This next week we’ve got a ton of things to do. Most of what we’re working on doesn’t show up in the game.
In no particular order, here are some things on the high priority list:
1. Gotta expose the AI to Python. Need that so that I can start doing serious surgery on the AI without constantly having to recompile and re-run the game.
2. Nail down what resources we want to have in the game.
I keep thinking that it’s better to have more resources than fewer. I’d love to hear how others feel about this.
I also am of the opinion that controlling a resource shouldn’t be a pre-requisite for building something but rather controlling the resource acts as a bonus.
For example, if I research metal weapons then I should be able to build metal weapons. metal deposits will be displayed on the map which can be controlled but those should act as a very large bonus.
I.e. every city produces say 0.1 metal per turn no matter what. If you control a metal resource then that amount goes to 1. If you control 2 then it goes up to 2. And the city that actually has the resource gets another bonus.
This is scheduled for the next beta.
But what we haven’t decided is how many resources should be in the game.
I was thinking there could be resources that give bonuses to research, prestige, along with resources that let you add equipment to your soldiers that give them more hitpoints or increase the speed of their attacks or increase their healing rate or how fast they level up and so on and so on.
Obviously, the more you add, the more micro-management you potentially expose yourself to.
For instance, let’s say we have a “twilight honey” which is a resource that is displayed on the map when you research it. It is a type of equipment that increases a soldier’s HP by 10%. Now, if you have the resource, equipping it adds no time to the time it takes to produce the soldier. But if you don’t have the resource and have a design that uses it, then it would add say 3 more turns.
So you can see some of the problems that this could introduce if it’s implemented that way.
With enough UI work, you could also have an option to make it so that a given piece of equipment can be picked as “required” versus “optional”. That is, if it’s optional and you don’t have the resource, it won’t use it when constructing the unit.
There are many different ways to address the issue but each one has its own pros and cons.
How would you guys like to see this sort of thing done?
Idea's for Resource Types:
(Cloth and non metals)
Wool: sheep farm requires grazing land
Cotton: requires planting fields
Leather: made from animal skins
(Basic Metals)
Bronze: base armor modifier
Iron: Better the Bronze
Steel: Better then Iron
(Rare Metals)
Coldstone Ore: Base armor modifier plus Resistance to heat and fire attacks. This Ore gives off a permeating Chill.
Lavarock Ore: base modifier plus protection against cold and ice attacks. This fiery ore gives off heat to the touch.
Mithril: Base modifier plus extra resistance to magical damage
Granatite Ore: Base modifier plus enhanced physical damage resistance, but, it adds a Weight penalty that reduces movement speed. This Ore is incredibly heavy. It provides GREAT protection but is very heavy to wear slowing down the wearer.
Palladium Ore: Base modifier plus resistance to Death Magic.
Bloodrock/Blackrock Ore: Base modifier plus resistance to Life Magic.
As you can tell I think I made some of those up. Hope those help with some general ideas.
I'd like to suggest that you use resource points as a cause for war outside the cities. Too many of these games end up as constant city sieges. To do this resources must be independant from cities and players must be able to garrison enough troops in cities (i.e. reduced upkeep) that they can sally a defense.
I have several things to state on this topic.
More resources are always a plus, but they need to have varying degrees of usefullness and requirement. Most all towns should have access to a small amount of basic resources, (i.e. wood, leather, metal, food), and it should allow them to create most units. However, it should take longer, and they should not have any bonuses (aside from racial ones of course). Gaining access to magically infused crystals, dense iron deposits, or gold, should give noticable bonuses to the Empire/Kingdom and/or your units (that use items/equipment that can utilize the bonus).
Trade should be required in order to give your Empire/Kingdom access to those resources (i.e. a new town you've built, several turns away by fastest scout, shouldn't be able to utilize any bonus resources unless it has a road to the rest of your land). Likewise, trade between players would matter, since exotic, or rare resources would give large bonuses to units/Empire/Kingdom/costs.
