After playing a few games, I have to say that global resources have some negative consequences. It certainly eliminates some micromanagement, but it completely trivializes the value of real estate and infrastructure. I can build whatever I want, my most advanced military units, even on a brand new outpost without any concern for logistics. It matters not that I had to escort my pioneer to this place with half my army because of the deadly expanse of forest filled with terrible monsters, and it really should matter. It's alot funner if it matters.
Another thing that devalues real-estate is that you can spawn resources by researching techs. You build a city any old place with enough room, and eventually it will justify itself after the fact. It seems a little goofy.
These two things really take alot of the fun out of exploration. You don't want to lose one of the X's. You only have 4 and 4 is better than 3 in that regard. It also means that it doesn't really matter which of an enemies city you conquer, because they're all kinda the same with resources spawning in after the fact.
Each city shoud have it's own pool. Caravans could be used to spread some of the resources around (maybe creating a percentage of the source cities income in the destination city).
A unit with a horse could cost +0.2 maintenance, a unit with a warg could cost +0.1 maintenance.
A Faction with "horsemasters" trait could use horses with only +0.1 maintenance instead of +0.2
A Faction with "warg-masters" trait could have +1 runspeed on all wargs
the more expensive "nomadic" faction trait, could add +2 runspeed and +1 attackspeed to all mounted units
I think there should be more at play to ensure that we only build near our borders and to keep our borders linked together, so that we don't have cities scattered around all over the place with nonsensical borders. Maybe some new border in addition to City borders, like Kingdom/Empire Borders could be added that confers penalties to any settlement outside a certain area of influence and slowly expands or shrinks area of influence depending on research, policies, and city influence. Of course a Policies menu would require additional content, but it's been part of the civilization series since Civ3, hell I think even Call to Power had policies you could set that effected globals.
I second most of the concerns in the OP.
Gildar and Food, global. Everything else, NOT Global. A lot of us beta testers warned against what Global resources like this would do to the game. Everyone screamed "No, No, Micro BAD"....and we end up with a map with resources that don't matter much. The resources matter, but where they are doesn't matter. It's not a good system. I should have to guard my caravans and they should have to transport good to cities to have things like armor and weapons made. I should be able to Specialize my cities instead of just building everything in every city with no consequences like I do now. Adding in Non Globals would make cities actually matter. Also I notice cities are Still WAY too close together. The AI and the player both spam cities everywhere. By the time you reach a level 4 city if you happened to feel like snaking your city you can make them both touch. By late mid game the entire map is covered in cities with next to No Space Between them and it looks Horrible. They really,y REALLY, need to Increase the spread of the ZOC to prevent this.
Ideally I would like to see only Gildar and Mana be global (like in MoM) and all other resources should be TRADED. This way unlike Civ food grown in one city isn't limited there but can be used to grow another city. On the other hand it shouldn't instantly teleport over oceans and enemy territory so that you can rapid build an army on your opponents doorstep from your fledgling village.
P.S. - the main people I remember screaming that micro was bad wasn't the beta testers but the developers and a very few others.
I agree with the op.
Geography should matter more. Real resource management is what gives world spanning, epic, empire building, turn based games their feel. Obviously too much micro management is bad, but always simplifying your game isn't good either.
As the game is now if you conquer one neighbor your instantly almost all powerful because so many resources have magically spawned in their area in the early game and all their resources nodes are all magically added to your global pool.
That was pretty much it, though there were a few beta testers screaming micro was bad too, just not as many. We did have our fair share of arguments on it though lol.
Heh. Yea, plenty of arguments. I for one, think that the game "Elemental" would do with global Gildar, Food, Mana, Knowledge, and Arcane.
As far as metal and materials ... honestly it doesn't matter. Its not, to me, the availability of resources, but just how simple the "rest" of the game is.
If I were to make a mod, I'd probably prefer to have local mana (on a character by character basis ... not global), although I'd probably keep all the other resources global.
Instead, I'd tie much of the equipment to certain new buildings, and I would have buildings have "building reqs" instead of only tech reqs. Basically, there would be too many buildings to have both economy AND the ability to build every kind of unit. Part of the Unit availability/customizability would come from your "city space" in your cities. Want the best horses? That's gonna take a couple buildings. "want the best armor?" another couple buildings.
And it wouldn't just be "the best horses" ... like in another post you have basic stables, and then two secondary buildings (one for speed the other for armor).
And I wouldn't have horses and warg's be identical .... and I wouldn't have them be anywhere near as simple as "+1 combat speed."
I guess in some ways ... MoM and Rome:Total War share many similarities. Need Tech? Just build buildings. MoM just adds Production and Mana, otherwise they both use a Gold-only system. Sure most military units have a food upkeep in MoM, but in the long run the food upkeep just makes it harder/slower to get more units ... so its not too different from the Gold-only system. Also, both use the building pre-req system. ties into Tech=buildings, in that (like in an RTS) the way you get better units is simply by building all the proper pre-reqs.
