I'm picturing situations where the AI sends out caravans the most direct route, but not the best. What if the direct route happens to be a very dangerous frontline route. Not being able to override the AI and reroute the caravan down a safer road might be frustrating to players.

On a related note, I think any idea that makes players seriously think about attacking and defending their supply lines is great. Supply line creation and control I can go either way on.

Sounds good to me.

I really like option one, those sort of complexities can really add to the game imo. There are far too many casual strategy games out there already. Like Civ IV I would really much love to see this game fill a niche for those who like to stop and think rather than for those who want a quick and easy game.

However, with system one there needs to be a way to reduce micromanagement. Maybe we can ask for goods per city. Say city A needs ore and I have two sources, then I can select city A, choose how much ore it needs and the sources fogire out how much to get from each one and how to ship it. Something like that.

Also it would be very nice if we could protect caravans not by acticvely guarding it, but by selecting a 'guarded caravan' over a normal one or by having an option to make the caravan guarded. That way the risk of getting robbed is greatly reduced but the expenes of the caravan are doubled or so.

Of course I am just giving examples here, but I would like to see a simple system that is deep enough to mke you stop and think. Casual strategy games only capture the imagination for a week or two, then people move to something else.

It sounds like there will not even be tangible units of resources, it seems like they are going with more of a CiV IV approach with some bonuses for having more than one of a resource. Going for that lowest common denominator, which isn't always a bad thing.

It really sounds like camp #3 is the best of both worlds to me.  Camp #2 and Camp #4 are too simple for my tastes.  You are throwing out a lot of really cool ideas by going those routes.  I like the thought of camp #1 but it just sounds like too much work to have to do.  You might want to give it a try but the interface would have to be incredible to not make this a major hassle and turn off a lot of people in my opinion.  If you do decide to implement this you might want to have an option for simple/complex economy models when creating a new game.  I'm guessing you don't want to have two separate models to have to code, write AI for, etc though.

The only problem I can forsee with camp #3 is how to resolve competing needs for resources.  What happens to my major city that is a resource hog because it is producing my best weapons when I suddenly decide to build some blacksmiths in other cities.  I need a way to tell the AI that I want my major city to get the priority and only give out resources to other places if there is excess.  You did mention having some sort of priority system so it looks like you have already thought of this case though.  Just give the player enough control to handle cases like this and I think you are good.

Brad et al,

Long time member, infrequent poster here. A few points...

1) I enjoy the strategy aspect of playing large, difficult, long epic games. That said, I hate micro/logistics management late in these games. I don't mind it so much early on, but it’s definitely a fun-killer later on (for me). I work full time and have a wife plus two kids...squeezing in some game time isn't a trivial task for me these days. The last thing I want to do is use up all my available time managing this stuff...a level of automation I feel, is necessary, especially when we're talking about map sizes that are multiples of Civ4s max size.

2) I really like both the ideas of resources building upon each other; as well as, strategically located cities. I think they both have the potential to add vast amounts of depth to the game. I think this can probably be accomplished using any of the (presently 4) options listed *if done correctly*, but option 3 currently sounds like the most feasible to me since that one seems to lend itself a little better to the strategically located cities/resources angle, while simultaneously eliminating the micromanagement.

3)  In that scenario (option 3), I presume that you would still be assigning a resource to a (nearby) city or that it would automatically be assigned to the nearest city. I like this concept as I feel it adds an important realistic aspect to managing/designing the success of your economy/empire. While I see the opposite side of the argument (that losing a strategic city/resource can having devastating effects to your empire), I think this is a sensible and reasonable construct...just imagine if Russia had lost Moscow to Germany during WW2. It would have changed the face of the eastern front and probably the entire war. Additionally, I think this tact is often times a losing players only (last ditch) option late in a large game for inflicting a decisive blow to an enemy.

4) Last point, more of a question really. Since I haven't seen a forum topic discussing it, I apologize if has already been addressed. Has any thought been given to the resource model hooking into the spell/magic system? Specifically some spells requiring reagents to perform (e.g. need some Mandrake root to cast fireball). This was one aspect of the old Ultima series that I loved. One had to locate/procure rare reagents in order to prepare or cast some powerful spells. It added another facet to resource and spell management that made the game fun (for me).

Just my $0.02.

.

I prefer the idea of camp 1. I would like to suggest that a good working and fun economic model can be seen by taking a look at starknights an online game that has been around for quite awhile or dwarf fortress. Perhaps a lot of micromanagement can be negated by only requiring the player to put the industries in place and then the player can simply rely on the industry's AI to transport and sell the goods. For example if I order a mine, a marketplace, and a blacksmith to be built then upon completion the mine will automatically look for a blacksmith to refine the goods and then the blacksmith in turn would look for a marketplace. A rather simplified view that could lead to interesting results when one considers that a  variety of parameters could be applied to each industry and vendor such that they will make decisions regarding when, where, for how much, and to whom they will sell their goods. Perhaps, as king our role will be to influence those industries by taxation, royal subsidies to get a particular good we want made, or maybe the locations itself (i.e. if I order a blacksmith to be built and the only mine that is close is a copper mine then my blacksmith would only be able to produce copper based goods in great supply).

