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 personal would prefere Camp 4.
Camp 3 is my second prefernce but because its not allows bonus form micromangmants oposit to camp 4 its only second.
Camp 1 sound like to much micromangamant or hoping the AI will do allright but I would prefer this option anytime over Camp 2.
I don't see how you would be able to equip the dread knight with iron if you don't have the resource though ... and shouldn't having a road connection be more than simply one less turn aka a bonus of 3.3% ... I'd almost rather it be at least a 10 or 20% bonus to have a road for the INITIAL resource, while additional resources of the same ilk are still only 3.3%.
In addition, I suppose losing your last iron resource would give the slowest build time, and build the units without the iron equipment. (since its easier to have them reformat a new unit to get faster build times than actually recalibrate the build time for the new equipment used) -> also the extra build time will enable to allow them to equip such iron at a later date, for a simple payment in gold (perhaps) once you re-aquire iron. However if you re-formatted a new unit, all "new units" without any iron training would have to spend some extra turns in order to train for iron weapons.
I suppose since we are looking at multiple resources, say 5? then each initial resource should give 10% bonus to build cost (need this for the unit to actually be built, its a built in reverse penalty for those who build a unit w/o the required resources), and each additional resource of same type (additional iron) should be about a 2% bonus, or maybe a direct "1 turn less" bonus.
(These are notes on how I think camp 4 should operate)
What I'd like to see is something of a mix between Option #3 and Option #4 on your list, and additionally a provision for low-level trading between players. Resources would automatically move between cities, giving preference to cities where there's a high demand (as in 3) but slowly building up a base level of the resource (as in 4).
My idea:
Your caravans would take the resource to nearby cities, and from those cities to more distant ones, slowly spreading it through your empire and giving you a basic amount of that resource in all your cities. Unlike with Option 4, you wouldn't have a resource available across your entire empire the moment you have access to it.
If one of your cities is using a lot of that resource, it would get priority, with larger shipments being sent in the caravans from nearby towns. If you have Iron, all your cities would have access to it, but the city with a Smith who's using a lot of iron would get more iron sent his way.
Basically, I really like the organic growth of #3, since watching my civilization grow is one of my favorite parts of the game. But I'd also like to have a provision for possibly using the resource elsewhere and not just sending it to the city that has a smith or barracks.
And if you don't have access to a resource, but one of your neighbors does, your caravans should be able to trade for that resource with their cities. So if I want to build a mounted warrior, but I don't have any horses, my caravans can go down to Horseland and bring some back. This would be a nice organic method to allow the player to build units without that resource, and not just make it seem like the resource is popping out of thin air.
If that's too complex, I'd definitely go for #3 over #4.
I'm so in for camp #3.
1 sounds like too much micromanaging. 2 sounds braindead and boring.
4 didn't sound too bad. Just thought 3 was the best of them.
I vote for Camp #1.
it seems like Camp #4 has already been decided upon, and while keeping that code intact would be important, it would be nice to beta an alta in which camp #3 was used
Really?
look to the resources paragraph in the numbers, numbers, numbers post
Over here, under "resources". It's basically camp 4.
This thread is actually several months old now, so its not surprising they went with something. It is kind of surprising they went with that option, but you know. Since they're the ones who actually have to build it, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
Put me in camp 3. The important part here is that resource locations matter, processing locations matter, guarding routes matters. If your blacksmith and barracks are in the same city two tiles from an iron deposit, you can guard it all quite handily... but there might be troop deployment issues if all of this is far, far away from the front line. Alternately, you can space it all out so there's a steady flow, but you've got to plan your production a bit farther in advance to allow for processing and travel time. Capturing a key city deep within enemy territory is attractive, but you'll never get any of your own resources to it. Etc.
Camp 4 basically takes a nerf bat to all of that, changing "impossible" (there are no caravan routes to that location which won't be summarily ransacked) to merely "inefficient" (we have seven iron mines and they have one, put a city on the other side of the map and come at them from two fronts). Sprawling empires should be a nightmare to manage; it's an important check on the situation of "Player 3 wins, but the game doesn't actually realize this for another 200 turns." There need to be some meaningful advantages to a lean, efficient kingdom which aren't meaningless in the face of a steamroller.
Edit: Well damn, apparently I missed this thread when it was actually relevant.
Don't worry, wouldn't have mattered Option #3 seemed to be the overwhelming player favorite, but Stardock is going with something like #4 anyways (at least for now!). Of course, Stardock has every right to do that, and probably at least as often as not, game developers would make pretty crappy games if they implemented every feature that was in high demand. It is after all hard to know how things will turn out in practice.
