So how complicated (as internal critics put it) or sophisticated (as internal advocates put it) should the Elemental economic system be?
We have the code in for handling a pretty sophisticated/complicated economic engine. But the debate is, is the system sophisticated? Or just complicated.
Let me give you the arguments of each camp.
Camp #1: “Sophisticated”
1. Everything in Elemental is a resource. Food, metal, swords, armor, horses, you name it.
2. Resources can be processed into other resources. Iron Ore into a Sword.
3. Part of the fun of the game would be running a proper empire (or letting AI governors take care of it).
Example:
A mine is built on an iron resource. The mine produces 10 units of iron ore per turn. That iron ore is then directed to go to the city of Torgeto where a blacksmith is able to produce 5 swords per turn. The unused iron ore is stored in a warehouse that can store up to 100 units of iron ore.
Those swords can be directed to be shipped to various other places (with sliders or other UI means to determine what ratio goes where).
In some of those places, the swords are issued to soldiers. In other places, the swords are sent to an alchemist workshop who, taking potions that have been shippped in from Wellford which in turn had taken Aeoronic crystal mined in another town to turn into those potions. The resulting magical swords are then shipped out to various places with the player (or governor) able to control the ratio in which they are shipped.
Caravans appear on the map to show the items being shipped. If those caravans are attacked, the items are lost.
Camp #2: “Simple and Fun”
1. There are only natural resources (food, iron, crystal, horses, etc.).
2. When a natural resource is controlled, the player assigns that resource to a specific town.
3. Only that town can make use of it. Towns that don’t have a resource assigned it cannot build units that require those resources.
Unlike camp 1, there are no ratio sliders to mess with. A resource is assigned to a particular town. That makes certain towns more strategic than others and a lot less micro management. On the other hand, it means that there will be many towns that can only build weaker units. Players can research technologies that increase the base (weaker) unit that cities can build over time but some cities will simply be more important than others.
Caravans would still flow from the natural resource to the target town and if those caravans are attacked, the enemy player gains a bonus and the victim player would get a penalty to their production until the next caravan arrives.
The Argument
Camp 1 argues that a lot of fun can be had in putting together ever more sophisticated and specialized items. If natural resources can be processed into new resources that can in turn be processed again and again and again, you can reward players who might be able to equip elite crack soldiers with very rare but very powerful weapons and armor.
Camp 2 argues that while some people would enjoy that, it would result in a lot of people who would find that system burdensome and turn them off to the game entirely. It also says that those who do like the camp 1 system would still be satisfied with camp 2 where those who like camp 2 would probably be totally turned off if the camp 1 system were used. In addition, they argue that Elemental has so much other “stuff” to it (sophisticated diplomacy, tactical battles, quests, etc.) that many players might find they have to rely on AI governors which would put a heavy burden on having really “smart” AI.
Now personally, I could go either way. I do like the idea of players having to choose certain towns that are absolutely strategic. But I also like the idea of being able to have “processed” manufacturing that can keep specializing things until you get some rare but very valuable things.
On the other hand, I’m also worried that a complex system could turn out to fall apart in actual practice (the user interface for it would have to be incredibly good) and then we’d be stuck having to go to camp 2 late in development.
What do you think?
UPDATE: 5/21/2009
Camp #3: The Merchant
Today we looked at the feedback from here and Quarter to Three and came up with a way that may satisfy both camps and increases the fun overall.
1. Everything is a resource.
2. Resources can be processed into other resources (iron to swords, crops to food, crystal to potions).
3. Resources are sent automatically to other towns based on the resource needs of that town. No micromanagement, no AI.
4. The fun of this portion of the game would be in watching your empire grow organically.
There are no ratios to set. If I build a town with a blacksmith, then one presumes I did that because I want to produce stuff that requires a blacksmith. If I build (or upgrade) more blacksmiths, then one presumes this town is a place where I want to crank out a lot of stuff.
Similarly, if I build a town with multiples barracks it presumes I am trying to train soldiers which means that stuff should be shipped there, particularly if I’m in the process of building a particularly type of soldier.