#1 seems too complicated to me, especially for late-game with large map (as many others have said).  And I agree with those who don't love sliders.  It's much worse if you have to separately make swords at a blacksmith, as described in the OP, than it would be if they decreed that making a swordsman requires, recruits, iron & blacksmith, so the swords are made automagically when the unit is recruited.

BTW, in any system I think recruits could be sent from town to town like other resources, so you can make large units at small towns if you need to, or ship draftees to the city that has the blacksmith, barracks, and magic-whatever.

I think I could live with #2, #3, etc.  No really strong preference, just a few comments....

Most of us are familiar with GalCiv2 asteroid belts.  Their resources default to going to the nearest star, but you can redirect them.  That could be a good starting point for resources in Elemental.  Asteroids come in clusters of about 3, close enough so one player usually has the whole bunch, but if they translate this to Elemental you could direct the ouput of each one to diff cities to even-out resource shortages        This would be much more important than in GC2, and much neater than the  scheme someone proposed many pages ago to send percentages of the resource to diff cities.

If they did something like that I think they could set up a system which doesn't require too much micro-management, or depend heavily on a hard-to-code AI re-routing things automagically.  (If the AI has to decide too much, I worry about how long it takes to code right, and how slow it will run on machines that don't have zillions of fast cores -- AI turns on very large maps HAVE TO run faster than in HOMM5).

  1: Give a warning if a city doesn't have the resources to make what you told it to.

  2: Have a warehouse building type to store some surplus.

  3: Give a warning if a city is about to throw resources away because the warehouse is too full.

  4: Have a city screen show how much of each resource the city has and how much it gets every turn (or maybe a summary screen for the whole empire, with one line per city).

  5: Remind people in the manual & tutorial that they should check said screen occasionally and redirect resources to the towns that need it.

  6: Permit us to send emergency supplies to another city if we need to, perhaps by the kind of caravans that have been discussed a lot above.  But if we have been paying attention, this won't happen often.

  7: Permit trade between kingdoms.  Once the deal is agreed, the transport mechanism works like transfers within the kingdom  (same thing if they do vassals & tribute the way I hope).

I think much of this is going to be in the game anyway, and the rest should be easy to write.  The point is that they don't have to kill themselves trying too hard.

(Please put the warnings off to the side where we don't have to click on them at once when they appear, and let us read them without making them disappear, in case we want to come back later).

(No strong feelings about whether caravans appear on the map, are subject to attack, how fast they move, etc).

--------------------------------------------

Plan B:  I could also be happy if they just had resources like iron mines owned by a single nearby city, and told us to build cities close to the critical resources.  Cities would have large & non-overlapping zones of control, larger for big cities.   Building a new city reduces the zones of nearby cities.  No caravans or transfers between cities.  Troops with lousy equipment could be made anywhere you have the barracks (or whatever), but armor could be made only in cities that had iron mines within their zones, magic swords could only be made in cities with some other resource (remember adamantium in MOM?).  Don't count units of iron -- if a city has a mine, it has "enough" for whatever troops it recruits.  Other things, like gold, might be global.  This is almost the MOM approach, except that there would be more kinds of resources, and they might be more common, so there would be some chance of finding a highly strategic location where your new city would have almost everything.  Such locations would be worth fighting over -- those might be the decisive battles of the campaign.

First of all I love the idea of being able to make uber weapons and be able to raid my oponents uber weapons.

Option 1 is way too complicated. Option 3 is the best direction IMHO. In my view no system should be implemented which requires manual logistical management. Also no system should be made unless the AI can be inteligent with its use. I don't want to win bc the AI can't understand the concept of these sophisticated suply lines. This extends beyond simply defending their supply lines. It means they design thier empire and expansions such that their supply lines are defensable. It means they understand the concept of assemply lines-> your iron gets shipped to blacksmiths->the swords go to the mages-> magic swords to to storage or recruitment places without too much backtracking e.g. your blacksmiths and mages aren't at opposite ends of the empire.

Unit production:

With option 3 you could completely separate unit recruitment and unit equipment. You train your units in one town but the people and equipment come from all over your empire. When it comes time to upgrade your units equipment you have to actually produce their upgraded equipment and maybe (depending on the fun and AI balance) caravan/teleport their new equipment to them. Their old equipment could even goto storehouses for use by other units. Magical upgrades if in a town with mages maybe don't need new equipment? Equipment should be able to ship from storehouses across your empire not just the local storehouse.

Storehouses:

I think it woul dbe really cool if EVERYTHING was kept in some storehouse especially money.

How do you decide what gets stored?

I would hate to have to actually specify what gets stored. Maybe there is an option to just build more storehouses to accomidate the extra stuff (maybe it works by selling a portion of the stuff to pay for the store house). Prompting me to build new storehouses is fine small scale but is horid for a large kingdom. Building them with a different resource would create unneeded complexities of opps I should have turned auto storehouse option off bc I needed full gold income this turn but  accidentally filled up another storehouse.

I most humbly support camp #3.

camp #1 sounds interesting, but I am worries about micromanagement.

Bassically I like the idea of treating many things as resources, with a hopeful tie-in to diplomacy

As sekerah said go for the sophisticated way with some AI help that can be enabled