So with the new design change of food being a Global resource, i started to wonder how that food just magically gets from one town to another.
I suppose the underlying theory is "if it makes the game more fun, who cares?"
As gamers, can you accept any excuse of why something is happening as long as you get enjoyment from it?
This is why I liked Camp 1. Food created locally. If you create a city at a hardcore spot [desert / tundra for example] = the local food production won't be enough to feed the citizens + soldiers. = caravans bring the food to these cities. Siege = no caravan access = starvation. Even if the city is not blockaded, but the caravans are destroyed = starvation.
Good summary. I think part of the confusion here is exactly what Frogboy means by "Global", I know I'm confused because I can a few different scenarios and systems used for what he's been saying. One is what you explained above. Another is that a city just gets food instantly and can't starve unless it has the "under siege" tag attached to it.
Or take the Hub and Spoke idea and apply it here it becomes more evident how the Global Store will operate.
Assuming my first City, plunked down on a Food Resource, is the Hub of a soon to be Wheel made up of outlying towns. If and when any outlying Town along the connected Hub, via the road/spokes, is cut off, it loses access to the Hubs resource pool of Food. Easy to understand, cool and realistic.
What would add even another layer of complexity, without added brain mashing, would be if I could connect each outlying town to one another, or another Hub City one along the chain, to backup each other, thus forcing a Siege force to cut off 3 source routes of Food supply, one from any main Hub and 2 others from other towns connected to it, to actually totally starve off a outlying town. Each single connection lost would apply a percentage loss of the whole Trade connection Bonus that town holds.
The reason this is important is because if you build in some redundancy to your Food network, a loss of a main Hub won't starve every attached outlying town in one pass.
As seen in this crude attempt to illustrate my idea.
http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/790/seige.jpg
How about splitting the difference?
This had been touched on by a couple of other posters.
Food is global, but roads and caravans are required to access this global resource.
Maybe require the building of a caravan unit for each new city.
Destroy the road and that city, (or cities, depending on the topology of the roads) is cut off.
A siege would also cut off that city.
Eh I think we ought to have a slightly more complex economic model as i said earlier.
The only compromise i settle for is that it can be done automatically. Or have it as optional altogether.
But still i perfer a more complex and logical economic model that allows greater management and more awesome features.
And as I said, once it's automatic, you have to ask the question of if it's really doing anything useful.
Caravans can still do all this in a "global" system, to get access to a global resource you need caravans to come and go. If they stop due to a siege, the city is cut off and dependent on its local resources. If it doesn't have enough local food to feed itself, people will starve. That's entirely realistic, makes sieges effective, and doesn't require a complicated system to do.
Sethfc, I think you're not making a compelling case for how the added complexity improves the game.
Quoting Sethfc, reply 13its complex to code yes but its not all that complex for the user so long as it can be set to auto or done manually *setting up special routes etc.* most of this stuff in reality falls right in line with its self *builds up on its own* So it can't be too hard to set it up in a somewhat simplistic fashion.
I understand the appeal of this, but it doesn't sound practically different from what Frogboy has said. The caravan routes would follow the roads, right. So that blocking a road to a city would cut it off from the supply. If you were manually controlling routes, then you'd have to go through re-routing the caravan.
And that's the added game-play? I don't really understand how that level of detail increases the strategic choices in the game. It just sounds like a lot of work, especially when your empire gets large.
If you make it automatic, then the difference between what Frogboy says and what you want is essentially nil in terms of game-play. If there's an unblocked road to a city, then that city gets food. If there's no road, the city must be self-reliant.
Perhaps you could explain more why you think managing the food supply would provide greater strategic/tactical options in the game.
It doesn't have to mean that. It could mean always available assuming caravans are getting through, which isn't the same as a road connection. "Global" just means that there is one pool for the entire kingdom, and any city with access to the pool can use as much as it wants.
You can trade resources with other kingdoms in either system, except in the global one you don't have to decide which cities to pull the resources from. They come from the global pool instead. Same result, much less micro.