Caravans (which aren’t player controlled) send out regular shipments of resources to the various towns. When these shipments arrive, they’re available for use on demand or, if the town has a warehouse, they are stored.
When players design a unit, they choose a category of weapon and that category of weapon (whether in the field or in a warehouse) will automatically upgrade as my tech gets better. A short sword doesn’t become a long sword or anything like that. But A short sword would automatically become a better short sword if I research tech that improves is in order to remove the complexity of having to “upgrade” units. However, the cost of keeping a soldier in the field will be fairly high and since soldiers come from population, there’s a real down side to keeping throngs of soldiers idle.
In addition, by building roads, my caravans will arrive a lot quicker (3X faster). Similarly, I have to keep my supply lines secure.
This also opens the door for a lot more trading. Rather than just having “food” you can have “crops”. Crops are processed into food and can be traded with other civilizations or used by special buildings (Inns, restaurants, etc.) to increase prestige (which adds to influence).
It also allows players to have the game be very simple (just keep everything local) or highly sophisticated (have weaponry go through multiple processes – a magic sword processed by a Aereon Forge doubles its damage. The town with the Aereon forge is the one that would get on the priority list of magic swords and the Aereon blades produced would be sent to the town with the barracks that is producing your “Night Guard” or whatever you call your designed unit.
But in this way, there’s no real UI other than providing players the ability to close down shops in a city or expedite their priority to get more stuff sent to them. The player remains the king/emperor and not a logistics manager but at the same time is the architect for success of their kingdom’s economy if they so choose.
UPDATE: 5/23/2009
Camp #4: Quarter To Three concept
Having read a lot of posts both here and QuarterToThree we’ve thought of another way to do it that might be interesting.
2. Resources can be processed into other resources.
3. Controlling a resource automatically makes it available throughout your empire at a basic level. The more resources you control, the more that basic level is provided.
4. If there is a road to a city that connects you to where the resource is provided, that city gets a bonus amount of that resource.
5. Cities can build improvements that have caravans deliver bonus amounts of that resource to that city from the source.
6. Cities can optionally build warehouses whose only affect is that they can store caravan deliveries for later use. I.e. if I’m not currently building death knights, I can store caravans of “stuff” so that when I do build them, I instantly get the bonus at that point.
I want my army to be filled with trained knights who have plate mail, steel swords, plate helmets, etc. Those things are expensive. If I control an iron deposit, I can build them though any town with a barracks. Let’s say it will take 30 turns to create that unit. 10 of those turns is the training of the soldier and the other 20 is the production of the equipment. If I control 2 iron deposits, that production is knocked down to 18. If I have a road that connects this town to the the iron resource (directly or indirectly) then I can knock it down another turn for each resource.
I can also build a blacksmith shop. By doing this, caravans will be sent from the iron resource production area to the town with the armory. When that caravan arrives, it will reduce the time even further.
Similarly, if I want to make a magic sword that requires Aegeon crystal to be turned into a magic potion then as soon as I build 1 Alchemist lab in any town, then any town can build magic swords at a base level. If I build 2 alchemist labs, I won’t get any further bonus unless I control more than 1 Aegeon crystal.
So basically, it’s a much simpler system that provides fairly straight forward bonuses for players who want to create a more sophisticated economy.
