). But you can change between structures, as I mentioned before (set the percentage slider to 0%)
This gives a much better feeling of connectedness between cities, AND make the capital a much more relevant structure. With the ability of all citizens to terraform roads, etc, connecting cities to the capital will be very easy, and because most early game work will be managed through the capital (the only available regional centre), you get a better sense that this town is 'important'.
Improvements and units should still be made on a per city basis - as they are in real life (I don't get the idea of having 'transferable' structures or terraforming, Ctp style).
1) Regionalisation
Every civilisation is divided up into different regions, based on a capital surrounded by a radius 8 area of land (or square, etc). Citys that are properly linked to the capital within this radius (i.e by road) can exchange resources, and the player can access any city from any other city with that region from the regional map, a popup feature within the city menu. Regions can be named, have their own internal borders, can be set identical production queues, and make city management a simpler process. As well, some social engineering factors (values) and the tax rate can be altered for each region.
(done either through options in the capital of the region or the social settings screen).
REIGONS:
The 'radius for reigon' would really penalize an archapegalo(sp?) empire. That's why I say # of cities. The headquarters serving as the nexus of the first reigon- awesome. Though I hope that it takes a bit to discover 'headquarters'.
PRODUCTION:
Units and infrastructure are indeed manufactured at many cities- often around the globe- and then assembled into final products at a given city. This is why I think reigonal production should be aggregated- it simulates the situation to a certain extent.
BUILD QUEUES:
err... I think three build queues should be mixed, any unit/improvement you like- maybe even tile improvements? Though perhaps with this method you should get 2 queues to start (for a reigon) and, say, 4 for discovering mass production.
The rules for stopping/starting production are OK- no stopping units, only improvements that are currently being worked on. I'd say that wonders take up 2 of 3 slots- so that when the barbarian/mindworm eats your defensive unit, you can pop another out without abandoning the giant work in progress.
For these regions a proposs that your entire empire be treated as a region (full details in the thread " a new civilization concept"). all resources are pooled, and only, multi part build list. (one for improvments/PW (infrastructure), one for wonders, one for units, one for capitalization). wonders are built one at a time, as your civ can only have one focus.
Units and structures are prioritized in their menu's and each unit type is given resources proportional to it's priority, you then deploy completed units/structures where you want them.
This allows a lot of suggestions above without having to seperatly impliment them.
mothballing production: set the priority for that structure to 0, resources already spent are not lost, no new ones are added.
Massive structure builds. Discover SDI, set your imrovment build rate to the max, and assign set the SDI priority arbitrarily high, most production goes to SDI, until you have as many SDI as cities, when no more resources are added to the SDI bin, until there is an oppening. same method for the "10 bombers 20 tanks to london" set their priorities high tanks 2x that of bombers, deploy them all to london, presto.. an attack force.
Induvidual cities would no longer build units, they would be resource gathering points and bases, allowing much more specialized cities, like farming centers. The build screens would have to have good information about the current numbers of each unit types, production available, economy and stuff like that.
I personnal really like the pooled resource concept, regions sound very good to me, but i'd like to hear some more concrete suggestions on how to impliment them, what to do about fringe cities, how regions change over time and how to avoid having to set you production on two orginisational levels
OTHER TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
how are resources shared between cities/regions
where/how are things built and how are they distributed
this could have an impact on the thread discussing the need to have oil available to use tanks...
------------------
-ember, thread master RESOURCE MANAGMENT
<A HREF="mailto:jhuebsch@engmail.uwaterloo.ca">< ;/A>