This would obviously entice people to go to war for certain resources, however, taking a town, even if it is roaded to your Empire/Kingdom, should take a certain number of turns to allow the infrastructure to start working for your Empire/Kingdom (say three turns before you gain the bonuses). That way people wouldn't just temporarily take a city or town and try to gain peace by offering the city or town back. It'd be neat to be able to chose sack for a town to destroy the town or hamlet (I don't think you should be able to completely destroy large cities, without a magical destruction), and gain a certain amount of said resource (i.e. your Empire/Kingdom makes 1.5 points of mythril, so your stores are only at 80, you sack a major mining town that you know is too far out from the rest of your Empire/Kingdom, and sack it, gaining 300 mthril).
The system for resources should be based on a certain amount per turn, (i.e. .1 for trace amounts, .3 for deposits, .6 for major deposits, 1.2 for a developed major deposit) and build up a pool (i.e. which could be held in storage buildings, which would also make raiding useful, likewise, attacking trade units could allow you to gain say 1% of a(n) Empire/Kingdom's resources). This would give greater flexibility, and allow you to stockpile for campaigns, while being fairly simple and not too complicated. All cities of a certain size should share resources, but new towns, captured property, and unroaded towns should either only have what they create (and thus not share it with the rest of the Empire/Kingdom), or at least have greatly reduced rates and building power.
Love this idea, although I think the cost should be gold. The whole point of smugglers is that they get the resources out without anyone knowing. Finding out that an empire is smugling your resources out of your country could be a result of espionage, which could THEN influnce diplomatic ties.
Definately not a fan of the 'as little micro management as posible' aproach. Half the fun of galciv was making new ships, and I'm looking forward to the same in elemental. Whats the point of designing units if they all get upgraded/downgraded automatically? auto built/upgraded units should be a setting, not a rule.
More resources are better in my book!
The resources in your realm should be an important feature in all aspects of that realm - its warfare, its culture, its trading, its research. I'd like to see kingdoms naturally play to their strengths, and their strengths being those resources. A land of plains with wild horses should become a land of powerful horsemen; their horses should be sought after in trade, their military horse-based, etc. Horsemen should become hugely desirable. Resources should have a big 'push' on the player on what direction to take their kingdom.
This should be the mantra of Resource Development.
To make this happen I think you should be able to SEE the a level or resources on the map before you research the tech to make them useable.
Example - If the levels of metal working are Copper, Bronze, Iron, and Steel you should see the Copper Resources on the map before you have researched the Tech needed to use them. Once you research what you need to use Copper, Tin appears on the map (Required along with Copper for Bronze), Once you research what you need to use Bronze, Iron resources should show up on the map, etc.
Sammual
Seems like you could make the forest/river/moutain spaces usefull for your resoures. Ie. just having a Mountain hex in your city radius gives you a small Metals production. Throw in some occasional Special Metal areas for bonuses. This way even non-owners of the Special hex can make up for it by building cities with lots of the underlying terrain bonus.
Don't forget that the Mana stuff is also likely to be the Critical resource. I'd also worry about too many resources (ie. every 3rd hex has a special output), might clutter up the map a lot.
Ren
You wouldn't know as a nation, that once you research x resource that you would want x amount and that it would be in location y. So, it's only after you research steel, that you discover you need to expand north to find deposits for it. This forces expansionism, and is good for the game anyways (plus trade would be a bigger focus this way).
I was reading this morning in the Wikipedia about Bronze as an example (for myself) of how metals could work in the game. Altough the Wikipedia isn't always 100% correct, I'll do as in this case it really was (and let otehrs correct me/it in that case). But iron per se wasn't so strange (uncommon) as copper or tin. The problem is that copper and tin deposits were usually quite far appart from each other. But you could work it better than iron and it was stronger... at least until some circumstances (trade rutes going kaboom?) forced to favor iron. And once reached the point of forged iron, bronze wouldn't be so useful (except for ships).
So in game terms, copper, tin and iron are equally common but iron requires more research to be made better compared to the research of Copper + Tin = Bronze. Also, Steel common? Well, compared with Mithril I suppose it is.
With Random map generation and placement of Factions, using towns with Resources in them or very near by getting Better Bonuses could create a slippery slope scenario.
Research should allow materials to be created, but that creation requires access, directly to said resource. Otherwise if I/My Team land on an Iron Mine deposit and my opponent(s) don't or have to wait any number/many of turns to get a similiar deposit up and running, then obviously I/We have been granted a HUGE advantage in the early stages of the game for which simple "random luck" was the sole reason.