@Shayde - Yes, I understood that you meant "without compromising your vision", I just wanted to bring out that distinction. Since we agree on that, the question for any proposed simplification is "is this a compromise of the vision?"And yes, many games make many things optional, like MoM's allowing auto-resolve-combat as an option. I wanted to go into more detail on my "options are bad" spiel but I try to not write a book in every comment (despite appearances). Basically think of it this way: how many places in the code do you have to change to allow two different modes of combat resolution? It varies, but probably just the place where the "stack collision" event calls "start combat", and it's replaced with "if auto-resolve then 'compute combat' otherwise 'start combat'", and then you have to write the function for auto-computing a combat. On the other hand, how many places would MoM's code need changing if instead of the "city only has access to special resources inside its radius, but can use an infinite amount" rule you could choose that or "special resources produce x units per turn which are stored in city warehouses and can be shipped via caravan to other cities"? I won't try to think of them all, but for starters:- City: "does this ordered unit get adamantine weapons?"- UI: "do I show the user stockpiled amounts and incoming caravan amounts?", "do I show the user the button to stop use and/or transport of resource X?", "do I show the user a per/turn production on this resource info box?"- AI: "how do I get adamantine troops?", "how do I keep enemies from getting adamantine troops?"- not to mention all the code for actually implementing per/turn production, stockpiling, caravan generation, caravan interception, caravan consumption, etc...Even in the case of auto-resolving combat, you run into balancing issues. The results were very different in MoM, for example because auto-resolve assumed you used your maximum casting skill in combat which burned a lot of mana. In order to have two options for combat resolution that are both reasonably satisfying you have to thoroughly test both for bugs and imbalance.
Touching on the MOO3's 'putting AI in charge' concerns...
In Elemental, no matter what system is implemented and what degree of automation/AI control is put in, rest assured that if the player overrides it, the AI will NOT re-prioritize it's own agenda the next turn. In MOO3, the main problem players had with the 'AI' was that player-set commands were often overruled y the computers logic, which we will NEVER allow.
If the player wants to make a decision (no matter how stupid the AI may find it) then that's what the game will use.
MOO3 should never be spoken of, it's just bad karma.
No doubt. It is a monumental tribute to the God of foolish project management and asinine design! How can someone take a near perfect game and FUBAR it after an extended development period is mystifying. Hell if they had just updated the graphics it would have sold millions. It is proof positive nothing is a 'sure thing'.
I'd buy a MoM2 with updated graphics and bugs cleaned up for $40.
I kid you not, same spellbook, essentially the same game with maybe some cut scenes and modern visuals, I would be there. Even updated 2D graphics.
But I am very excited about the direction that EWOM is taking, obviously!
Excellent and thought-provoking thread, everybody. A few observations.
The "sophisticated" option has its temptations, but unless you want the game to fundamentally be a Patrician III/Railroad Tycoon style of game, #1 threatens to bog the gameplay down with unneeded complexity.
The complexity of camp 1 could be an issue but I also don’t want a totally watered down economic system either. That is why I feel a general economic management system would make most people happy. If you didn’t care about adjusting resources for a specific purpose you could leave it to the AI with your only duty making sure you have enough myithril mines, iron mines, crystal shards, or whatever you need. However, if you wanted an added layer of complexity you could manage the general resources and city specific resources yourself.
That's not the way I read it at all.
The way it is described, you do not have to manage caravans. Everything that is needed to build troops is processed in the city -- no caravans needed. Caravans are just used to visualise that the city is getting a bonus to a basic resource.
I do not see how this is worse in (micro-)management than option 3.
From the description it may sound that option 3 will take care of everything "automagically". The reality would probably be quite different.
The main difference between option 4 and option 3 is that option 4 gives you direct control over what is used where, whereas in option 3 whatever control there is is indirect, which is harder to handle.
Example: I want to train soldiers with swords. In option 4 all I have to do is build a blacksmith next to my barracks. Swords will be produced and stored in the warehouse until I am ready to train my soldiers. When I do the same thing in option 3 only some of the swords produced will be stored in the warehouse. Others will disappear because the game has decided that they need to be distributed to other cities that also have barracks. I will be fiddling around with 'priority' buttons or shutting down buildings to try to trick the game into moving resources where I want them.
It would be a lot more annoying than option 4 where you just produce items where you need them.
I am still a fan of option 1. Option 4 would be an easier but workable alternative. Option 3 would be too frustrating in my opinion.
