Trade dominance ? let civ iii be a civ game.

[Cyclotron]

quote: Originally posted by Youngsun on 03-25-2001 11:24 PM When a civ becomes economically isolated? When a civ run by a person who have inferior skills of diplomacy ,lack of strategic planning or poor military management. When you lose a war, you face consequences. Nothing will save you from the unconditional surrender. Will you still ask options even if you lost your war? Why keep making unreasonable request for a situation that is not worthy of options?

Here is where it breaks down, Youngsun: Options are not things that are earned, and one cannot be "worthy" of options. Indeed, one uses options to become a worthy Civilization, and correct manipulation of options is wht makes a good player and creates game diversity.

In addition, utter defeat is different from trade. Defeat as you are saying above is a consequence of a long series of actions, which has eventually led up to your defeat. Actually, the options to get out of this losing scenario are played out before the loss itself. Your trade model, on the other hand, has no options from the start. I must play a certain way.

What is so unrealistic about raising "taxes" for money instead of international trading? In Civ2, taxes really reprresent internal trade goods within your cities, trade that is redirrected to your coffers. Basically, Civ2 taxes are intra-city trading.

Another problem is that governments do not directly intervine with most resources (some very strategic resources excluded). The government usually buys armaments from those who make them, which is why total production (shields) and money aare important, while most resources (especially your basic resources) are irrelevant to most governments. This brings up the question of scale, how much should a leader control? I thought CTP (despite its flaws) took a step in the right direction, in that it decreased the city-by-city micro and promoted the "whole empire" perspective. Mandatory resources seem like they would increase the city micro factor by making specific routes and commodity stockpiles essential to all parts of the game.

quote: Do poorly run civs deserve options?

If we don't give them options, they will always stay poorly run.

Youngsun, the entire reason I disagree with mandatory resources is because people need choices; it creates more gameplay styles and makes the game more interesting (and multiplayer more unpredictable). I COMPLETELY AGREE that trade should be enhanced... all I am asking is that just like war and diplomacy, trading should be important yet optional.

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Any shred of compassion left in me was snuffed out forever when they cast me into the flames...

[GaryGuanine]

Youngsun,

I will continue calling it the mandatory resource system. When I refer to that, you know what I'm talking about, and so do I. When you refer to the supplemantary resource system, I know what you're talking about and vice versa. If you want to call it the "variant of the shields system", that's cool, too, since I now know what you're referring to. I would reserve that term for later, however, as if I develop some system to deal with this it will be much more like the shields system than the supplemantary system.

quote: Do not overly simplify the matter. In real game situation, that's not supposed to happen very often and even if that's the case, that is the consequence of how you have managed your civ so far.

Of course it's not supposed to happen, because with that system, to be successful you have to trade.

quote: Where is the military conquest option?

You tell me where the military conquest option is when your opponent can produce much more advanced military units in much greater numbers than you?

quote: Economy and industry should be dealt in separate way? Aren't they related each other very much? Industry suffers? bad economy. Bad economy? Industry suffers.

Watching a lot of CNBC are we? This is Wall Street stuff. Anyway, by industry I mean producing goods. By economy I mean money coming into the coffers of the kingdom. Also remember that what we're dealing with here is international trade. There's lots of domestic trade (as cyclotron pointed out) that accounts for a lot. Probably the lion's share of all money changing hands in nearly all historical periods.

raingoon,

quote: The hypothetical system Youngsun advocates is hardly as tangible as Civ 2, which, btw, is almost the definition of an anachronistic game. Not trying to prove you wrong, just making the point.

So? If Civ2 is anachronistic, what does that have to do with Civ3 being anachronistic?

quote: I also realize you probably meant that resources appearing SO early is simply TOO anachronistic for the suspension of your disbelief.

I was referring not to the idea of resources appearing early (while I am opposed to that as well), but many other factors. For one, I find that the mandatory resource system forces one to trade from the initial stages of the game on. It produces much too great necessity for international trade. I also used the term "mandatory resource system" to include Youngsun's "labor" thing (because I was discussing it with him). I find that terrible.

Gary

[raingoon]

quote: Here is where it breaks down, Youngsun: Options are not things that are earned, and one cannot be "worthy" of options.

Youngsun, correct me if I'm wrong, but this is a misinterpretation of what you said. What you said was:

quote: Why keep making unreasonable request for a situation that is not worthy of options?