"Local storage" means that each city has its own pool of resources, and you can't build swords at X if your iron is in Y until you move the iron. Global eliminates that last part, which is something that will just annoy the hell out of people in the long term anyway.
No reason you can't do that with global storage either. Brad mentioned as much in this thread, and I suggested it last week in the dev journal thread. What changes is that with local storage, destroying a caravan blocks X food, whereas in global destroying a caravan cuts the city off entirely until another caravan successfully gets through.
Really the difference isn't that big in practice, both allow for successful siege tactics and both make protecting caravans a priority.
Yeah, but you can accomplish the same things using global storage. Local storage adds a lot of micromanagement without a lot of extra depth, compared to the system we're talking about.
Great response Frogboy.
Food created locally MEANS self sustaining cities. Having to set up caravans or trade orders in order to bring food from Tile X to Tile Y, or caravans actually taking their time to reach the city (mechanically speaking), is like using Storage Wagons in CIVILIZATION: Colonization.
Imagine playing Colonization, and having City A use food from City B each turn. Imagine having to build 10 storage wagons and constantly having a train of food from City A to City B. If (especially if) a turn = 1 year, then using a "realism" viewpoint caravans would be practically teleporting between cities multiple times during one turn. (Bloody Murder, not worth it for most, impossible in MP). 1Z is a simplified version of this that doesn't cost anything extra. However I am relatively confident that being connected will have value (as I will explain below).
A Caravan in China could travel to Spain over the course of 1 year as long as there was a well protected, wide and paved road. (and probably a lot sooner too).
Food is Perishable so there IS no storage.(only a value for "unused" food) If a city is under seige it starts to starve immediately. IMMEDIATELY. Which means if it has 0 food creation within its walls then it has -100% production penalty and cannot build anything or train any units. If a city is some-what self-sustaining then it can produce at (say) 50% capacity (speed). If a city is completely self sustaining food-wise then it can just laugh at the petty fools trying to besiege them.
For all non-perishable items, yes you can use your global stockpile of wood/iron/adamantium/ect, however if your food supply is 100% gone, then you won't be able to actually produce anything (you won't get any closer to building anything), and if your partially self sufficient then the things you build or the units you train will be created much slower ... probably not before the enemy decides to attack (if they are at all prepared). If however you are 1%-99% self sufficient (lets say 30-70% food sufficient) then your city will be slowed down as long as you allow the raiding/sieging army to stand right outside your city walls. I *think* this % penalty might also apply to the equipment cost of units/buildings as well. Which means if your city is cut off from 50% of the food it uses, and you are training a unit that costs 50 iron, then it will cost your global supply 100 iron. Or if your building uses 100 wood it will cost 200 wood.
Having a connecting road increases the amount of food/resources you have available. What I think this means is that if your city is connected to the road network (potentially multiple road networks) then your houses will cost less net-food and your units/buildings will cost less resources. Say a house not-connected will use 4 net food, while a house connected will use 3 net food.
Additionally, building a Stone Cathedral will cost 100 stone and 200 wood if your city does not produce Stone/Wood and you are not connected to a city that does. It will cost 80 stone and 160 wood if your city is connected or does produce those materials. In both cases, if the city is not under seige, and the city has no labor camps, it will take 10 turns. However if it is under seige and cut off from 50% of its food supply, building said Cathedral would cost 200 stone, 400 wood, and take 20 turns. (all numbers are examples/conjecture)
Finally, caravans in detail. Caravans (to me) will always be a blatant abstraction on a time-scale that is impossible to use caravans on realistic terms (as far as speed). Yes, I understand military movement is under the same concern, but military movement is a game element that is Integral and has to be abstracted somewhat, since military action is extremely important while caravans are the unsung heroes that just aren't important in games of this scale. How many WWII games have a core of "Merchant Marine" units, and how many simply have supply available across the entire Ocean without any distance cost/triviality? The only way such games remove access by sea is through naval blockade (if they even allow that). I know Making History doesn't involve merchant marines (or caravans). I know Total War doesn't have caravans. Merchant Marines = Caravans (of the sea).
