One of the things in Elemental we've been thinking hard on is how the economic system in the game should work. Elemental is, first and foremost, about building a civilization that happens to exist in a world filled with magic.
So when it comes to building things, we are trying to get away from the classic "N production units". There are, for instance, no factories in Elemental. We want players to really understand just how big of a deal it is for a civilization to be able to produce mounted warriors who have metal armor and metal weapons. It's not just knowing how to build such a unit, it's being able to put together the infrastructure to produce such a unit.
Players don't research types of units, they research technologies. Players then design their own units and those designs require certain resources. A basic soldier with a club is pretty easy. You take a guy, arm him with a big stick. A better soldier might involve same guy, armed with same stick but trained. Now he's much much better but it will obviously take longer to get that unit. It's not about production then, it's about time.
A still better soldier might be equipped a bronze sword instead of the stick. But that bronze sword didn't just come out of nowhere. The metal had to be mined and then forged and then delivered. Of course, the challenge from a game-design point of view is that you don't want players to be forced to micro-manage such things. It's supposed to be a strategy game, not an inventory management game. And so, you make that issue something for your civilization to deal with - not the player.
A given land tile may have a metal resource on it. The player builds a mine on it. That mine then produces N units of metal per turn. That metal then flows to the keep's inventory (in the city). When the keep's inventory gets filled, it then starts getting sent out to other cities (little caravans start appearing on the map delivering this stuff). All of this is automated but evidence of a growing civilization. Players can build warehouses to store more inventory of a resource. A player can also build an armory which produces weapons which flow again into the keep's inventory and then into warehouses if built and then out to the country side to other cities. Players can build roads to increase the speed in which these resources make it (and incidentally, these caravans only go out sporadically so the map isn't going to be full of these units running around and they're not true units, they'll be almost like decoration except when attacked).
So when I go to build a unit, the amount of time it takes to build that unit is going to be based on decisions I made -- what am I equipping him with. How much training am I giving him? And of course, since populations of "cities" range from 100 to 1 million or so, one of the resources units require are people. A village of 100 people obviously can't conjure up a legion no matter how much money and resources you have.
How will all this actually be implemented? That's where the open beta will come into play. Our development tools allow us to quickly implement many different concepts and UI's. that's where a lot of our work has gone into so that we can make changes like this. Players saw hints of this in Galactic Civilizations where we could make dramatic changes to the game based on player feedback but it's nothing compared to what we've built for Elemental.
So for instance, do players want to prioritize where these caravans go? How much control do players want of this kind of thing? Would it be more fun to actually have technology branches dedicated to having governors (not AI, just bonuses to supply) that "manage" this. These are some of the many things that players will be involved in.
The main thing I wanted to get across is that we are not going to have the traditional "N units of production". Players will be able to design their units, design how much training (a small squad of elite soldiers or a huge mob of untrained brutes or somewhere in between?), decide how well equipped you want them to be and so on. It's not about sending out a knight. There is no "knight" unit unless you choose to call a unit you designed that has a horse, a soldier who has been trained, plate mail, sword, helmet, etc. a knight when you save it. How long would this knight take to create? Possibly very little time at all if you have the plate mail, sword, helmet, and horse ready to go. Then it's just a matter of the training time. Otherwise, it could take quite a long time (the game will estimate the time based on arriving supplies).
Hopefully this gives you a glimpse at the strategic depth we want to provide players. The choices for players in how they want to play this game are endless.
And here i suppose i might have to ask a silly question.. but in the end, wouldn't it just be easier then to do it all by yourself ? As the alternative seems to be some rather awkward and complex system that in the end might require more work than just doing it by yourself...
Depends on the scale. I want an auto system so I don't have to worry about how the equipment 'trickles down' through my 10,000 man army. If the units only come in blocks of 1000, that changes.
Some of us are going to want to do it manually, some of us won't.
Well, when you are dealing with the re-equipment of such an army anyways, it's more a question of logistics, because either you'll have to move the army to your main military center for them to be equipped immediately, which would leave your outer territories somewhat exposed, or you would have to deal with a logistics nightmare of epic proportions no matter what, just to ensure that weapons, armor and such was sent out to all the different armies throughout your realm.
It's here i suppose that choices could be made.. instead of resorting to some auto system..
Will it be possible to upgrade the equipment of units?
Say I make a unit that takes a while to train, and he has crappy bronze equipment because I don't have anything better to outfit him with. He beats some people up and gains experience from it. Then, I get a new metal, or a new kind of mount, or both, something like that. Will I be able to keep him useful by giving him these new toys?
This is important because it sounds like it will be hard to slap together an emergency defense if you get caught with your pants down due to the training thing - you will need to plan ahead and start building troops well before they are needed. And that will really suck, if there's no way to keep these troops up to date by modernizing their equipment.
I love seeing the old SMAC workshop make its return to 4x. Just making sure that one of the most important things that made it work doesn't get removed.
@Lavitage: Well you don't really have to train them, as far as i understand, you could smack together a legion of well equipped, but untrained troops.
@Ron Lugge: Point, but if we go by that train of thought.. shouldn't most of the game be automated then ?
But it's our job as the benevolent dictator to make sure these guys are doing their job and sometimes step in and do it for them. At least, that's how it works in the real world. In strategy games, too often you're both roles, which equals zero fun later in the game.
You know, Good generals study strategy, Great ones study logistics
Anyway, I'm curiuse to know if, for exempel, there is a Gryphon breading ground near one of my cities, would I be able to "mine" them for a set amount of Gryphons per turn?
I know that there aren't going to be building like Gryphons Aviaries that we could build in our cities but having the option to discover a "natural" source of magical animal to use in unit building would be awsome!