This doesn't mean the player, Cyclotron, but the situation the player finds himself in. That's a big difference. Specifically, Youngsun is saying that when a civ is so poorly mismanaged that one finds themselves losing, that is a function of the player's use of their options up to that point. He is clearly not saying that the player must prove worthy of having options, but when those options are chosen poorly, Youngsun was telling Gary that he thinks there must be real consequences. Like when Youngsun says:

quote: Do poorly run civs deserve options?

It's a given that poorly run civs are the result of a great many poorly chosen options. What's implied is "more options" to escape your fate should not be given after you've chosen all the bad options in the first place.

quote: If we don't give them options, they will always stay poorly run.

Illogical. If there are no options in the first place, the player can do nothing right or wrong. It's the system that is running poorly on its own. On the other hand if there ARE options in the first place, and the player chooses them poorly, why should they be saved with a set of more options? That would mean the stakes for choosing poorly in the first place are much lower than if one knew one had to choose carefully or else. More options to get out of a situation you have created for yourself by choosing poorly only means lower stakes for those first choices. And lower stakes = who cares?

I agree with Youngsun that this word "mandatory" is becoming more and more misleading. It is certainly "mandatory" in Civ 2 that the player found a city on a tile within reach of X number of shields. That's no different than what Youngsun is saying about his resource model in the early game. He has clearly stated the early game will deny no player of the necessary material to create a sufficient force to defend and expand itself. If later in the game one had to acquire both shields AND oil barrels in order to build battleships and carrier fleets, this would hardly seem unfair or unrealistic, and logically the equanimity of the preceding parts of the game has created a situation where everyone has a running shot at getting those resources necessary to maintain such extreme hardware. Some will have to make up for shortfalls by going to war, others by conducting trade. Right there you already have (1) new choice you did not have before, and one that is inherently "Civ" in its nature. Is it "mandatory" that you trade for this new resource, oil? Not when you can go to war before the other guy gets to big of a head start. Do you want to not do either AND not have oil? So don't do either! But if you're saying you want to not do either and also have all the resources you need, than you're not advocating interesting choices (read: options), you're advocating lower stakes. I say, Go bore up somebody else's Civ, I hope for leaner and more challenging things.

[raingoon]

Gary

quote: So? If Civ2 is anachronistic, what does that have to do with Civ3 being anachronistic?

If we agree the former is fun; it follows the latter will be too.

[Cyclotron]

Raingoon, "mandatory" is used by me only as a name for Yougsun's system; I in no way define his system as such.

I believe, Raingoon, that trade should be more important. But this is the wrong way to do it. I understand you are saying that nobody is "forced" to trade, because there are other options (conquest, etc.) but every player IS forced to center their strategy (late game strategy, at least) on claiming x resource, by whatever means. It seems to me that this shifts the entire point of the game. In Civ2 the objective was to win (AC or total war) by any means available, in your prospective Civ3 the objective is to win by getting resources. That's it. Civ2 was in part good because it gave a few ways to achieve victory; with your system as soon as I get into the late game I am forced to take only one path to victory: trade. Even if I want to win by conquest, and not trade, I still have to do a lot of trading in order to get any powerful units. All ways of winning seem to become a quest for diplomatic trading. I appreciate this, but other ways of achieving victory should be open.

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Any shred of compassion left in me was snuffed out forever when they cast me into the flames...

[raingoon]

Cyclotron7, if I put myself on your side of the issue, I do see your concern. It's a fine line between encouraging resource exploitation (and the trade that goes with it) and chaining the entire game to some trade model like it was an anchor. As Gary has said, we don't want Civ to become Imperialism 3, hence the existence of this thread, which I have deplored perhaps a little too stridently. Not that I take any of it back.

But okay, so Youngsun and I don't seem to be very persuasive that resource trading can be done without making that the only pathway to victory. I was going ask if you could think of a way it could be done that would still please those of us who want resource exploration and exploitation to be tied to unit production. Then I remembered that I authored the energy model that was submitted to Firaxis in the EC3. It's based on a lot of discussions here over the past couple years. Maybe it will be useful to this debate. What was sent to Firaxis basically says:

quote: An energy resource model...should be implemented in Civ 3, as distinct from the current production resource model in Civ 2. Where production resources would remain as SHIELDS, energy resources could be depicted as BARRELS.

Okay, barrels? What do I know. I think lightning bolts might be better, and I can visualize little gold lightning bolts next to the shields pretty easily. But essentially Civ 2 implies this already in the shields system, and Civ 3 would alter that slightly, dividing shields into raw material and the energy/fuel needed to convert that material into production. So shields aren't REALLY shields anymore, they are now "raw material" that requires energy to be converted into production. It goes on:

quote: Energy could be derived from animal power, wood, water, wind, coal, oil, uranium, and solar, depending on your current level of technology. The map would seed (resources) according to their energy yield potential. E.g., the more profitable the resource is to exploit, the less frequently it would appear on the map. Perhaps Uranium, which might yield the most barrels per site of all, would be the hardest to find.

