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.
I also like the idea of being able to switch between the two, though I realize this may be super tough. But if you could alternate between ARPG/RTS style in Demigod, it seems plausible to do this for Elemental.
I've actually given this sort of economic system a fair amount of thought myself in planning for a 4x webgame which I've been putting off for a few years. The concept I was working on there is sort of halfway between the two (probably similar to Caesar or Settlers, but it's been a long while since I played either):
+ Raw materials may be produced at a location by appropriate structures, given the availability of that resource in the immediate area.
+ Additional structures may be used to refine or produce more advanced resources.
+ The transport network is abstracted. Structures may be built which increase the player's overall transport capacity, and the player simply sets a priority queue to determine which resources are transported first. If more resources need to be transported in a given turn than capacity exists for, any production that depends on backlogged resources is delayed until the transport congestion is relieved (by increased capacity or by lower demand for top-priority resources).
+ Products made from non-local resources may have a flat fee or delay added to account for transport.
+ Resources which are not in demand are stockpiled at the point of produciton/refinement. Stockpile capacity may be limited by structures, or unlimited to simplify gameplay.
Basically, if a player tries to build something at a particular location, and not everything needed is locally on-hand, those requirements would simply be maked as imported, backlogged, or short based on transport capacity and production/stock levels. The cost or time estimate would be adjusted transparently based on resource availability.
The same location where the queue is assigned would note all transport/supply issues so the player could effectively manage the queue to minimize economic slowdowns.
The whole system would also go hand-in-hand with a sort of bartering auction house. Players with extra production of one resource could offer up X units per turn in exchange for offers of needed resources; others could offer their own excess depending on how badly they need the first player's goods. Of course, you'd need to be quite careful who you dealt with--you wouldn't want your main supplier of hull plating to cut you off just before your new fleet is done and come knocking with their own fleet...
My vote is for the sophisticated model, Thank you for bringing us in on the debate; I wanted to ask for more details but figured you didn't want the hassle of unreasonable user feedback. I underestimated Stardock You are right that the interface would have to be very good. My ideas may be way off, but here they are in case they help:Have map mode for "Resource allocation" where the user picks one resource ("X") and the cities are marked: - gray if does not require resource X- green if requires resource X but has enough in current stocks- yellow if requires resource X, not enough in current stocks, but enough currently on the road in- red if requires resource X, not enough in current stocks, and not enough currently on the road in- blue if requires resource X, not enough in current stocks, and no X source is even assigned to send anything to that cityThe user can then:- alt-click a city to run this algorithm:if (clicked city is not "gray", "green", or "yellow" for X)for each owned city "victim city"if (victim city is not clicked city) and (victim city is shipped X from somewhere) and (victim city is not locked for resource X)for each city "shipping city" that ships X to victim city (including the victim city if it produces X locally)change shipping city's target for that amount of X to clicked city- ctrl-click a city to run this algorithm:make clicked city locked for resource X- shift-click a city to run this algorithm:make clicked city un-locked for resource XIf it is unwieldy to directly click every city, you could allow bounding box selection and provide buttons for "reallocate to here", "lock", and "unlock". Also, it would be very useful in many interfaces to be able to assign user-defined "tags" to cities (like "military production", "top resource priority", or "low resource priority" and select and act on cities based on tag. Multiple city selections would just add a "for each target city" to the top of those algorithms.If you want more, or an example interface (windows forms or whatever) I'm happy to do it, but I'll assume for now that I've said quite enough Thanks,Keith
I would prefer to see the options of Camp1 while, for those that don't want to delve into that level of management, there is also the ability to change the difficulty to make the choices either more or less necessary to accomplish the goals of a given scenario. Essentially, as the AI becomes "smarter" with the difficulty level rising, it is more important to manage the details. On an easier difficulty, the player should have the option to automate some of these processes so they don't have to touch them (which won't work well as the difficulty scales up). Something similar to a Civ game.
Sophisticated.
It seems like camp2, when you gain a resource it essentially flips a toggle for the city you assign the resource to that you can make things that require that resource.
I much prefer that each chunk of iron ore, each horse, each crystal has a history from when it was taken out of the ground/domesticated to being implemented and ultimately killed/destroyed. I like that a caravan being attacked would result in loss of the resource - maybe some of the resource can even be "looted" by the attacker and sent to his own cities.
