Yeah, but you are not King of America like..... nm.   However, the point is, you are bringing your civilization back from a cataclysmic event that probably almost wiped them out! It's not like you have IMPORTANT stuff to deal with like giving the ambassador from Aingland a DVD collection or the Queen of Aingland a gold plated IPOD! Maybe getting those swords where you want them is the highest priority you have to deal with!

Seriously I agree with the gist of it. There should be some free market "invisible hands" at work, but you should also have the ability to direct every molecule within your realm if you wish to.

edit: 400+ posts. They are never going to ask us for input again...

Never say can't in software design.

Say it would be cost prohibitive to design.

Say it doesn't match your "Vision" (TM) Sony and Verant Interactive.

Say your focus group didn't like it.

But don't say can't.

Between Camp #3 and Camp #4, I think I come down in favor of Camp #3.  A few chief reasons:

• Camp #4 doesn't seem to have any significant trade-offs within the economic system.  Sure, I might be deciding between spending gold on Black Knight or spending it on Mine Upgrade III, but Camp #3 seems to have some decision-making within the economy: "do I build a new blacksmith in City A so that I can equip my troops there with something other than sticks, or build a second blacksmith in City B because it's closer to my mines and can use iron more efficiently?"
• Camp #4 seems to fall into the "well, of course I should upgrade such-and-such" trap.  Upgrades are not strategic decisions, but are merely tasks to check off at some point or another.  The only decision is when to upgrade, not whether to upgrade.
• Camp #4 presumes an infallible, instantaneous resource transportation mechanism.  I'm sure we could force a system on top of it--delays in getting bonuses, etc.--but they would feel forced.  i also think it would be far more difficult to design a system which allowed raiding/plundering/pillaging of non-city areas.  In other words, Camp #4 removes supply lines: roads just give a bonus, like any of a set of things

I think Camp #3 would give the player more of a feeling of control at the strategic level; Camp #4 would end up feeling like a To Do list.

Just my 2 cents, of course - comments and criticism are welcome.

When a new order A and the previous order B uses the same MR(s), the time delay for the older order B is the turns needed to produce & caravan the MR(s) needed by the new order A (or less in some situation).

I don’t see why the game cannot re-calculate this difference nor display this to the gamer, even when gamer makes a new order or build a new factory.   On top of that, Camp#3 has the same issue, when local MR warehouse is emptied.

The PE I’ve suggested always prioritize to finish your last order first.  If you need to defend urgently, gamer just need to make sure the unit ordered is your last order.  Please notice that whenever there is a long chain of MR re-processing, competition of MR exist btw orders.  This applies to Camp#1 & Camp#3.  For Camp#1, you need to re-route all caravan involved with that MR, it is tedious micro.  For Camp#3, Frogboy has not mention how this is handled.

I believe the Pull Economy I’ve suggested is very intuitive; if you think this is a complex, I cannot help.

Either my modified version, or Camps 1 or 2, allow for Cities to matter. Which is always nice. It goes from, "I have four cities in my Empire.", to, "But I have Helfast, city of the Skies, where the White Battalion is given their angelic weaponry."

This matters a lot, especially I think, in a game like this.

O RLY? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maia_(Middle-earth)

Also, we talked about Elemental economy. In context of Elemental, Gandalf as a rival of Sauron also should have had a tower and minions. So, you lose. Try again.

Saruman doesn't steal, he beats him in a fair fight. So that's actually favors MY argument that wizards don't really steal from each other like thieves and don't buy assets from each other like traders. They settle their disputes like they should - in a fight Thank you for providing arguments for my cause I guess i don't really even need to say something, you'll argue that you're wrong by yourself

Ok, i see. That's what you consider "clever and meaningful". It's about as clever and meaningful as your posts. What's the english proverb for that? Birds of a feather flock together, i think.

You're putting the cart before the horse. If you want a convoy raiding, you need just that. It doesn't require any needlessly convoluted economic system. Actually, it requires just as many changes in military aspect of the game as in an economic system so that's another reason why you should advocate a "convoy raiding" feature. With you approach, you'll get economic system that potentially may make convoy raiding effective, but most likely it won't (as nothing works as you desire just because of your wishes). With a focus on a convoy raiding feature, you'll get exactly what you want, one way or another.

Say, in Starcraft you have units that can evade main force (mostly flying units or flying transports, but some invisible ones too) that deal lots of damage but have relatively weak defences. Obviously, map design helps too. And it's very cost-effective to destroy the enemy economy because workers cost a lot, and you can't restore mineral gathering immediately. That's just an RTS without any complex economy yet "convoy raiding" is very effective, it probably wins just as many matches as a direct combat.

Now, let's try Dominions 3. Just about everyone here agreed that it's a significantly more complex game, "a real strategy" (while Starcraft isn't LOL) etc. However, can you really do a "convoy raiding" there? Not really, IIRC at best you have some spells and some specific tacics with domain spread. That's because the game is not designed that way. So, the complexity of the game or it's economic system doesn't really matter if you want "convoy raiding".

I agree that quantitative resources is a good idea as long as it's fully automated. That will be enough.

