I suggest that not all races share the same economic and possibly miltary model.
For example, I suggest that not all races use gold for recruiting and shards for mana in the same manner.
Undead race should have less use of gold for recruiting armies and more use for other kind of resorces (zombies, graveyards, whatever).
A scritly military order could have little or no use of magic to be compensated by strong miltary machine.
And so on and so forth.
This will make for a unique feel to each race. Granted, its much harder to balance, and the balance may not be full order but could be like race A has many counters to race B so its stronger then B 1:1. race B is stronger than C. race C eats race A for breakfest.
I have to say I firmly agree with this idea but have not fleshed it out in the subsystems thread since we are not that far along yet.
Cool ideas of course, if done in an interesting way not making some factions boring to play, but it will need a lot og balancing, and also making the work on the AI much harder...... so we'll see if it's considered worthwhile in the end by the developers......
We must avoid the Rock Paper Scissor feel. Even if a slight advantage would be welcome, it must not be an advantage that can't be negated by smart unit customization.
Beside i feel, it will be awkward with the addition of players made factions. Maintaining a balanced food chain would require more coding.
The game will have strategic ressources that is a another avenue to make distinctives economics models for each faction.
Given that:
- units will be designed from a list of components
- each component requires x units of some resource
- those resources ust be produced (generally from raw materials, it would seem)
- components become available through researching the prereq tech
- each faction has a different tech tree
There will be some diversity of economic systems anyway. Some factions will have techs that give iron-heavy components, some will have techs that give wood-heavy components, etc.
And even if the stock factions don't have this sort of diversity of primary raw materials (I'd be surprised if they didn't), creating/modding factions could introduce it.
As for different mechanics for spending gold/mana... dunno, hard to say. I echo the concern about overly RPS'ing it though.
I agree with these in the inner economy part but every race should have, in my opinion a common international economy, to keep it playable or not as complicated, I think.
I'd say that having wholly seperate economic models for the seperate races (and there are only two playable races, across 12 distinct factions) would ultimately be unacceptable. It'd be like learning a new game entirely for every faction, and an utter horror to balance.
The way different factions spend and use their money, whether their benefit is greatest from trading or domestic production, or even magic, could of course be different, based around the diversity of the races; the unique tech trees, the unique base bonuses, possible super powers, etc.
I think as long as every nation has a slider scale with economy on one end, and military on the other (so they offset each other) and the AI is able to slide along that scale correctly based on that particular game's progress, then I'll be happy.
I'd hate to have the strict "this nation is good for this, that nation is good for that" regimen. I point towards Europa Universalis II policy sliders as a GREAT example of how this works.
That is exactly what I had in mind.
I think that perhaps a bit could be taken away from EU3 as well by having specific events/societal characteristics based off of the sliders.
Well, here is my problem. What about when you capture other town. MoM, AoW, and Homm are all about getting a bunch of different races in the towns. If they have have different economic structure then you wouldn't be able to get different races.
I'm not so sure of that. You'd certainly have different buildings and structures, and different means of raising troops, but I wouldn't think that it would preclude you from having different races under your control. The economy would simply have to be done by tile.
I actually wouldn't mind the way that could possibly develop, i.e. you might actually have to raze some buildings/replace them with some of your own faction's to create a fully functioning city. Without doing so wouldn't mean a useless city, merely that it would produce lower level units/benefits/whatever. Defensive structures could be repaired and units there healed (so that it isn't completely defenseless). I also like the idea of sliders as done in EU (along with events and characteristics tied to them)
What would be great would be the limitating factor in MoM. You couldnt build every buildings because they were too few "monetary" buildings. In MoM you had to make choices.
Just the fact that you're limited to 4 buildings/tile means that you'll have to prioritize and make choices.Just like in GalCiv2.