Now I am as competetive as the next guy, but FREE bonuses just because of Luck suck the Fun out of games.
If you want an Iron Mine? Go find one. Then build it and begin shipping ore to town. Then also be prepared to defend both the Caravans and the Mine because I might find it way easier, and way cheaper, to just to take yours away from you after you spent the money to get it up and running. LOL
bump
For resources, I'd like to have quantities of resources instead of I control spot X so I can build X-based stuff at X*constant speed. (While I control spot X I gather that amount of said resource, which also allows to have different qualities of spots, some giving more than others which will create strategy objectives). Speed would be more dependant on how experienced are my workers and how good are my workshops.
I said it in another thread, but I like recipes
1 fur -> 1 leather (+ some amount of gold)
2 leather -> 1 leather armor (+ some amount of gold)
1 leather armor + 1 unit of iron + 1 unit of coal -> 1 studded leather armor... (+ some amount of gold).
Recipes are discovered by research and maybe rare recipes are discovered in lairs ?
Even better, i'd like to use the bones of the 25 soldiers of another's player faction I just slaughtered to make 25 archers with human bone bows/arrows... So that in multiplayer I can shoot my enemy with them You can do that in Dwarf Fortress to some extent It's useless (and ineffective, steel would do better) but a nice customisation touch and fun Like outfitting all your dwarves in kitten clothes you butchered in your fortress. That kind of stories make the good memories.
Like in multiplayer : "Remember your dragon I killed and the 10 dragon skin units I got from it ? I used them to make shields for protecting my troops against your newly-born dragon's fire. You don't want to know what weapon I made with its bones, who is using it and who I am targeting with it..." Spider venom, spider silk, etc, etc... Obtaining resources by killing stuff would be cool, especially if it can causes spider near-extinction making it less available afterwards in the game.
Just ideas
I think being able to have a "trickle" of every nessessary resourse is a must. Learm from Civ4's mistakes: I've played Civ4 for years, and I can't tell you how really bad it is for gameplay to not have oil, or horses, or iron, and you absoulutely can NOT make a unit if you don't have the resourse. On the other hand, if you get more than one resourse of each type, it's near useless, which gives no incentive to aquire and hold more resourses.
Perhaps a marketplace where players can buy needed resourses at a much higher price, and/or even the ability to put their own extra resourse on the market to make a profit.
This was a dynamic of the game I actually liked - it was supposed to entice you to expand early and form alliances with people who had resources you need so that you could keep up. I recall reading that one of the focuses of Civ IV was to ensure no one player had access to all resources - the idea was to promote conflict, which creates for far more interesting and fun games than if every player had access to every resource.I understand what you mean about necessary resources, and to this point I sort of agree - however, I believe we are differing on our definitions of necessary. Food sources to allow growth and copper were really the only necessary resources in Civ IV - right up until you reach Iron Working and gain access to Swordsmen, you had what you needed. If you didn't have Iron, you should forge alliances with people who do, or take them by force. Once I have Theology, I usually have my alliances that will stand for the entire game in place, or my military has begun it's campaign to take what I need. This is something, in my opinion, that Civ IV perfected.
ofc
strongly disagree
maybe NOT EVERY SINGLE resourse should be a prerequisite, that could work
but some resourse NEED to be
dont like it so much
maybe there should be normal and upgraded versions
like researching metal weapon will allow you to craft generic metal sword always
but having copper deposit will enable copper sword thats a bit stronger than metal sword
otherwise resourses are just SAD if they just provide some + production or something
In MOM there were only 3 resources: Food/Mana/Gold. Food was an important limiting factor but didn't do much to add to the enjoyment of gameplay.
Mana and gold had an excellent interplay because with alchemy you could convert gold to mana or vise versa.
Without getting into the nitty gritty; I think there should be a diversity of resources to make the game interesting and create advantages for having one thing or the other, but at the same time there could be a trading subtheme to accomplish certain goals; I think of settlers of catan and how you can always trade at 4:1 resource rate, but if you have certain improvements, you can get enhanced trading rates... 3:1 for anything or 2:1 for certain commodities. At my gut level I'd say tracking up to 10 resources would be fine, tracking many more than that would get tedious.