What you really said is that _flawed_ abstractions tend to create balance _flaws_. Hovever, if you'll think logically, you'll see that you have more control over a very specific abstraction (that was specifically crafted to reach the certain outcome) than over a complex simulation. That's because in an abstraction you're changing the outcome. In simulation, you can change only inner workings of the system with potentially unpredictable and unobvious changes in outcome. Since you have more control over an abstraction, it's always easier to balance an abstraction.

28 isn't remotely like 110. Don't you see the difference? LOL Well, i can't help you in that case. Besides, it was my point - even in economic simulators you don't control 110 resources. And even in worst case you don't control the logistics of 110 resources. # 1 is insane idea. I'm starting to like #3 where it's automated as much as possible. However, universal resource storage is better anyway (that is, as long as cities are connected, they're using the same warehouse for all their resources).

And there is no point to imply that i'm slow and my micro sucks. I'm a former RTS player and i out-microed everyone in Civilization 4 ladder on Future start (that era has highest micro requirments). So i bet my micro is much better than yours.

Fine, fine. Everyone else failed so far, and they'll do it. Right.

There is a logical error here. In a resource-driven game, a much bigger empire will hold more resources and it will have a much bigger production. So, even if you disrupt it's ability to field powerful troops somehow, they'll still have more resources than you. And more production too so they can field weak units against your weak units and win (you're small so you don't have many resources and so you can't make strong units anyway). You're still doomed, one way or another. Resource requirements almost always favor bigger empires.

Yes, several people in that thread https://forums.elementalgame.com/345012/ - 1st post on 3rd page etc.

I'm a realist. You're an optimist. Realist is a well-informed optimist

Anyway, let's say our empire has 50 resources out of 110. If we want even the most basic overview, we need to know current reserves, production, consumption, import, export and total change per turn. That's 50*6 = 300 numbers on the screen, nice excel spreadsheet. We didn't even start giving any orders yet and we don't know any details about production, consumption, import or export. As a bonus, we also have 20 cities. That makes it 20 spreadsheets.

I apoligize if this was previously mentioned.  May i suggest that you shift your focus from Supply side to Demand.  Let the player priortize Demand and let the AI handle the more complex Supply side.  You retain complexity, supply lines, and depth with minimal micromanagement by the player.

You have a point that there's quite a lot of data to display, but the other guy's right on that there are better ways to display it.

Let's do a little interface design exercise. We'll begin with goals: we don't need to know everything all at once, but it should be easy to find the numbers when we do need to know them (nothing should ever be more than two screens away from the game map). We need useful overviews that we can interpret at a glance, both to locate problem areas and figure out which cities are our biggest producers or consumers.

There are three categories of data we need to know about--cities, resources, and trade. We'll take the list one by one.

The city overview screen is accessible from a button on the main screen. It contains enough information to be useful but not so much as to be overwhelming--a city has one single 'resource flow' rate (or perhaps several for different categories of resource), which denotes how much is flowing into or moving out of the city. It has a resource reserve, a similar piece of data, but for what the city has in its warehouses. Leave a space for a warning column--if the city is using stockpiled resources, or if stockpiled resources are nearly running out (tooltips saying what's wrong?)

The city detail panel is basically the massive spreadsheet, but it's relatively simple to take advantage of a massive spreadsheet when you know what you're looking for. Reproduce the data from the overview screen at the top of this one, and you know what needs your attention on this screen.

The resource screen is also accessible from a button on the main screen. It has a similar overview: flow rate, stockpile, and warning, but also something along the lines of 'vulnerability'--the strength or weakness of your economic network for each resource. A high vulnerability resource might have only one or two suppliers in your empire, and must be routed along one road over a mountain pass to get from the producers to the consumers. A low vulnerability resource might be produced by half or more of your cities, and may be routed a number of different ways to get to the people who need it.

The resource detail screen goes into more depth for an individual resource: list producers and quantities and consumers and quantities. The producers and consumers link to the city detail screen.

Trade you do as map overlays, city- and resource-centric, with a detail screen accessbile by a button on the map overlay panel. The city-centric view displays trade routes into or out of a city, tagged with the resource(s) they carry. The resource-centric view displays routes which carry that resource. The detail window is accessible by leg of the route.

That's just a rough idea, but it is certainly possible to handle interface-wise.

And that coming from me, who likes the hands-off approach from camp 3.

I actually really don't like this idea. In general I'd much rather that the game prioritize my first order. Otherwise I could easily see situations where an early order is incredibly delayed or even completely stalled for indefinite periods of time, just because newer orders constantly supersede it. There should be a prioritize button next to the production queue which, when pressed, prioritizes the new order. This way orders are completed when you expect them to be, unless you explicitly reprioritize things yourself. This is both more intuitive and more practical.

Actually, Saruman tricked Gandalf into coming to Isengard, then simply imprisoned him. There was no fight (even if Gandalf could have contested Saruman, he couldn't contest Saruman and a fortress full of orcs and other nasties). There was no fight, just deceit. And regarding Saruman's activities in the Shire, he did steal, connive and shroud his activities in secrecy - largely out of jealousy of Gandalf. 