If option 3 is implemented, there should definitely be settable export floor (ie. if city has less than X units of resource Y, do not export). Really, I think the indirect control inputs (like presence of a certain building, training or building queues, etc) should be general guidelines and easily tweakable. However I think that more often than not they would be perfectly sufficient for everyone but the most obsessive people, especially if we can create rules like export/import caps.
I was just trying to point out the problems I see with the options as they are presented here. I am sure there are various solutions.
Most people who vote for option 3 seem to like it because on the surface it does not involve any micromanagement. I think it wouldn't work as expected or without adding a layer of micromanagement, like the one you described.
New changes are in italic. Unit Upgrade mechanics is now included.
Pull driven economy: 1. No Manufactured Resources (MR) is produced at Factory unless explicitly ordered 2. Factory (e.g. Blacksmith) converts unlimited amount of NR to MR, or MR to MR. Conversion takes 1 day. 3. Warehouses store unlimited amount of MR or Natural Resource (NR)
4. NR or MR warehoused can be used immediately/caravanned away for new orders. Gamer can also explicitly caravan them away.
5. Creatures (e.g. Bear, Horse, Fallen, Human, and your current race) is considered as NR
6. The game calculates the extra NR/MR needed to ‘upgrade’ existing units. The difference is paid via normal process. If these units happen to be away from town, the extra NR/MR will be caravanned to them before the upgrade is considered done.
7. Caravan travels faster than most units; road provide speed bonus
Example
At turn 1, Gamer order 20 “Soldiers with Sword +2” at the Barrack in Village E. At turn 2, 20 Ore is caravanned from mine A to C. 5 crystals are caravanned from B to D. 20 local population are converted to Soldiers (without sword atm) by the Barrack at Village E. At turn 3, Blacksmith at town C produced 20 Swords; the sword starts travelling to village E. Alchemist at town D produced 5 potions and starts moving them to Village E. At turn 4, 5 potions & 0 Sword arrived at Village E Warehouse. At turn 5, 5 more Potion arrive. Since 10 potions & 20 Sword are available in warehouse E, the Barrack make the best use of its inventory. 10 Soldiers has Sword+2. 10 Soldiers has normal sword. At turn 6. 5 more Potion arrive at E. Village E has 15 “Soldiers with Sword +2”, 5 with normal swords. At turn 7. 5 more Potion arrive at E. Village E has 20 “Soldiers with Sword +2”
At turn 8, Gamer build a Stable in Village E, which allows a NR to be mounted by another NR , when appliesAt turn 9, Gamer orders ‘Upgrading’ of the ‘20 Soldiers with Sword+2’ to ride bears.At turn 10, The Bear’s den at G produce 10 bears/turn. It starts a caravan of 10 bears to village EAt turn 11, 10 Bears arrived at E. Now there are 10 Soldiers with Sword+2 Bear Calvary. Gamer orders all 20 units to move away from E for a duty.At turn 12, 10 more bears arrived at E. Since the soldiers has left already, the game setup a caravan route to reach the soldier.The relations described above:(Crystal+Alchemy->Potion+2) + (Ore+Blacksmith->Sword) + (Creature/NR+Barrack->Soldier) = Soldier with Sword+2(Creature1/NR1)+(Creature2/NR2+Stable-> Mountable Bear)= Soldier riding bear
When there is no order, the NR mines will automatically accumulate in their warehouse. Warehoused NR or MR can be used immediately for new orders, or be caravanned away by gamer. Suppose the Gamer make another order of 10 “Soldiers with Sword +2” from another village F, at turn 6, this order also need the Crystal mined at B. The game will exercise this new order first. After the new order is completed, the game will continue the previous order at turn 1. Where there are more than 1 Crystal mines, the game will need to calculate if extra mine(s) will speed up unit production. If yes, 2 or more caravan will arrive at the Alchemy lab at town D.
In case the Soldier’s ‘Sword+2’ is upgraded to ‘Sword+5’, the game will caravan the old sword+2 back to the last town he visited. OR the gamer can sell the sword for gold.
For me, a city (or I call them a settlement) is a Warehouse of Human/Fallen/Bear/etc. Its population grow at X Bear/turn, until certain population limit is reached.
