A few thoughts about natural resources and trade.

[IVANMV]

A few years ago I was amazed by the game called Imperialism. In this game player controls the production, transportation and the use of natural resources. The amazing idea of the game is that you can either use the ore to build units, develop your industry, or sell it to generate income. I mentioned this game because I believe that the recourse management they invented would be incredibly interesting to play if included in the game like civilization.

The most difficult thing here is not to make the game too much complicated. Civilization is a pretty difficult game to play for someone who hasn’t seen it before and the mentioned features can completely kill the game play, but what if a lot of player’s time is partially saved? What if you don’t need to build huge empires and control many units? (See my first article.) The saved time can be used for example on resource management

A limited number of resources can be introduced in the game to make it more interesting to play. The idea is the following.
Different types of natural recourses are spread around the world. These resources are used to build units, city improvements, etc. For example, in order to build a phalanx you should get some bronze first. (I believe that there should be not more that 15 different types of natural recourses in the game or it can be too much complicated to play and we don’t want it)
This system will give many new strategies to follow. Imagine that in order to build tanks you should get some iron ore and oil and what if your rivals control most of oil in the world? Nations can specialize in certain natural resources, so that wars can be very unprofitable for someone who is not prepared to suffer trade sanctions. The big advantage is that you do not have to invent any trade system. This system assumes it. As an alternative to war there is an option to trade what you need. Let’s say in order to build a battleship you need a lot of steel (which is produced from iron ore) but you don’t have it. You can only trade it from your neighbor who produces it. Another interesting idea is that nations could develop certain industries based on the resources they have. Let’s say that your neighbor used in my previous example may have already invested much in his steel industry and may be more interested in selling completed goods (steel) for a better profit rather then raw materials. Hypothetically the system can give us a very interesting situation where a nation with a very developed industry can use the recourses shipped from poor nations to produce completed goods and later sell it back to them for profit. (Poor nations may be willing to sell raw materials to someone who can use it but find it to expensive to build an industry) Anyway, there are to many strategies and features to discuss. I may be wrong but I believe that this resource management feature may be very interesting to play in civilization. That’s the idea, I wonder what do you think?

[VetLegion]

There will definitly be more resources in civ3. But what do you think, how deep will the reconstruction of the game have to be?

Could you make a more precise model? This was proposed many times before, but I havent seen a good model yet.

Anyone played Railroad Tycoon?

Check out my post on road & rail in the Civ3 Essential ideas forum...

Basically, you build a station/port/send a ship to a resource and then ship/rail the resource to a city or another resource producer.. For example, you build an oil refinery, so you send a ship to an off-shore oil rig, bring it to a port, which sends the oil by train to the oil refinery which produces petrol which is sent to cities or for export..
Of course, it would be too complex to have to control the trains yourself.. It could be automated.. All you have to do is make sure the destination & source are connected by rail, and that they both lie in the catchment area of some station...

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-Shiva
Email: shiva@mailops.com
Web: http://www.crosswinds.net/india/~shiva
ICQ: 17719980

IVANMV, I find your idea very good.. I'm working on the same aspect of the game..

Check out this post of mine..

http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum6/HT...tml?date=11:36

comprehensive revamp of trade and infrastructure



------------------
-Shiva
Email: shiva@mailops.com
Web: http://www.crosswinds.net/india/~shiva
ICQ: 17719980