In order to be able to raid convoys, there need to be convoys to raid. In an economic system that doesn't use convoys, there won't be any convoys, and thus there won't be any convoys to raid. I don't know how you can come to any other conclusion.

And regarding your strange comment about things not working just because we want them to - no shit sherlock. They would work presumably because Stardock would make them work. An economic system with trade routes and resource distribution lays the groundwork for features and content that many of us are excited about, it wouldn't make those features pop out of the ground magically. 

For one, Starcraft is a RTS game not a TBS game and comparisons between the two genres aren't likely going to be very productive. Secondly, 'convoy raiding' (really, worker raiding) works in Starcraft because there are workers to destroy. If you have a system where workers and convoys and all that are abstracted away, what are you going to raid? You like to twist people's words to make it sound like they proved themselves wrong (when really you just ignore their point) - but now I get to say that you just argued our point for us.

Specifically crafted abstractions can cause as many unintended consequences as a sophisticated 'simulation'. Every aspect of a game is in some way connected to every other, and thus if you cut out or abstract away part of a chain of events or a mechanism that would normally exist, those other aspects can see completely unexpected effects. You are nonetheless correct when you say that simulations can often lead to focuses on unexpected (and sometimes undesired) things, but if done well they also give players more freedom and provide many more places to hide strategic decisions. A pertinent example: universal storage vs. caravan distribution. Universal storage is binary - you have something or you don't, everywhere; there is no opportunity to intercept transport of goods and disrupt economies via harassment and specialization becomes much less relevant. However, it achieves its goal of providing a simple, care-free method of 'distributing' resources. A caravan distribution model, on the other hand, forces players to make strategic decisions about where they want their resources to go (danger, transport time, and use all factoring into this decision); it gives players the ability to fight unconventionally, against any opponent (but probably most helpful against big scary ones). A system like this would definitely require more tweaking than an abstracted one, but it provides a wealth of strategy and depth and atmosphere that is utterly lost in the abstraction.

You're really good at not reading, and making a fool of yourself by laughing at people for things they never said. He said that in Settlers you control 28 resources with no automation and that it takes almost no effort or time. In Elemental, we would control a maximum of 110 resources (probably far less at any given time), and there would be heavy automation. #1 is only insane if you don't know how to read, considering the only difference between #1 and #3 is the method of automation, not the amount of it (though I agree that #3's method is superior, especially if it draws from some of the suggestions in this thread).

Like someone else said, "Everyone else failed so far, so it's impossible" is a philosophy which would lead to total stagnation. There would be no advancement of any form in any discipline in the world except through the occasional accident if we lived by that mantra. And besides, as far as I know no one else as tried to implement an economy like the one we're suggesting, yet alone failed.

That's only the case if not implemented well. Bigger empires will hold more resources and have higher production, but they also have more problems. They have larger borders to protect, larger distances to transport resources, more neighbors (and thus usually more potential dangers). The larger distance aspect is probably one of the more important ones. If you can disrupt a supply line in a large empire, it should cause much longer production delays than it would in a smaller nation. Caravan raiding wouldn't allow David to single-handedly defeat Goliath, but it does at least provide him with a way to fight, and in the case of a large-scale war between more than just 2 parties it could be used to devastating effect, I think.

You're reverting into your old habits again: lack of imagination. Displaying every iota of economic or resource information all at once with no qualification would be a dismal way of going about things. Even if they do resort to a standard spreadsheet UI (which I don't think is necessarily ideal), sorting would go a long way, and any resources that are in high demand compared to availability should be made prominent. Likewise, clicking on 'short swords' should display the relevant information about the entire supply chain. The most important information could be displayed on the map itself at the toggle of a button, including the actual shipping lanes.

Making giant static spreadsheets with all the information for every town is the straightforward, unimaginative and terrible way of going about interface design for such a thing. In other words: complaining about how bad such an interface would be (and thus how the idea is not feasible) is a waste of time, because Stardock would never do such a thing; and thankfully they are much more experienced and innovative when it comes to interface design than you, me, or probably anyone else on these boards.

Oy. That's just silly. Calling the greatest RTS of all time not a strategy game is pretty far out there.

If we're going to have to warehouse everything at cities we want to produce and move things around and such, yeah I can see how it's going to get complicated. I like games like that, so it doesn't bother me. If they can't come up with a good UI for that, they may have to abstract it some instead:

1. Have a single empire wide warehouse. When you mine Iron, it goes into the warehouse.

2. When you tell a city to make swords, that city needs to be connected. If it is, it can draw on the warehouse and make swords immediately (no waiting X turns for it to get there). Caravans can still appear on the map and can still be raided, but in this case raiding them would have to act as a production penalty on the town the caravan was heading for.

3. The swords go into the warehouse once made, and your troop producing cities can draw on them in the same way.

I guess that's a lot like Camp 4, actually. I didn't like that initially, but reading a few more pages it's grown on me a bit into something I could live with. It's less of a gamble for them then Camps 1 and 3 are, because those do have a risk of going horribly wrong.