Pros: There is minimal increase in micromanagement, even if EWOM has 110+ MR. MR can be re-processed to make even higher end MR. NR is not wasted, compared to Camp#3.
No AI or governor involved, except the game need to determine the quickest path of production The rate of producing unit depends on 3 factors only: a. Distances from the NR mines & factories b. NR mine production rate c. Unit Production Building’s unit production rate What do you think? What are the cons you can think of for this method compared to existing camps?
Maybe you do a Stronghold like economy for buildings where you don't necessarily upgrade a building to make a new type of MR, but the existance of other buildings in the same town enables a new MR to be manufactured (a smithy can make swords only. If a sawmill exists in the town, it can make quarterstaves, but having both in the same town enables the smithy to make arrows and the sawmill to make pikes). I like this idea.
I can go with infinite MR conversion if the limiter for troop production becomes training instead of equipping. In that case, rates of MR conversion don't really matter (since they'll always be less than the training time). Which brings a point that Frogboy made that I think is dead wrong; he described camp 4 as taking 30 turns to make a knight....You'd need to be able to cancel an order somehow still. I don't see how to do that once a caravan is underway; those NR or MR are alread accounted for, and they're going to arrive at the city in a certain number of turns and deposit their goods in the warehouse, no matter what, unless you make them evaporate and redeposit their NR or MR in the resource of origin instantly.
Winni, I just want to point out in the model I've suggested, there is also troop production rate limit at the end i.e. the barrack. It controls unit production rate, regardless how much NR you have. For a military town, you can build more barrack to speed up troop production.
I personally would say I do not like the SD's troop training feature. Essentially, it is like if the new troops stay in the town for extra 10 turns before exploring, the troop get a bonus. It offers limited strategic value & what fun you derive from that?
Rgds to Cancelling an order, is it possible just to the caravan to backtrack? I've not put much thought on that, but you got a good point, & evaporate them is still good to me.
J
how exactly will players communicate to the AI what they want?
I don't have much time, but I'll definately dive into this discussion later this week, very interesting.
personally, I'd think that option 1 might be a bit too heavy whereas option 2 is a bit simplistic. thus, the other two plans sound nice, I kinda like the quarter to three approach.
some direction of my own would be that you indeed have all those items as separate resources (iron ore is one resource, basic swords a second and magic swords yet another). and to make them available to your towns requires 1) a road or some kind of path and 2) some kind of caravan or transportation means. I would not assign those caravans indivually, between all those towns, but I'd like it to be at some kind of capacity level. like that a single caravan unit can 'ship' 20 resource units. that could mean it could ship 5 units of a particular resource to 4 towns or 10 resource units to 2 towns. something like that. as your empire gets bigger, you need to expand your commercial capacity likewise if you want widespread construction capabilities.
@Climber - Outstanding post. I'm glad someone has the time to really spell things out. I was going to post links to different global models for people to study but I think maybe they would be to dry for most people. I firmly stand behind the demand side system.
Anyway karma given.
I must confess that I haven't read all previous replies, but I place myself firmly in the 'simplicity' camp. I have played quite a handful of magic-fantasy TBS, and, in my experience, any economic aspects above barebones are more of a hindrance/annoyance rather than a feature. Afterall, the game sets you up as the sorcerer-king of Draj the realm, not a Microsoft Project Manager trying to cram as much work before the end-of-fiscal-year reports. Your main aim is to invent new and creative ways to horrifically debilitate and kill your opponents, not act as an impromptu Burgmeister.
Me, I'd go with option 2.5. Do away with most of the agricultural angle: give all areas an "agriculture rating" which determines maximum sustainable city size (sort of like the old MoM). This is quite plausible; for most of the Middle Ages relatively close regions had odd combinations of famine/abundance because food would spoil in transit (you may counter that there's such a thing as a stasis capsule, however in the beginning, the necessary amount of capsules would be prohibitively expensive to craft, while mid-late game you could just transmute leaves/twigs/grass directly into food).