Basically it all comes down to numbers. I stress that I don't know what the exact ratios are, but it breaks down roughly like this:

ANCIENT ERA
Low energy yield resources readily available: wood (for fire), animal power, maybe water?
Shields readily available as in Civ 2 (though now represent raw material such as wood, stone, ore? etc.)

Required energy to convert one raw material unit into one unit of production = 1 energy unit.

Units available to build can be built readily with available energy and raw material.

MIDDLE AGES

Same as above. But increasingly stronger units require more raw material and energy, in equal amounts. In othe words, just more expensive. Perhaps the advent of wind power now gives another option for generating low yield energy if you live in hilly or plains areas. To build the actual windmill on the hillside would require only raw material shields (the energy that comes from manpower would be assumed).

NOTE: at this point you cannot determine where the oil and uranium deposits are on the map. I don't know when coal comes into play historically, but maybe that happens here, or soon. Whenever, in each case it should be that the map algorythm seeds the map with only enough "deposits" to foster fierce competition as they are discovered, but not so few that if one loses they are out of luck completely.

Let's put coal here and say that coal now allows you to convert shields into production at a rate of twice what wood, water, and air did. Coal is a 2:1 resource, readily available across the map.

INDUSTRIAL

Now we get into whatever tech triggers the availability of oil. Oil should be something like a 4:1 rate of shield conversion, but don't forget the units are getting tougher to build as well.

Here is where we might have trouble. You might say oil is mandatory for building a battleship. However, it is theoretically possible to do it with coal, it will just take you twice as long. Remember raw material is always simply shields. It could mean titanium or steel is in those shields, or whatever. The variable is what fuel is your nation is running on? That will determine whether you choose to trade for more efficient fuel than you currently have, or if you can afford to wait and build a decent force more slowly (similarly to Civ 2) -- and find better fuel yourself, in your own time.

Imagine a game where the two of us are playing in the industrial age where the necessary tech has been discovered to trigger the potential for oil exploration and exploitation. Oil has suddenly been found near our shared border, but on your side. Not surprisingly, my diplomatic efforts to get you to give me that land fail, and I decide that it's in my best interest to seize the deposit and declare war on you, committing my forces to full scale war. Now, playing the game, I know it's highly likely that other oil exists behind me somewhere and within easy reach, but I'm committed to depriving you of this deposit. Better a bird in the hand. So, I damage my reputation, lose the war, end up ceding some of the land I HAD and in general get pretty banged up. But it was worth the try. Now I turn around and try to find that oil that's behind me, or trade for some oil with my allies and build up a force that allows me to stave off any aggression you might be emboldened to make now that your oil deposit allows you to build bigger machines (or smaller ones that much faster). OR I do none of the above, maintain a strong defense that I build up, albeit at a rate half as fast as yours.

MODERN AGE

Uranium Deposits are the Holy Grail of energy and there ought to be one less on the map than there are Great Nations (as I believe they're called in Civ 3).

Uranium is a 6:1 ratio, or something like that. It allows you to create units perhaps one and a half times as fast as oil.

So that's the basics of the Energy Model.

It has more to do with rate and volume of production than anything else. Trade and trade routes remain helpful, but not essential to victory. Resources aren't mandatory for making certain units, they only change the rate at which you can make them. So there is always a floor beyond which you cannot fall. At the minimum any nation will be able to have coal and water power to convert their shields into production. It may limit the size of the army they can build in a short time, but that's better than being forced into trade, is it not? And lastly, something else this promotes is colonization. It gives you a reason to colonize and trade with yourself -- beyond accruing gold, science and luxury. It increases the rate of productivity of your nation. Which is true to history, and I think very Civ-esque.

Firaxis was sent this proposal with the Essential Civ 3 List months ago. I hope it was useful to them.
[This message has been edited by raingoon (edited March 26, 2001).]

[Cyclotron]

Interesting! I very much like your energy model. Generally, it is what I envisioned for Civ3.

My idea, that I called a "supplementary resource system," was based on the idea that trade should be important, but it should neither be dominating or absolutely necessary. I envisioned something similar to your system. I thought that certain "strategic resources" (as Youngsun puts it) would be scattered on the map, only visible when you had a certain advance (i.e. refining for oil, industrial revolution for oil, nuclear power for uranium).