One game I know that DOES have merchant marines/caravans used (somewhat) effectively (as a player-controlled unit) is Age of Empires (at least III). They have a Trading Cog. It is not necessary!!! It adds added benefit!!! Unrealistic? maybe. It represents merchant vessels that conduct commerce between cities. its a controllable abstraction of "Trading Routes" of civilization ... however unlike in civilization, the amount of your investment affects the amount of pay-off, and these are the first things to be destroyed during Naval Warfare (destroying all that investment). The pay-off of the Trading Cog is high enough to make it a costly(though still cheap), buildable, and player-controlled unit. Also, it AUTOMATICALLY automates itself to go back-n-forth between City A and City B if it was built in City A and you send it to City B. You don't have to find a way to Automate it, it automatically does it because the automation is a "non-choice". In order to STOP the automation you can click on it and choose a new direction/location. Its not required to access resources (even though its an RTS so some people might auto-expect that), its not required for any normally needed activity. Its only used for EXTRA.
I don't see caravans as something that are needed for elemental, from a Trading Cog perspective. However I don't mind an abstraction with limited mechanical usage.
I see there can be two ways to handle caravan movement and quantity. One way is to automatically create (free) caravans directly proportional to HOW MUCH your city is using global resources NOT produced inside the city. Say one caravan for every 100 *total* goods produced *per turn* not produced inside the city. This includes food. Caravans are spread along all the roads going into your city, hopefully dispersed depending on where the majority of the surplus is coming from (say, a caravan will be much more likely to be on the road between your giant farming city and your giant Marble Mining city). So, you could have 3 caravans travelling between City A and City B, and no caravans travelling between City A and various outposts. Second way- you could simply have one caravan on each City-City connection and each City-outpost connection. This could lead to more than caravan on roads with many destinations, but always only one caravan on a road-segment with only 2 endpoints.
Handling "Caravan Destruction- an aspect of pillaging." One way you could handle caravan destruction is with the following example. Say there is one caravan that travels between City A and City B. As long as this caravan is alive (and there is no road destruction or siege), the two cities gain constant access to global resources. If Horseman Bandit "Fred" destroys the caravan on its way to City B, then City B loses all access to all global resources for the next 1 turn. The Caravan is immediately recreated at the walls of City B.
Handling Roads ... There are two ways to do this. One is to treat the city as if under siege (meaning no access to global resources), and the other way is to not provide the "connected discount". This alternative is hinted at previously, when I said that connected cities (or cities that produced the resource) would be able to use food and equipment at a lower rate (say 80 vs 100, or 3 vs 4). If your city has no roads (and no stone) then your 100 stone building is going to cost 100 stone (instead of 80), and if you have no food, then your houses are going to consume 4 net food as opposed to 3 net food. This is unlike a seige. In a seige if you had no food, all production speeds would halt to 0, and you wouldn't be able to build anything else.
Further notes on a Seige. The Seige would work on an exponential scale depending on how self-sustaining your City was (measuring only food). If your City produced 50% of used food, then everything will cost twice as many materials, and everything would take twice as long to build. If your city produced 10% of used food then everything would cost ten times as many materials and everything would take ten times as long to make. If your city produced 1% of used food, then everything would cost 100 times more materials and take 100 times as long to make. If your city produced 0% of the food, then it would cost infinitely more materials (cannot purchase anything new), and would take an infinite period of time to make (production is halted). This represents the Starvation of the citizens without actually having to decrease the population. Alternatively, they could decide that purchasing prices are the same and siege only effects the TIME it takes to produce items ... however I think that would nerf siege, and that increased prices reflect how hard it is to ship something into a city under seige (or inversely the ability for people/citizens to destroy private property in order to build what is required).
also, Frogboy's response was well-said, pleasant to read, and not at all a surprise.
I am surprised that people found it at all confusing.
I think we'd lose a lot by going to local-only resources.
For example, I should be able to starve an entire kingdom if they put all their eggs in one breadbasket.