This is one of the things, I think, that will make the world more real and help with submersion. The balance needs to be found to be able to do this in a way that is not cumbersome and a pain. One way to have the best of both worlds would be to have "smart distribution" system, that when enough ore (or whatever) was ready for shipment that a governor would make a best guess of where to send it based on need/distance to ship.
I am definitely with camp 1. I realize camp 2 would probably get us the game sooner, and I wouldn't NOT play the game if camp 2 prevailed. The most critical thing is if the depth of 1 can be included without it being micromanagement hell.
"The transport network is abstracted."
That would be good. Honestly, the resource allocation part of camp 1 doesn't sound all that complex to me, but the actual shipping of the stuff sounds like it could be a bear to manage or understand. I'd probably be in favor of an abstract "transport capacity" stat for each civ with a transport priority for each resource.
The thing I'd miss then is the ability to interrupt enemy transports. Sure, you could say that "any city with an adjacent enemy unit cannot send or receive resources" but that would be sub-optimal for several reasons. For one, it would be very cool if you could cut off supply lines by occupying that 1-tile-wide canyon between the impassable mountain ranges and force the enemy to either not transport from one side to another or go the really long way around. It's a tradeoff.
I like the simple model. I'd rather be able to refine items (and people) by the sovereign's magic rather than through sending a bunch of iron ore to be beaten into plain swords then off to Friendly the Alchemist's Magical Sword Shoppe and then off to the Sword of Doom Factory (TM) to get set with Gems of Annihilation from the magic gem crafters shop so I can give them to my honor guard who since I've closed my borders for many turns now makes up most of my army. I then go back and switch production on all of these cities so I can make them some super uber armor. Thinking about all the laborious steps leading up to getting the super ultimate weapons makes my head hurt and who cares about that flaming sword said to be hidden in the trolls' den over the hill when the Magician's Union Local 56 is on the job cranking out super refined death razors.
Then I go to another town that's sole function is making Griffon Barding for my Griffon riders over in Griffonville. I watch the little caravans carrying loads of griffon barding to Griffonville get attacked but am not worried because what would the enemy do with a bunch of griffon barding anyway.<sigh>
I'd rather have iron ore and aeonic crystal being forged into magical blades and armor for my shock troops and since the rate I gain Aeonic Crystal is very slow the remainder of the iron becomes normal vanilla swords and armor for my normal troops. Finally, I finish my first full unit of magical shock troops so I make them my elite guard and imbue their magical blades with the sovereign's essence.
I have a unit that is unique and costly. They can turn the tide of battle but I can't have too many of them because they cost so dearly. Now I might even have to send them out against those raiders who are stealing the Aeonic crystal from my caravans and using it to make their own magical swords over the hill so they can take on those trolls and get that cool flaming sword the guy down at the pub told them was there.
My post is in no way meant as a flame toward anyone, I kept it light hearted and the sophisticated system would be just fine with me it would just knock off some of the epic feel of the game and make it more a logistics and supply chain exercise which would still be fun, but different from what I'd really like to be doing in a game like this.
I definietly like what Kryo wrote, as I am in camp 1.--though, an abstract method of transport is more practicle, I think having many caravans moving accross the map would make it come to life in a cool way. -also I like your idea about a bertering auction house. This would make port cities very strategically important I think, which is something alot of TBS games are missing. Blockades would also become more important, as you could stop an enemy from getting needed resouces that have to be transported on the sea.
also, To add to something you said I also think you should be able to queue up any unit as long as you can produce it's requiments somewhere, and then the game automatically prioritizes the city that unit is queued up in. For example, if you queue up 1000 infantry in a city, it automatically starts sending available resouces, and then, if you don't have enough in storage, it priortizes new resources to that city based on the proportion being used (aka, if you don't need swords anywhere else, all new swords will go towards the queued units until it is done). The player should also be able to manuly addjust priority. --my point here is that sophistication is always better as long as there is an AI that can handle it well without much player input.