Think of a basic city, with 1 tile, as a class 4 planet. You've got room for 4 structures. Even with 14-or-so spots to build on in GalCiv2, I can never fit everything I want. I -have- to make the choice wheter I want THIS planet as a throw-away planet to just sit there and make money, or if I want it to be a planet capable of producing some worthwile units (without taking twelve years, to boot!).
I'm expecting similar choices have to be made, in Elemental. On the other hand, I really hope there won't be any "useless" cities, like some planets tended to be in GalCiv2. The fact that we're limited by the number of tiles of the cities, and that we can actually expand, instead of being limited to a somewhat flat planet quality, bodes well.
Further on the limited spots, specialist cities should get some form of bonus. So for example you build economy heavy buildings (market, bank, etc) then that city has a trade bonus. A city with barracks and different training grounds and a war academy should give an experience bonus to military raised there. And so on.
That would help to increase the strategy around what to build there and also make war more strategic in what goals you want to fulfill, such as taking out your neighbours trade cities to cripple their economy.
Barracks, Bear Stables & War Academy are all in the military ballpark.Marketplace, Stock Exchange, & Trading Post are all in the economical ballpark.Mercenary Post is in both the economical and the military ballparks.
Every time you have 1 economical building, all economical buildings unlock an extra bonus. Marketplace gives +10 Economics, but if you build another Marketplace, both marketplaces now give an -extra- +2 Economics. If you build a Trading Post (+1 trade route), you now have 3 economical buildings, unlocking another +1 extra economics from each of the marketplaces (bringing all marketplaces up to a total of 13 each). But hey, you also have that trading post, that now gives +1 trade route for every economic building, so now it gives 3 trade routes, instead of 1!
A Mercenary Post would count as two building types for the purpose of determining this; One in the military ballpark, and one in the economical ballpark.
Sort of like "item" sets, but with buildings, and for cities instead of heroes.
Edit: All numbers are of course completely arbitrary, and only used for the sake of argument. I'd want to keep them quite minor, however, to avoid having to pigeonhole cities. Often, you -want- a city to be a little bit of everything, so that a single city isn't your first and last line of defense, or you end up with a nation of poorhouses if you don't do the 'X'-tactic.
There's also the potential to give one civilization the special power to specialize, by giving them double the benefit from sets of buildings.
@Luckmann, cool idea! But, I think I'd personally prefer a system where the number of buildings in each "ballpark" doesn't give you any bonuses, but the different buildings within each "ballpark" (i think we need a new word ) would synergize with each other. Like your trade post, which gives a bonus based on what other economic buildings you already have. This would encourage players to diversify their cities even when they want to focus on a specific area. You could still easily build an econ-focused city, but building 10x of your favorite structure shouldn't be the most efficient way to do it.
For example:
Build two marketplaces for +10 Economics and +1 trade route each, for a total of +20 Economics and +2 trade routesBuild one trading post for +1 trade route per marketplace, for a total of +4 trade routesBuild one bank, for +5 economics and +3 Economics per marketplace, for a total of +31 Economics.
Like Luckmann, all these numbers and properties are just arbitrary for the sake of discussion.
My own economic concept is to have a specific overarching monetary based system with a commodity based system overlapping for different races..
The way different factions spend and use their money, whether their benefit is greatest from trading or domestic production, or even magic, could of course be different...
This might not be a problem if there was an underlying 'global game economy' that did not give a fundamental trade privilege to any particular resource and understood that money is a social innovation and not a true resource in its own right. Basically, the 'real economy' is cross-cut by use value and exchange value. For a good game, the core should be pure use value, and any money system should be an add-on that might or might not improve production and/or distribution for a given faction. So you wouldn't really be learning a new economy for every faction, just that faction's way of dealing with production and distribution.
I feel that the difference should only be enough to make them feel different. I've seen in other games they try to create different systems and it ends up making certain factions really hard to play. It can cause a lot of trouble balancing and such if they are wildly different.
Several races that have similar economy models but very diffrent other features may work just as well or better!
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