Local-only resources removes multiple dimensions of strategy. One of the reasons why TBS games tend to have a grindingly painful end game is because of local-only resources.
In the typical TBS, EVERY game ends up a war of attrition. Not so in Elemental. With proper scouting, I can spot a kingdom's weak spots. If they have a key city producing most of their food, that is the city I lay siege to. If they have a key city for producing all of their metal, that's the city I'll focus on.
If cities spread it out evenly, I still can wreak havoc by laying siege to a city keeping it out of the global resource network (i.e. turning the city into a local-only hub).
I like what you're saying, but couldn't this be applied to a local-resource based model as well?
Connect cities via roads to allow for resource sharing. No caravans, no inner-kingdom trade routes: just roads. Cities that don't have food production will use spare food provided by other cities. If the road is severed / obstructed or if the city comes under siege then they lose access to the food that they require (along with the other shared resources).
Yeah Frogboy it does apply to local too there's no reason to not have a local system that functions similar to how me and tasunke have been saying.
I am going Green now. If you keep "local" needs in place vs Global resources to produce, then the sky is the limit to City diversty.
Global + travel time for non-local needs vs movement cost overland will solve it all. right?
We do let players connect roads and have caravans to increase their resources.
1Z! 1Z! 1Z!
Frogboy, as i stated before, i agree with you 100%. I think you should move from the local-only to avoid the end game issues you discuseed.
All I want to know is "how the hell does the food get from point A to point B, and who pays for it?"
As the topic imples (which i think has been lost over the discussion), logic vs fun.
Is there no way to satifsy both?
Food and resources are available everywhere. You could look at it as a hidden penalty for not having roads or having roads provide a bonus. It's really the same thing but people respond better to bonuses than penalties.
So are you saying caravans no longer transport actual food but rather have an abstract "% food increase" amount attached to them?
So is it a bonus amount of global food that becomes available with Roads stemming from City w/Food to cities w/o Food?
Or does being connected to a "food hub" allow each Housing building to require 1 less food??
//I suppose the first way would run more smoothly, I simply had the impression that it was the second method
@ Rising Legend- Yes, its more realistic that way. Cities do not rely on a monolithic caravan in real life (or real fantasy life) its many groups of Traders and Smugglers, most who don't even need to use a proper road. Its only the offical, snobbish "I must ride in horse and carriage" merchants that require the presence of a road. I surmise that an Imperial Road (better than a standard road) would provide a much larger % increase than normal road, because then you get the Heavily Commercialized Wagon Train of goods that you would see in The Roman Empire for instance.
Well, that should be something along those lines but not so dramatic.
Our ancestors didn't wait for us to invent electricity and fridges to keep food: granaries for grains, rye bread, smoked fish, salted meat, fruits in sugar, honey,...
Even with a system in which food is perishable, we could add an option for constructing granaries into an exposed city. Let's say it would fill with every global surplus there is by turn and will be depleted in case of siege by how much % the city lack in self-sustaining by turn!
So I just checked out the 1z update.
Pardon my traditional TBS mindset.
How on earth does building a workshop in one city add materials for another city?
In my mind, it would be like in MoM if you had a 25 pop city all switched to workers using their production to build a barracks in a new outpost you just created.
Again, i'm sure it adds to the fun of the game to have food and material be global, but please explain the logic behind the infrastructure.
I was thinking about it yesterday. Now if you can code part of this as AI behavior, that would be fabulous!
I haven't played the beta yet ,but I read everyones post and the post about the camps. Here I see a lot of people arguing that the local one can do A,B,C the global can but it lets them micro more for the same results. Im my opinion if something can be abstracted from a more complex system with the same or very similar results, while removing unnecessary complexity and will allow a bigger player base. I am all for this global system that at the same time allows for sieges and blockades. I dont see a reason as to why i have to map every route so my cities have supplies when frogboy & his crew can come up with an effective algorithm that does it instantly and I can focus on the many other aspects of the game.
sorry that english isn't my first language, hope its clear
-Crasus Akechi
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