I also the bonus object idea; one additional option would be defining if an object was critical to troop development or optional; so if I loose my mithril it'll complete ruin my deathknight but if I loose my honeycomb i'll be bummed but continue on with the troop just the same.
Since we are on the topic of resources; in so far as city development goes, I'd rather not see a mana crystal or an iron mine taking up a city expansion slot.
I agree that resources should be a driving factor in conflict and trade, but slamming the door on the option to build or recruit something because the player forgot to negotiate or is in a bad position can be highly frustrating for the player and quite "un-fun". That said, the costs (either in time or money) of building something for which the player has little or no resources should be crippling. This I think would be the best of both worlds: spurring the player to seek out necessary resources while keeping open the option of building it should he *really* want to.
You could always do a trading system in which a city produces gold, and you could buy a resource at a bad rate, that way the .1 per turn could be avoided all together. Then you could have a black market where you could trade metal for wood at a better price than say metal for money, and actually create an economic system of supply and demand.
Perhaps here should be minor and major (Greater and Lesser?) Resources, or some resources that are region specific/hard to export.
You could for example make a certain type of unit that has certain types of armor and certain weapons. Maybe you want their armor to be an especially strong form of steel (That requires special coal/craftsmanship) or a special kind of wood.
Rather than letting an entire empire fill itself with soldiers armed and armored with rare resources, perhaps some resources are naturally more scarce, and so you can 'omit' them in the creation of a unit.
I personally would also like the option of being able to form an empire /without/ a certain resource and with another, and I don't really like the idea that EVERY Empire should be dependent on, or require certain resources. That sounds a little too linear to me, like civ.
It'd be nice if you could have a rich trade empire that's mainly about wood, and leather, and silver, and copper, and doesn't have gold or iron, except from imports, and functions fine.
(Reposted from another post on the same issue)
Totally agree. Percentage modifiers feel very empty. +4 'beakers' or -2 'hammers' is much more clear for a player than 'this increases our research by 2 percent'. It's not forbidden to use percentages, since this is obviously a neccessity for a game of this scope. But percentages should be easy to translate for a player. The suggested gamecards should really help for this.
My only issue with having a lot of resources is that right now the only way to actually harvest a resource isi to build a city near it. If there are lots of resources, you may need a ton of cities.
I agree with prevailing opinion of more resources is better and that they should be prerequisite (ie no bonuses).
But obvioulsy more resource which all would be absolutely neccesart wouldnt be probably too much fun, however what about further resource cathegories (apart from food/insudtry/luxury)
so this way we can have resources in same cathgeory requiring only little or no extra research to utilise them but they would add certain flavour to the game. For example
Now from unit design point of view (which is the target, because we need to utilise resource somehow) there wouldnt be too drastic difference between resources within same cathegory - obviously iron swords will be better than copper, but not in 1:10 ratio. But to really make a difference, you would have to use rare metal instead.
Some resources groups may differ more in special abilities - ie lizzard mount may attack on its own as well, while horses are fastest from. Frogs on the other hand are able to jump over enemy fortifications...
Advantages of this system are that there are lot of resources and yet they are cathegorized to not-so-many groups. This makes game still acceptably playable without deep insight into system. Obviously you want to acquire best one (iron) within cathegory, but you can do it with copper/tin swords as well, so you wont be completly screwed if you wont succeed.
One further advantage of having multiple similar resources system is that each one can have different graphics (I know, we can play in ascii - dwarf fortress ftw), and this might help to add some extra flavour to unit design. (something which was done nicely in GalCiv, but I have hard time to imagine in Elementals, since people are just... identical)
delete me - double post
Agreed. Civ4's resource system was quite good actually. If you had no X resource type, you couldn't build Y unit. I have no problems with that. This system could work very well, but like someone has said, it should be tweaked a little bit. Like implement a special building [marketplace for example], so the player will be able to buy resources for a high price, even if he/she has no access to a given resource type. = Problems solved, and the resources will have serious strategical value this way.
Like in HoMM in fact, no? The more markets you get, the easier it's for you to get resources.
Anyway i'm in for some diverse resources, but not too much. Special things should be created thanks to combination of basic resources ( adozen resources could be enough if you start combining them to get what you want)
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