A city with these resources would get a shield bonus from the commodity (either an addition or a multiplication). It is feasible, however, that you could put in an extra resource (energy), which makes sense (industry + energy = production). Low tech units might take more industry and less energy, while the reverse would be true of higher-tech units. Each unit, when being built, would have two boxes for energy and shields (industry). Overflow would be lost until both boxes were filled, at which time the unit would be produced.

Only cities with energy resources could build energy-required units, however a Civ2 style trade route with another city would supply that resource to them, too.

Here's an idea: Energy resources can only be used if you have built a power plant. When a power plant is built, you can choose what type of resource you want it to use. Pollution and energy from the plant will depend on this.

I think readily available things like wood and stone shoudl not be commodities, that's excessive. In other words, no basic resources.

So, in conclusion, I like your model (basically a supplementary model)! It makes resources a valuable thing, but lets everyone build any unit as long as they have some shields and some energy. I must credit you with a very good idea. I think all and all everyone here has given good points, what we need is a model that is a compromise that is fun for all of us.


My ideas for resources, modified:
NOTE: To allow for all units, every city has a base amount of energy produced, dependent on population, to represent human labor.

Ancient:
- Shields would be readily acessible. I don't think much energy is needed here, allowing civs to expand and secure territory with possible energy in it for the late game.

Middle ages:
- Mostly the same as ancient.
- The waterwheel improvement can be built to get a little energy from river squares in the city radius.

Industrial:
- Units begin to take more energy.
- Early on, coal would be available as a resource in hills and swamps, providing plentiful energy. Coal plants would be very polluting, however.
- Later on, oil is discovered (dependent on advance, as with all other sources). Oil is found in deserts and glaciers, with a little at swamps and other terrain. Oil is cleaner but rarer than coal. When miniaturization is discovered, cities may build the offshore platform improvement to reveal undersea oil within the city radius (modern times, actually).

Modern:
- Units now require nearly as much energy as shields.
- Aside from offshore oil, natural gas would be discovered as a resource. It would be rarer than oil and have output between coal and oil, but would be very clean.
- Once the wind farm improvement is built, all hill and plains squares now produce a small bit of energy. No pollution.
- Once the solar plant improvement is built, the city gets an increased amount of the base energy per population point. No pollution.
- The hydroelectric plant obsoletes the water wheel, and basically acts as a slightly better water wheel.
- Uranium is discovered, providing an extremely rare but very potent energy source. It is very clean, but meltdown is a possiblity. In addition, uranium is used for nukes (the only unit I think shoudl use a resource in a mandatory manner).

I like it, you have a great idea Raingoon!

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Any shred of compassion left in me was snuffed out forever when they cast me into the flames...

[Youngsun]

raingoon

quote: Youngsun, correct me if I'm wrong, but this is a misinterpretation of what you said. What you said was:

You interpreted EXACTLY as what I meant.

Yea! I remember the energy model.

quote: Energy could be derived from animal power, wood, water, wind, coal, oil, uranium, and solar, depending on your current level of technology.

I have several questions on this.

How do we acquire animal power?
Is there any "manpower" factor included?(manpower, the most basic form of energy?)
Do we need city improvements(or infra outside cities like the irrigated tiles)to get energy from wood,water,wind and such?

quote: dividing shields into raw material and the energy/fuel needed to convert that material into production.

How the division of shields take place? If you have a city like this what happens?

CityA
Grassland(shield) shield 1
Hill shield 4
Hill(coal) shield 8

total number of shileds:13
converted to
Energy:?
Raw material:?

Other misc. questions.
A Battleship = Raw material(?)+Energy(?) is right assumption?
Do city improvements require constant supply of energy?
Do military units require constant supply of energy?
Do infra structures like railroad require constant supply of energy?
If you build city improvements like a mill or a factory do they have positive effect on energy unit?
Can we stockpile energy unit for any future use as well as raw material?
If we can, is there any national pool or city level storage like granary?
Can energy and raw material be transported? by power line or cargo ships?
If they can be, what kind of tranportation model are you portraying?

two more questions added..
Can raw material and energy can be traded or just raw material?
what kind of trade model you think about for civIII, the same trade arrow based trade or trade commodity based trade(I think internal trade should be represented by the arrows but international trade by commodities.)?
[This message has been edited by Youngsun (edited March 27, 2001).]