I'd tie resource extraction to cities: that is, a mine may only be built inside the radius of a city. This could create interesting choices if handled properly. Example: you have discovered an enormous deposit of quork magic cristals; you need to build a minig town nearby. Unfortuantely, the immense amount of raw magic causes random mutations in the inhabitants. Do you raise the anti-magic barriers (fueled by a portion of the mine output), thus decreasing the amount of usable crystals from the mine, or just have the unfortunates grow tentacles (and quite possibly deal with a revolt down the road)?
The amount of resources available from a mine would be tied to the mineral abundance and the town's mining tech level (minus any other modifiers, as above). Raw ore would be processed in situ; there's no point in transporting it, since 70% of it is tailings, gravel, basically.
I'm strongly in favour of the 'roads-as-trade-lanes' concept. I find the idea of manually setting caravan routes as demeaning (I'm a wizard-king, not a UPS dispatcher). The amount of resources available to a town would be production capacity of the mining town - m.t. consumption - m.t. warehousing - distance penalty modifiers. If another city is daisy-chained (linked by road to another town not a mining town), the formula is further extended. Since there's only a limited output, one needs to be careful when assigning resources to warehouses or troop production. Regular roads would give military troops a 1.5 move bonus. Creating fae (enchanted) roads would halve distance penalties (while also increasing a city's AR, since faster travel would make some foodstuffs transportable; fae roads would increase the map speed of your troops threefold), and building/creating Town Portals would completely eliminate them. Town Portals would increase a city's AR as well (more than fae roads). Regular roads could have their trade lanes disrupted by an enemy plopping a troop on them. Fae roads could only be disrupted by highly magickal creatures (since the people on the road would be invisible to non-or-lightly magickal creatures). Town Portals could be disrupted by spelljammers (this could cause famine inside the city, if the AR drops considerably below sustainable max. pop.).
I know it's considerably long-winded for a first post, and probably many of my suggestions are impossible to implement, but I wanted to emphatically state my support for fixed game-engine mechanics over manual fiddling.
Everybody probably has a different ideas about where the focus for this game should be placed.
Some people think that you shouldn't have to worry about resource management.
With the same argument one could say though that working on quests is not a king's work. One has people for that.
And that diplomacy is not important, since we want to destroy all enemies anyway.
And that tactical battles are boring -- no king would move individual units in a battle. They have generals for that.
It is going to be impossible to design a game that pleases everybody to the same degree. The best we can hope for is a game where each element (combat, resource management, diplomacy, quest, ... ) appeals to the group of people it is important to and that it doesn't annoy the rest too much.
As such, it would be a mistake to look for the lowest common denominator for each element. The result wouldn't annoy anyone -- but it also wouldn't please anyone and would make a pretty boring game.
i just want 1, somthing like stronghold on a larger scale would be nice. give me a complex economy to manage as most RTSs are going the not realy resources way like DoW2.
Except diplomacy (ultimately) provides you with (part of) the tools necessary to destroy your enemies (even sweeter when the enemies unknowingly provide you the tools themselves). And there's a long list of rulers who have led their troops personally in battle. Besides, there's always the option (though not necessarily a good one) to autocalculate.
The game sets us up as a "god" that controls a channeler and his/her/it kingdom/empire. We "roleplay" it as if we were the channeler but unlike a real case of roleplaying, we can do more than the actual channeler could do.
Anyways, why cannot I kill my opponents economically? Why military should be the only way?
I agree. Next to the magic system itself, getting the economy "right" I think is pretty fundamental to the success of the game. I am excited to see what they decide. I am pretty flexible, I think the only two decisions that I really would not like would be to handle resources like Civ IV, which considering they have an engine to handle a robust economy I think would just be a cop out, and if they decided to autoupgrade all units at no cost in the field instantaneously when you research a new level of equipment. And even that second one, I could learn to live with.
Camp 3. I'd rather have some resources but no warehouses please.
Camp #1 is awful.