IMO the "simple but fun" theory has some flaws. Firstly, this will more than likely result in some towns being over developed, and some towns being ignored, simply because they weren't built close to a certain resorce, which I think would end up herting game play. Also it would seem like to be able to build some of the more powerful stuff in the game you would have to get extremely luck and find a city close to many different resources. Overall, the camp 2 is way oversimplified.
For a game that is based more on its single player features like Elemental is should go with option 1. After all the people playing elemental are more "hardcore" persay in terms of depth in a game and since option 2 would make the game alot shorter that option 1 it would make elemental more multiplayer friendly which as you've said before doesnt matter
Option 1 ftw!
I've never liked sliders in a game. MOO3 ftl. I know GalCiv2 has them, but not as many, and I liked it in spite of them.
A lot depends on how many resources you plan to have. If there are more than about ten at any given time, it could get ridiculous, and turn some people off. Some people will still like it, though.
IF you can develop a UI that lets me manage all this effectively while only looking at one screen and making a small number of clicks, I vote for #1, but otherwise I think #2 would be better.
You only have to mess up one part of a game to mess up the whole thing.
Definitely the sophisticated option.
I think the way in which your example described it made it sound more difficult than what it is in practice.In practice, I could see it pan out like this:
1. I mine the ore2. Ore goes into my stockpiles.3. I select the buildings that use that ore, and can refine it/manufacture it.4. These items then go into my stockpile.5. From my stockpile, I can choose which cities are to receive each item by trade through a % slider.
That's all that needs to be considered at this stage. Adding that bit about the alchemist made it confusing You worry about what resources the alchemist needs when you open up his respective building and see the requisite resources there.
This does not seem like a complex procedure, and I've never been one to really wrap my head around some of the complexities created in games. More importantly, it's fairly intuitive, and opens up so many opportunities to add depth to the economic side of the game (which has been touted as much as the military) that it would be foolhardy to dumb it down, I think.
So long as you have a central hub for managing your stock of items, eg. a warehouse or something, so that players can centrally manage the exporting or throughput of their resources (be they refined, raw, or manufactured) then I foresee no problems at all. You also need a sound UI that can report a number of things at-a-glance, ie. what resources is going where, and from where, and precisely what has happened when that resource is disrupted.
It is turn based afterall, giving people more to think about is inherent.
Maxpower has a point. Althought I am for camp 1, it really depends on the number of individual resources - and many of the items that are created also are a type of resource - it bears osme consideration.
One of the big things I like about camp 1 is when you mine some iron, do you take the risk of sending it near the border (more dangerous for the caravan, but then the finished swords can be given to troops who are now on your front lines with almost no travel) or do you play it safe and send it via a safer trade route deep into your empire and then either create troops there and have to move the troop to the border, or do you send the swords back out to the borders and risk losing them?
How many basic resources are we talking about here? I definitely concur that knowing a ballpark there makess a HUGE difference on which camp I would support. (although I am always going to lean toward complexity/micromanagement as long as it is MEANINGFUL micromanagement).
IMO, regardless of which choice is used, please do not simplify it to the point of "Got Iron?" and if you have an iron resource you can make iron items. Make it so that a unit of iron is taken out of the ground and goes into storage at a bare minimum.
That's actually a perfect counter argument to camp 1. Can you imagine doing that for 20 cities for 15 resources? That's 15*20 sliders to adjust... And you can't set it and forget it since priorities will change as research happens, as towns are founded, as treaties are made, fronts of battle change, etc.
The question is, taking in the whole picture, do the developers believe that even "hard core" players would still enjoy playing the game with the simple and fun option? If the answer is yes, then making the game appeal to a lot more players (adding the "casual" gamer base) would ultimately be the better option. That being said, there is a small part of me that would like to see the "sophisticated" version done as replayability would probably be extended that way. Why can't it be an option setting? Is there another deadline?
Instead of quoting the whole post I'll just use this passage
Exactly the way I feel. Don't use a too complicated economy model. Think of Master of Magic or Master of Orion: they were fun not in spite of a simple economic model but at least party because of it. Even Civ 4 uses simplified economics at the resource level but that's quite fine for me because I don't want to worry too much about distributing resources, managing production at a low level. The important strategic decisions should be where to produce what kind of unit and not how to set up your resource distribution that certain units can be built in the first place.