[GaryGuanine]

cyclotron and raingoon,

I definately like this idea. It changes as history goes (not anachronistic), and it's really simple, but illustrates the idea well. I think that idea that units will require more energy the farther you go in history is very clever.

Just how would you then implement trade, then? Caravans?

Gary

[Youngsun]

I think each resource should contibute to "raw material" and "energy" in different way and amount.

Wood +1 raw material or +1 energy
Copper +2 raw material
Iron +3 raw material
Peat +2 energy
Coal +3 energy
Oil +4 energy
Uranium +5 energy

"Iron" or "copper" or other metal resources should provide raw material while fuel resources gives you energy.

[raingoon]

EDITED

First off, Cyclotron solved something that had always bothered me. The 1:1 ratio of energy units from low yielding resources early in the game seems needlessly detailed. Leave it mostly like Civ 2 with a reliance on shields (raw material) and a little energy (man power). Great point.

In Civ 2, energy was abstracted and implied in the use of "shields." The goal here is to show a little more of how the sausage is made, but still abstract the energy part, leaving the raw materil and the energy resource part of the equation. So Youngsun, for now I'm calling raw material "shields," and not worrying what KIND of raw material it is. For simplicity sake only. Once we get into what sort of material or what sort of energy producing resource, then we get into the issue of stockpiling, which I frankly don't know about. I'll get into that below.

Suffice to say, I think Cyclotron's post is a good articulation of how the system should work. There needn't be animal power or wood, etc., modeled in the game at all. Instead, during the early game when firewood and domestic animal power would normally be used, MANPOWER is assumed to include those things. For early game purposes, 1 population produces 1 energy unit (or lightning bolt) per turn. You will never not be able to convert shields into industrial product -- it's just that today's isolated Trobriander Islanders would take forever to build a battleship even if they discovered exactly how to do it. Still, the game will not PREVENT them from building one and I think that's a great step forward in this whole trade discussion. In fact, there's a certain whimsy to it that reminds me of classic Civ.

So, okay! Now, I'm gonna pretend like I'm a five year-old so I'm sure I understand what we're all saying. Uh, in no particular order, the following basic issues:

First, Youngsun:

quote: How the division of shields take place? If you have a city like this what happens? CityA Grassland(shield) shield 1 Hill shield 4 Hill(coal) shield 8 total number of shileds:13 converted to Energy:? Raw material:?

Putting aside that hill with coal for the moment, lets just say the hill produces 8 raw material shields, and all the shields in CityA represent a total of 13 units of raw material per turn. You always have energy units available = to population of your city. That means your shields will automatically be processed at a ratio of 1:1, up to the population of your city, per turn, and let's assume a population of 5 for CityA. This is the base rate of production below which CityA cannot fall right now. So, if CityA produced 13 shields of raw material in its raw material box per turn, a basic warrior unit requiring 10 shields and 5 lightning bolts would take CityA one turn to produce (5 population contributing one lightning bolt to the energy box per turn), leaving you 3 unprocessed shields that for now I say are lost, same as in Civ 2. And although I call it an energy box, it's really an energy RESOURCE box, in this case representative of those resources mentioned above.

Interesting to note that in Civ 2, shields not used are lost. I like to think this accounts for the energy being represented in those shields -- energy not being storable (see California's current woes!). Energy itself is still being abstracted in this new model, it's the actual RESOURCES that we see in the energy box (lightning bolts) next to the raw material box (shields). So the questions becomes would nations get into a stockpiling thing? Could energy resources and raw material be stockpiled? That's a big question, I'll leave it alone for now.

Youngsun, your assumption that Battleship = Raw material +Energy is exactly right. Exactly how much of each is another big question.

I like Cyclotron's idea that a city harvests energy the way it would harvest shields, and only that city can use the energy resource in production, but the energy can be dispersed to other cities vis a vis a kind of trade route, the way food can be added to other cities in Civ 2 via caravan. If you build a power plant, there'd be plenty to go around every turn. Like if certain cities were built up to harvest huge amounts of, say, uranium, they would become conduits to the empire sending this energy out via a trade caravan unit that establishes the connection (and maybe late in the game there is a tech or a new version of Hoover Dam that allows you to do it automatically). OR, to be more precise and simple, it is NEVER the actual energy being sent out, but the resource. And any city that wants to benefit from this new resource must build a power plant, per Cyclotron's idea.

So. Two questions stand out in my mind.

1) Storage/stockpiling -- should it happen? and
2) Unit "Recipes" (i.e., if Warriors require 10 shields, how many lightning bolts are needed? 5? Or two? Would battleships require four times as many lightning bolts as shields? This would represent the need -- though not a necessity -- for an energy producing resource on a par with at least oil).