On another note, I sure hope that the number of civilian units will be greater than in GalCiv, I want to be an mpire builder, fighting is for when you run out of land....
Warder
Not quite the same.. the quartermaster doesn't handle where it actually goes and what goes where... In any case for that it has been mentioned you can prioritize, but directly telling what units should be upgraded should probably be a job for the player..
Defining which units, yes, but hunting them down to do it, no...
I think we may be talking at cross purposes or something here...
Hallo,
I envision an economy run somewhat like Dawrf Fortress...
Example, You start with no way to make any kind of armor. You must mine until you run into raw materials that can be refined into metal steel or iron or whatever. Then you must have a someway to heat the forges to melt down the iron ore. After that you need someone who can create the armor,weapon,tradeable good.
Now lets say you run into gold and cannot find any iron or raw materials to make steel you can create gold armor.... or trade your gold for iron.
This adds a dimension to the economics that wasn't there before.
Now lets say you want a horse riding knight...
well first you need a knight.... now I wasn't around way back in day when knights templar were around but i do not believe that one is born literaly a knight. They must be trained, tested, and confirmed into knighthood.
I think this would be attainable by giving one of your generic people aspirations of becoming a knight.
they join the town watch and guard the city and train and gain experience then you import horses from your horse trainer/breeder and train the ride horses.
after leveling up to certain point they can then enter a tourney to become a knight.
I don't think that queing up x knights and you will have them in 3 weeks is that much fun nor does it add the layer of depth that i think can be achieved.
It would also be fun to have your blacksmith level up too and be able to be trained by a wizard or whatever you call them to be able to enchant weapons.
The list goes on... but this is the direction i would go if I was to be the economics designer.
Goober
g00berhead: aside from the idea of gold armor (gold is quite possibly one of the worst metals for armor that isn't mercury) and making production of knights historically accurate (it would be way too convoluted, the production time you're talking about would probably make knights obsolete by the time you finished training them, and there aren't going to be any knights in the game anyway unless you name a cavalry unit "Knight", so historically accurate training wouldn't make much sense), that seems to be more or less the idea behind Elemental.
Hehe, reading that gave me the mental image of a knight in shiny lithium armor. While it rains.
For armor in the historical sense, gold would indeed make horrible armor. However, there is a possible use. High density like lead, shares the efficiency in blocking harmful radiation. Anti-magic armor perhaps?
You are correct gold armor is bad option that was the point I was trying to make. Thank you for understanding.... that is why you would probably choose to trade for iron with another faction. That would bring on more interesting aspects of starting conflicts if you rely on your enemy to supply you with iron to make weapons it would be hard to destroy them by brute force especially after trade embargos.
The idea being that you work with what you have one faction is NOT entiltled to any one type of armor or metal or resourse you must work with what you have. So you create imports and exports.
*edit*
the central idea would be the same for building up all units weather it be archers, cavelry, balcksmith, masons. The more one does their job the better they become. Anyone may be a mason, but unless they perform thier duties day in and day out they are never going to be very profiect at it. You can potentially have as many cavelry units as you want very quickly assuming you have enough people, armor, weapons, and horses, but until they train and have battle experience they will be not nearly as effective.
It might be convoluted... but I am not sure what you mean in this context. It would be hard to determine how fast you could make x units? well, as long as you have the resourses, relativly quick, but the units would not be very effective until they have time to train.
I think the training should be something that can be varied. This could be a way to rush buy a unit: cut training in half for a penalty that the unit could later buy off by completing training.
The scenario would be this: You have your 8 weeks to train knights in a town's barracks being trained and the town gets attacked halfway through the build cycle. Assuming they had all their equipment and some training they should be able to help defend the town at a lesser effectiveness. Even if they were missing some equipment they should also be able to defend the town at an even greater penalty.
I second Ragnar's proposal. I can't tell you how many times I've wanted units that were still being trained to be usable for defense.
no worries i wasn't very clear in my explanation. I think it would be a better system if you could have attackers train as much as you have time resourses for. If you need quantity not quality then you could reduce training or vise versa. The more options freedom you can give a player the better off they are to be able to create a unique playing experience and to be able to adapt when things change like a war party sieging your border fortress or something.
Reshaping the 4x economics is not an easy task. Personally I think a good way to start is eliminate the monetary savings account you usually have, and instead have a barter system. I will trade my gold bar for your iron ore, or your leather for my barrel of beer. This is really the base of economics is it not you have something that I want and I have something that you want let us trade. The more I want something then the more I am willing to trade? Please correct me if my oversimplifed rundown of basic economics is wrong.
The description given in the OP reminds me of a game from the past. Enemy Nations.
It was way ahead of its time and sadly the company got a raw deal and it was not widely know about. It is now FREE to download and can be found here. Just follow the links.
http://www.enemynations.com/
Anyways, I am a old school StarDock fan and this one looks to have real promise. So forgive me if I spew out some crazy ideas and other stuff as we journey along togethor.
I remember Enemy Nations. If memory serves it was a good game. It sort of reminds me of a high level Dead Lock.
Indeed it was a great game. I always liked its ultra realistic economy model (Human based of course) and that sort of model would also, that when modified to suit, certainly fit here. It was intuitive but as noted in the OP, time was the critical factor to assuring success.
If you wanted something built, you were required to have the raw or refined materials/Infrastrucutre available or in storage and if not it had to be trucked from the source, smelted or refined, and then trucked to the manufacturing sector.
Of course in this seeting, one doesn't manufacture Horses, per say, but perhaps a Farm Tile may provide them to the Town/City it is attached to...along with Food stuffs.
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