I trust you to not let this slip into the MOO3 territory - much micromanagement, no fun (at least not much).
The "Simple" version as described here seems flawed somehow.
When my city already has access to iron, and I come across the crystal resource, it makes sense to assign it to the same city, so I can build stronger units. There's no point in splitting my resources and assigning the crystals to another city. And so for any additional resource I gain - say one that gives me mounted units or bonus to armour, it makes sense to assign it to that one city.
Since cities without resources are practially worthless, there does not seem to be much point in expanding and building an empire. You are better off cherry picking, i.e. choosing a few strategic locations to build cities and have all your resources sent to these cities to build uber-units.
The limitation that a resource can only be used by one city seems arbitrary. What happens when I gain control over a resource but all my cities already have that resource? Can I assign it to one of those cities to boost production further? In this case I could have one super city that churns out all my units... Or do I get to assign it later, when I have scouted for a strategic location for my next city?
My vote goes to "Sophisticated" as well.
Another vote for Camp 1. The sophisticated resource management was one of the things that made Elemental interesting to me. A decent AI could probably reduce things to an approximation of Camp 2, but I like the idea of having more control over resource allocation.
One additional feature that I'd like to see (and would fit somewhat with both) would be the ability to upgrade your supply lines. In additional to the (Space) Pony Express mentioned earlier, perhaps being able to install railroad lines (or other thematically appropriate equivalent) - the resources travel from location to location much quicker provided they're travelling via rail, but the lines themselves now become a target for the enemy, and perhaps the the trains require so much coal per turn to run. And for a third level of transport, instantaneous teleportation, but it requires skilled mages on both ends, eats dilithium crystals like crazy, and has a risk of attracting the attention of Klingons.
I live for this type of economic gameplay, even if the UI sucks. Camp #1: “Sophisticated” has my vote. Camp 2 looks to be the kind of economic model for a mulitplayer orientated game. I'm not opposed to the idea of having both systems in game, if that is possible.
As far as I understand it, the "simple" option does not solve the problem you are describing.
You would still have iron ore and crystals and "Gems of Annihilation". The difference is that in the "simple" version you are forced to send them all to the same town in order to be to forge the "Sword of Doom". And you would still have to worry about your caravans getting attacked along the way...
Hands down CAMP #1!!
I think Camp one with the change of one thing
Lets use a system like Stronghold Legends carter post system
You build a Caravan post (Caravan sounds better for this game then carter post)
And set it to send a resource to a certain town so every little bit a caravan with a certain amount of that item is mailed
To that town every little bit and that way we can go sophisticated without turning off players who are new to games like this
Even if you do do camp two make everything a resource because yes there are ways to do that while keeping the other ideas from camp 2
(I don't own a single turn based stredegy and plan to get this one so i'm new myself to this, but i still want Camp one)
I also think that you shouldn't make economy a huge factor You should have good economy, but it shouldn't kill you if you get one thing wrong like Stronghold Legends
If I had to choose between the two options, I'd vote Option #2. Here's why:
*I'm playing a fantasy strategy game where resource management is but ONE aspect of the game. I'd also like to devote time in varying degrees to combat, unit creation/placement, research, diplomacy, and general strategy.
*Option #1, while conceptually is really cool and would be genre-defining, seems to be one of the bad aspects of GalCiv 2 (no more sliders, please!)
*Option #1 also involves making strategic choices, but not about fun stuff. Things like, should I upgrade my warehouse? Where do I need to click now to manually move around my resource production? It's strategic, but not fun strategy. We could also add in a system that handles waste produced by processing resources and by units, but who wants to manage crap? That would be, well, crappy.
Here's the bigger idea- is it really that black and white for choices (option 1 vs. option 2)? In the long run, I'll get satisfaction from the game if I'm able to conquer my foes in a variety of ways. Having superior resource management could be a possible factor in that, but is that really that fun? I mean, it may be a necessary component, but I view it more as the means to victory, not the reason for it.
The reality I'm thinking of is this:
WHATEVER SYSTEM IS CREATED, IT SHOULD BE FUN, EASY TO USE, AND OFFER AN ELEMENT OF STRATEGY.