Essentially, one could say that energy resources should effect trade in Civ 3 the way food currently effects trade in Civ 2, and trade need not be discussed again. At the same time, we now have new things to trade for should we choose to do so, and new reasons to go to war.

Some questions I think got addressed. Though I don't about stockpiling or not, I see this as Cyclotron says, at the city level, in a box under the granary, same as in Civ 2 only divide the box in two. Shields on the left, lightning bolts on the right. That's the principle anyway. And I think trade arrows are a separate issue, same as in Civ 2 for our purposes. Though it WOULD be possible to trade energy resources internationally, as distinct from trade arrows, and it would be virtually essential to trade energy units within your own country.

[This message has been edited by raingoon (edited March 27, 2001).]

[raingoon]

Hey, Dan! -- I know you're out there, I can hear you reading. Also you just showed mercy in that hexagon map thread, an act of considerable kindness, I have to say. So, can you tell us if we're building a "bucky ball" here? Is this a done issue or is it not quite nailed down yet?
[This message has been edited by raingoon (edited March 27, 2001).]

[Youngsun]

raingoon
Thank you for the detailed information.

1 population = 1 energy unit

That 1 population comes from total number of population of the city(including city specialists), number of field workers or something new(labour)?

quote: 5 population contributing one lightning bolt to the energy box per turn

This sounds like labour points.

quote: Could energy resources and raw material be stockpiled? That's a big question, I'll leave it alone for now.

Maybe, after the discovery of electricity.

I think "animal power(horse power?)" can be represented this way.
Each city keeps it's own record of number of domesticated animal. Animals consume food too like the horses of Colonisation. When combined with its master, animal power is generated which should be far more powerful than just manpower.(working cow/horse and man combination) Number of animal should not excced the number of actual human population.

CityA
Total pop:5
Total animal:3
Total energy 11 = 2(2 X 1 pure manpower)+ 9(3 X 3 animal power)

CityB
Total pop:5
Total energy 5 = 5(5 X 1 pure manpower)

Therefore, the population becomes the base power and things like animal power,steam engined power, combustion engined power and nuclear power act as modifiers.

After industrial revolution, fuel resources(steam engined power, combustion engined power and nuclear power)replace the animals(animal power)

[TheSocialist]

During the middle ages there were several advances for the use of animals in farming that could probably help here. We could show this by having increased energy from animals during the middle ages.

[Rhuarc]

Why can't the game be kept simpler? There could be advantages and disadvantages to everything. If you were a player who wanted to trade you would get more money and have a better economy, but your empire would be more susceptible to spies, and it would be harder to wage wars without huge repercussions. If the player wished to not trade at all the empire would not be nearly as susceptible to other nation's spies, but they would be without the additional money bringing brought in through international trading. It would be easier for them to wage war though, because they would hae their citizen's under much tighter reign. I'm kind of new at this, but these are some of the things that would seem to me that would balance the game. Having both advantages and disadvantages to everything would allow the player to have options. It would help to balance the game while keeping it interesting and fun.

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DO, OR DO NOT, THERE IS NO TRY - Yoda

[Cyclotron]

Youngsun, I don't see how or why energy or shields could be stockpiled. Industrial strength cannot be stored, as excess industry is probably used for re-tooling for the next project.

Energy also cannot be stored, at least not in amounts that could sustain a factory or city.

I don't really like having the "domesticated animals" factor in energy. I mean, this is largely dependent on population. If anything, once domestication is discovered, the amount of energy produced per population poin goes to 2 instead of 1, etc.

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Any shred of compassion left in me was snuffed out forever when they cast me into the flames...

[Roman]

quote: Originally posted by cyclotron7 on 03-27-2001 02:03 PM Youngsun, I don't see how or why energy or shields could be stockpiled. Industrial strength cannot be stored, as excess industry is probably used for re-tooling for the next project. Energy also cannot be stored, at least not in amounts that could sustain a factory or city.

These are legitimate concerns. Electricity currently cannot be stored at a large enough scale for industrial applications, but energy also comes in the form of coal, oil, etc. that certainly can be stockpiled. As you say, industrial strength also cannot be stored, but raw materials can.

[raingoon]

It's true, energy cannot be stored, and though raw material and and energy producing resources certainly may be stored, I'm not sure it should be. I would have to say best to always keep it simple as Rhuarc suggests. So I prefer the idea of leaving simple animal power, firewood, etc. abstracted under the general heading of "manpower" in the game.