That said I'm still sad. There is so much potential in an Option #3-like economic system that is crushed into little tiny pieces and thrown away in the transition to #4, and I'm still unconvinced of the 'storage nightmare.'
I don't think anything is set in stone yet - that's why the long beta, remember?
However, the fact that Frogboy said that he found dealing with resource storage and discrete units "unfun" I think does not bode well - I know if I were making a game I sure wouldn't do something I found unfun no matter how many people wanted it.
I like camp 1 and camp 3 and camp 4. Don't like camp 2.
But to choose one I'd go with 4 as long as the caravans can still be attacked. I want bo be able to cut supply lines of my enemies as well as having my ememies cut my supplyy lines. This also will allow a special unit in the game that would be skilled at attacking caravans and taking thier resources (the Highwayman oe call them Bandits)
I like the Quarter to Three concept which is a lot like the Civ4 concept. However, I'd tweak that to be a bit like the Civ2 concept where each region has natural resources, but there's no need for the micromanagement of say building a mine on the iron node. I'd sum it as, Complexity rocks, but tiles should be looked at and not fiddled with. (edit: basically a tip of the hat to Paradox's Victoria system)
Rather it'd be that most mountains have iron, so if your city is in a region with mountains, then it has access to irons. Trade routes then share the resources with other cities; Like in Victoria, trade routes can have their own efficiencies (regional infrastructure). Cities in the trade network, and having key production buildings can then turn the resource into something useful (e.g. forge turns iron into weapon, or building supplies).
There can still be some variety to the implied resources. E.g. some mountain ranges might tend to have copper, not iron, some plains would tend to have buffalo, not wheat. So there's still incentive to expand to different parts of the map, but less checking to see if a mine has been built for every type of mineral, or a farm for every type of food. The exact resources grabbed would still be by the cultural sphere of the city (i.e. tile-based grabbing of resources, rather than pre-defined regions).
Exceptions to the rule of no-tile fiddling would be rare items might be represented by nodes that need physical infranstrure. E.g. Admantine node needs a mine that connects to a city to supply that rare item to the trade network. E.g. the fire mana vs. the death mana for MoM.
So in other words, everything is a resource, and any Victoria or Settlers-like (remember that old Blue Byte/SSI/UBI game that keeps resurecting?) chaining of resources to prodoucts to products can be envisioned, but there's no need to micromanage the map to be sure that you workers fiddling to build tile upgrades (there can be an actual flow-chart screen that dictates, say 50% of iron made goes to the weaponsmith, 50% goes to making nails). If regional resource gathering upgrading is needed, it should be done at province/city level, not at the tile level.
That should reduce some useless CPU and player fiddling. To starve a city of resources, a proper siege should be conducted, not tile fiddling of military units, except in certain situations (e.g. horsemen pillaging the countryside abstractly).
Or in other words, Settlers/Victoria like economic complexity, Civ4 cultural grabbing of resources, Civ2 regional resource dispositions, Victoria-like regional efficiencies to resource gathering efficiency, very little tile management (very un-Civ4 like in that regards).
Sounds cool to me. Requires thought from the player to devise an economy on multiple levels, yet eliminates tile micromanagement which just sucks up CPU cycles and is just busy work for the player. Limits tile managements to truly rare resources by which the game might be lost/won, such that guarding them with a giant castle and army is really useful.
Afterthought: Theres still the issue of quantifying the actual resource stockpiles of a civ, if that's still in, but that can still be done fairly abstractly at the region level. E.g. Theoretical maximum resource gathering rate based on surroundings, influenced by the efficiency of gathering for the region/city, and further influenced by whatever workforce is assigned to the gathering.
Here is the other problem that has not been discussed in-depth enough: specialization population centers vrs non-specialized population centers leading to how that ties with resource acquisition, management, disbursement and trade.
The Devs have talked about the dilemma of a game's victor being decided long in advance before it is over. If a kingdom has lost a few cities then it's no big deal but if even one specialized super city is gone, well for your average AI it might be game over. The flip side is specialized cities are relatively cheaper in some respects because a single city recieving advanced upgrades means 8 cities getting enough basic upgrades to equate the output of that one. Losing one city in ten is only a ten percent loss but one super city could be like 80 percent right there. There is one additional factor, population = units or vice versa, game changer.
Should trade be substantial enough to close the specialized vrs nonspecialized cities gap?
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