I think both of these system proposed could fit that, but I'd also encourage looking at a hybrid, Kyro's unique ideas here, and re-examine how this feature fits in with others. I would much rather have Option #2, as it's simpler, and get other areas that get more time and attention, than a complex/sophisticated economic system with watered-down combat/diplomacy/trading/research/etc.
Thanks for asking, Brad!
Personaly - Camp #1
Max sales - Camp #2
I want to see anything that will case us to have more then just a single killer stack running around. I want raiding to be an effective counter to the single large army we see in every game.
Sammual
I've read the OP but I've only skimmed some of the responses. Thoughts so far:
1) Camp 1 sounds a little too complex, while Camp 2 sounds a little too simple. I share Kyro's idea that the best way to find a good balance would be to simplify or abstract the "transport" elements of Camp 1 while keeping the resource complexity (and thus, build possibilities) intact.
I might even go so far as to suggest that resources should be stored an abstracted empire-level warehouse with needed supply removed from that warehouse as build orders are created/queued. To retain some of the strategic decisions related to resource localization, a few approaches could be considered:
A ) Increase the resource cost (by, say, 20%; reduceable through spells and/or technology) if the city requisitioning a resource is not a natural producer of it.
B ) Supply line mechanics could be approached more generically, by simply making tiles with roads the presumptive path of caravans. Again, I would recommend not stopping resource access altogeth for a blockaded city but increasing the resource cost by a lot (+75-100%) to represent needing to ship a lot of resources to that city to get even a little through the blockade.
2) Derek / Kael's notion of transforming the economic system in parallel with the transformation of the world sounds fascinating.
I would like to add a wrinkle to his suggestion, though: I believe part of the gameplay in Elemental is going to be choosing whether our Channeler helps rebuild the world (good) or continues to further erode it (evil), yes? If so, I'd suggest that the nation's economy should be able to evolve in either of those directions: "builder" nations should be able to spread their resources and economic strength around their territory, creating prosperity for all; "destroyer" nations should have access to spells or the like that further focus their production on chosen cities, creating a few powerhouse locations while the supporting lands rot even faster.
That's all I have time for tonight...
- Ash
I've lost where Kael responded to this, so I can't quote him, but I liked what he had to say; ultimately, it's about what kind of game you want to design. For me, a 4X game is about building up your forces; conquest victories are the most common type. This question leads into what victory conditions will be. If it's possible to have a purely economic victory, then you'd like to have the economy have all the richness and depth it deserves. If the point of the economy is to supply your armies, however, then it becomes a point on a pathway to victory, not the victory in itself. I'm not sure that either camp 1 or 2 is correct. The problem with a wargame with an oversimplified economy is best shown in Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic. The economic model there was simple tiering of cities with no specialized production. This led to the standard strategy being to rush cities to being the highest level, and then churning out your level 4 units as quickly as possible. Apart from rushing, there was no particular use, except in specialized scenarios, for the intermediate level units. Lack of economic depth leads to lack of tradeoffs as everyone rushes to the ultimate weapons, and then the economics switches to a rate of production and transport to the front lines.
The economic models I've seen that work well do two things: Provide depth and provide obstacles that impede the development of large amounts of the highest quality troops, either through being cost prohibitive or time prohibitive. Good strategy players have always been able to overcome cost limitations, so I'm a fan of time limitations. More complexity (er, sophistication) in the economic model gives more time limitations, so I think that's a good thing.
I'm thinking of what Kael said about evolving map resources (iron, crystals, etc) that get "better" over time, expanding production and therefore the volume of material produced. I think that may work, but I think you'd need to put in something other than just a straight time for growth; maybe getting other cross resources (to build a bigger mine with higher output, you need more food production shipped back to the mine, resulting in reduced growth in the food supplying city, or some such thing). There's nothing that necessarily prohibits the sophisticated model from being simplified by allowing a mine to ship all of it's resources to the closest city, and then producing swords there, potions, and soldiers.
Boy, that's kind of rambling. I think deeper economic models are better overall, but I think the AI will need to be developed to take over the sophisticated system once it's up and running. I'd like the ability to build a complex web, but then have it self sustain, and just give me status reports. That way I can go in and tweak it when the situation demands it, and not micromanage it every turn.
Plus, more sophiticated economic models allow for more sophisticated trade models.
Winnihym
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