Are there any huge game balance problems that would come from stockpiling either natural resources or raw material? You can certainly imagine the benefits from stockpiling oil or coal. You might literally trade them, you might steal somebody else's, etc. But I just don't know...

[raingoon]

IF this is true...

If anybody hasn't seen the thread, go check it out. This is claimed to be from the May issue of CGW. They quote a preview of Civ 3 as confirming that:

quote: ..."now game worlds sport raw materials that when sitting within a city's sphere of influence can be used for the good of the player's civilization...in firaxis' design the raw map resources tie directly into the gameplay [as opposed to CTP] rather than functioning strictly as a source of revenue raw goods can be used to build certain types of units or to make your citizens happier. you can also use them to amplify your power, and possibly even win the game...

Sounds real enough. I get the feeling it's not "energy" per se, but just different types of raw material. Sort of a mid-step from the way it was to the kind of thing we're discussing. If so, not bad! Keeping it at the city level, using raw material for certain units... I wonder "use them to amplify your power" means. Wow, I hope this is true...

[Cyclotron]

Good: "Amplify your power"
Bad: "Define your power" (mandatory system)

I have faith that Firaxis will do the right thing.

Anyway, and example of the energy model:

I want to build a Musketeer unit in my capital, Cyclocity.
Cyclocity has a population of 8, and a total shield income of 6.
A musketeer takes 20 energy and 40 shields to build.

Normally, I can build a musketeer in 7 turns. Although I will have enough energy by the 3rd turn, I do not have enough production so the extra energy will be lost.

I have, however, discovered domestication, which increases my energy to two per population point. Even so, Shields are the limiting factor, so there is no difference (although it would be if I had a lot of shields).

I have built two more improvements: A factory, and a water wheel.

The waterwheel gives me +3 energy per turn, as there are 3 river spaces in my city radius that I am working. The factory affects shields, increasing them by 50%. Now Cyclocity produces 19 energy (2*8 population, +3 river), and 9 shields. I can now produce a musketeer in 5 turns.

You ask, "but here energy really isn't very important, so why do I need it?"

Well, its not very important in the middle ages with musketeers. But when I want to build a battleship (250 shields, 300 energy) it is obvious that stuff like that water wheel will help me out.

Actual Factors for improvements listed bove:

ANCIENT:
- The discovery of domestication increases the energy output of one population point to 2, instead of 1.
MIDDLE AGES:
- The water wheel gives +1 energy for each worked river square in the city radius.
INDUSTRIAL:
- Coal plants, with coal, add +25% to the amount of population energy accrued each turn.
- Oil plants, with oil, add +50% to the amount of population energy accrued each turn.
MODERN:
- The offshore platform reveals offshore oil, and gives the city +1 energy for each worked ocean square.
- Natural Gas plants, with gas, add +35% to the amount of population energy accrued each turn.
- Wind farms add +1 energy for each tile of hills and arable land that is not improved with farming or irrigation (so mined hills still produce).
- Solar plants add +10 to energy.
- The Hydroelectric plant replaces the water wheel, adding +3 energy per worked river tile.
- Nuclear plants, with Uranium, add +75% to population energy, but there is a 3% chance of meltdown.
- The Containment dome improvement decreases the chance of nuclear meltdown to 1%.

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Any shred of compassion left in me was snuffed out forever when they cast me into the flames...

[raingoon]

Cyclotron, I gotta hand it to you. You seem to have a real clear vision for this stuff. I mean, this brings the energy model into the realm of a real mock-up, something I hope Firaxis can take a second look at if it's not too late...

[Cyclotron]

Thanks raingoon!

I think the most important thing is that us resource debaters get one good system we all agree on, and then try to present that to the powers-that-be. I mean, nobody will listen to us if we are perpetually arguing. Arguing must serve a purpose, and I really want to get a system that everyone agrees on here so we can put all our support into the idea.

[b]About the idea of stockpiles:[b]

Besides my bias because they are IMO too messy and difficult, there is the matter that stockpiling is just a, well, more complicated method of achieving the same goal.

We have established that energy cannot be stockpiled, and that an intangible thing like industrial might also cannot be stockpiled.

If you consider a factory that takes 5 coal a turn, for example, as long as you have at least 5 coal being mined, any excess will be useless to you. You could trade this externally, instead, right? Okay, so if you have an income of 10 you trade 5 of it per turn to a foreign city. He now also has 5 per turn for his coal factory.