The problem does not arise when you're building your elaborate net of interconnected transportations and caravans, but instead when some ugly interloper takes up residence at a point which cuts your supply chains.Once you have a detour for the caravans worked out, it may make more sense to send them somewhere other than the city they were initially supplying, and then the cities that were being supplied from the original caravan routes may need supplied from other places, which, with a large number of resources floating round, may necessitate a large number of routes being recalculated.
So, when your enemy has moved into an awkward position and you're trying to recalculate where everything's going, your options boil down to:
1) Spend the time readjusting each individual route to fit. Do the same again when you lose a battle on the other side of the country and another occupying force cuts off a city there. Grit your teeth as it happens a third time.
2) Let it be, and don't even try to fix things. Personally, this grates; I'm enough of a strategist to be annoyed by making wittingly suboptimal play through laziness.
3) Sigh, and turn on the AI governor. This revisits my optimality concerns from #2, and signals an abandoning of the attempt to keep up with resource control. It's not really a good sign.
In other words, the low-maintenance argument is a wash when it comes to a complicated resource network served on a "push" basis. It's only low-maintenance until something goes wrong.
Late-game micromanagement is an annoyance. What's fun for four cities is horrible for forty. On turn twelve, producing my first unit of bat riders after shipping in bats, spears and horned helmets from three different locations is great. I get a new exciting unit and I feel I've worked for it. On turn three hundred and twelve, producing my eighty-ninth unit of bat riders Mark XIII is a chore, and having to do anything to acquire it beyond signal "I need another one" is a nuisance. By that point there are grand strategic sweeps going on, and having to take time out from seeing the results of my big plans to oversee the details of fixing the cut supply lines is deeply unsatisfying; having graduated to General, I want to minimise my time playing Quartermaster.
Camp #3 is a much better stab at the problem, for this reason. A default "pull" approach is what you'll be wanting 99% of the time. Let the quartermasters handle getting the stuff where it's wanted, and only override them if there's a desperate need to get resources to some particular spot. Even then, if your supply lines are being thrown into disarray, it's important that you don't have to go to every affected city and click some button to reset its supply; this should probably be done automatically, and only override orders issued concerning the affected city should be questioned.
It's hard to predict when units will actually be built/upgraded so a strategic value of this feature is zero. Basically, you just added a complex simulator for nothing.
Do you think the system below would minimize micromanagement without being simple? 1. There are natural resources (wood, iron, crystal, horses, etc.) and manufactured resources (Swords, Bows, etc) 2. When a natural resource is controlled, the player assigns that resource to a specific town. The player can change their mind later and assign the natural resource to another town, the first town will no longer receive the natural resource. (Possibly limit the number of natural resources assigned to a town to avoid having towns that can produce everything or add some type of penalty) 3. Only that town can make use of it and produce manufactured resources with the proper buildings. (Blacksmith, Fletcher shop, etc) 4. Manufactured resources can be stockpiled in town. (Export on/off button, storage limit, but have upgrade options) 5. Manufactured resources are automatically sent to towns that have unit build orders. (Sword, shield, and armor are automatically sent to Capital City which has orders to build 10 armored swordsmen)
Do you think the system below would minimize micromanagement without being simple?
1. There are natural resources (wood, iron, crystal, horses, etc.) and manufactured resources (Swords, Bows, etc)
2. When a natural resource is controlled, the player assigns that resource to a specific town. The player can change their mind later and assign the natural resource to another town, the first town will no longer receive the natural resource. (Possibly limit the number of natural resources assigned to a town to avoid having towns that can produce everything or add some type of penalty)
3. Only that town can make use of it and produce manufactured resources with the proper buildings. (Blacksmith, Fletcher shop, etc)
4. Manufactured resources can be stockpiled in town. (Export on/off button, storage limit, but have upgrade options)
5. Manufactured resources are automatically sent to towns that have unit build orders. (Sword, shield, and armor are automatically sent to Capital City which has orders to build 10 armored swordsmen)
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