However, in the above scenario, wouldn't my system work exactly the same way, except without messy numbers? If my city mines coal, I can trade it to other cities so they too have coal. Excesses are considered lost until I decide to trade, at which point my excess becomes a trade route to another Civ.

These two systems accomplish the same goal, but one is more simple and less of a headache. The "realism" you would get by the above system is negated by the fact you would need to have "recipes" for units... since once you quantate resources, everything needs a certain amount, and you are back to basic mandatory resources. Trade routes are easier, long term like real life trade, and they have no recipies or yearly incomes to think about and no calculations to make. In the long run, the leader of a kingdom doesn't sit around and count coal. Usually, private merchants handle trade, and trade in real life was (and is) conducted on a mass scale. In a course of thousands of years like in Civilization, a market shortage or excess is a drop in the pail. There is really no need to simulate such small happenings, and it would make Civ3 more work than play.

In conclusion, I say two things:

1) Stockpiling of resources is mutually exclusive with the very nature of the energy/supplementary resource system, and
2) Stockpiling is unrealistic over the long term and is too complicated and small for good and correct gameplay.

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Any shred of compassion left in me was snuffed out forever when they cast me into the flames...

[TheSocialist]

I think stockpiling of resources should be allowed. Say you're mining 7 coal per turn and you only use 5 coal each turn. If you can stockpile the extra 2 coal, then when you or other civs run out of coal you'll be sitting on a stockpile of it. This is, of course, assuming that resources eventually run out.
[This message has been edited by TheSocialist (edited March 27, 2001).]

[Cyclotron]

I don't think resources will run out. I can't think of a time so far that a major fossil fuel or uranium deposit has just suddenly ran out, although this could happen in the future. For the purposes of the game, however, resources should be permanent (unless the terrain is tampered with, i.e. transformation).

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Any shred of compassion left in me was snuffed out forever when they cast me into the flames...

[GaryGuanine]

I give up.

I'm just so psyched about the newly released information, I realized that they are just going to do the right thing. I'm sure when I see the final game I'm going to say, "Wow, that's better than my system, and more intuitive." That's how it always is with these guys.

Gary

[lord of the mark]

quote: Originally posted by GaryGuanine on 03-26-2001 12:26 AM Youngsun, I kinda see where you're going, but I just think it's wrong. No, I won't admit that. If I want to have a wealthy capitalist country, trade should be my main objective, a good thing. If I'm running a religious fundamentalist civ then, to me, trade is a bad thing. If my civilization is communist, then international trade is often seen as a bad thing. Forcing civilizations to engage in international trade is wrong. Again, this brings up the point that you're taking away choices, and making choices, as cyclotron always says, is what makes Civ games great. Gary [This message has been edited by GaryGuanine (edited March 26, 2001).]

Communist block - Cuba to USSR and Eastern Europe - Sugar. in return oil, manufactured products. USSR to Eastern Europe - Oil and raw materials. Eastern europe to USSR - Relatively advanced manufactures, consumer products.

No multinationals, no banks, no exchanges, but trade nonetheless.

Applies even more strongly to "fundie" regimes.

Lord of the Mark

[raingoon]

With respect to energy resources used in production, I guess now we can say we know at least this much about Civ 3:

1) Only shields will be in the production box, same as Civ 2;
2) however, some units will require a certain resource/"raw material" in order to build;
2) Resources are seeded on the map and all cities linked to a city that possesses a resource are supplied with that resource.

From this alone, it seems that "energy" is again being abstracted, although raw material is now a real factor in the game. I would hope much of what we're saying here is still viable and maybe even useful to anyone working on this part of the game.

[Youngsun]

quote: 1) Only shields will be in the production box, same as Civ 2; 2) however, some units will require a certain resource/"raw material" in order to build; 3) Resources are seeded on the map and all cities linked to a city that possesses a resource are supplied with that resource.

Nice summary raingoon!

Shileds are there but they are not the same as the one in civII. In civII, shields represented both works+resources but since a resource got splited from the shield and allows to build certain things, I see the shields as pure works or labours.

Trade will be commodity based, I believe and this is like my dreams come true!

The "culture" aspect was the other shocker,too!
[This message has been edited by Youngsun (edited March 28, 2001).]

[TheSocialist]

I still think stockpiling should still be allowed. What if you have control of all the major coal deposits in the world and your the most technologically advanced with the largest army and you want to put a coal embargo on everyone else so they become your vassels? Will the extra coal you mine just disappear?
[This message has been edited by TheSocialist (edited March 28, 2001).]

[GaryGuanine]

My favorite people are those who come into a discussion when it's nearly over, and take things out of context.

Gary