I guess the middle ground between the MoM/Rome system and the Civ/Elemental system is to have a building pre-req system tied into an actual tech (with tech points) system. For instance, the simple horseriding tech may unlock both Pastures and all 3 of the horse-unlocking city buildings. Then, if you have low tech but high resources, while your researching the next tech you can get your military cities primed for pumping out your favorite cavalry.
I'm not sure how I feel about the "time" resource. Its innovative, it seems fun, although it becomes moot once you get to -100% troop training time from buildings. Then not only is there a way completely around it ... but it suddenly makes all the time WITHOUT -100% rather annoying. Like, If I had my way, I wouldn't train a single unit larger than a party until I had -75% or -100% troop training time.
While I don't fully agree with how long it takes for large units to be trained, I like how it takes longer to train certain weapons.
I mean, honestly, I'd rather have a system where having a HUGE field means you can train 80 people the same speed as training 1 person (as long as same unit), rather than them both taking 1 (or 0) turns while normally it would take say 5 turns.
Now, obviously a city with a rather small training yard would take more than 5 turns (1 soldier) to train 80 soldiers ... assuming the city has a training yard designed with a Party in mind, it may take 20x as long ... yet if it was designed for training 40 soldiers, training 80 soldiers would only take twice as long.
Therefore, in order to train a unit of many soldiers, you need the proper infrastructure first. I'd probably make equipping 80 soldiers much cheaper than equipping a single soldier 80 times. I'd also reduce the maintenance fees significantly.
I mean ... the whole point of having a single unit of 80 soldiers is to have a single cohesive logistical unit. If tactical battles and armies shouldn't have unit limits, then there should really be an incentive to build a squad of 80 vs 80 squads of 1 (and that cheaper cost is the main, if only, reason)
Yeah, we've talked a lot about this back in those days. Needless to say, I always preferred the local resource system [like you've said it's more strategic and realistic as well], but I never had problems with micromanagement in any games. However.....local res. model -> much more micro [especially on huge maps]. I guess most of the players wouldn't like that. It's not for the "masses".
Indeed. I was "one of those" testers. ... but from Stardock's perspective...perhaps the global model was more acceptable, because -like I've said in my reply to Rishkith-, the local res. model means much more micro, and I guess most of players wouldn't like that....but hell knows...maybe I am wrong.
True. Also though people need to realize, this is a Grand Strategy Game. If thy didn't understand that, or wanted a dumbed down board game, they should have bought something else. People wouldn't like or play strategy games like GalCiv 2 on a PC if they wanted to play "Risk". This is why games like that sell to different audiences then games like this. If they try to make Elemental into something that tries to please both Hard Core Strategy fans and Casual Strategy fans, they'll end up making something that NEITHER group will like. Because it will be Too Simple for the Hard Core, and Too Complex for the Casuals. They need to make up their mind on which group they want to please and which group their customer base belongs too. I know if they dumbed the whole thing down to "Risk" levels I wouldn't be buying the expansions, and that would be very very sad to me because I think this is an amazing game with an amazing future ahead of it if they steer it in the right direction.
i think there can be alot of strategy that goes along with global resources. i like it, but not because it reduces micro. i actually like both systems. the only problems with t e current system is a lack of balance. resources are everywhere in whats suppose to be a dying world. the only rare resources are the shards. there is nothing to fight over. i think what we need is a hybrid system where your basic resources can be made where ever there is a city and special resources for those must have units are rare and need to fight over.
food/materials/iron - these should be available anywhere, maybe make it where you can get this stuff from buildings. in order to have this stuff plentiful though you will have to really make some specialized cities.
crystal/shards/special tiles - this stuff should be rare and only have a handful on the board.
i have to repeat that i don't like the tech that spawns resources. waaaay to easy to take advantage of.
Civ4 has a moderate position -- some resources are global, some local, and transportation can make a local into a global. There is little micro, and what there is is made pretty easy by the great UI.
Elemental took an extreme position -- extremely simple. I understand not implementing the 'extreme' micro suggestions, but going to the 'extremely simple' instead of a more moderate position suggests who the intended market is.
A turn-based strategy game should be feature at least a relatively complex resource/economy mechanic. There is no reason why there shouldn't be since you are not fighting against the clock. Complex resources and economies lead to much more diverse and complex city planning and tactical strategies of your opponents as you have strategic targets instead of the current system where it's just a "sweeping" of cities, with the closest being the primary target.
I just began working on a Dark Sun conversion for Elemental, and I know that I plan to have a particularly complex resource and economy system in place. For instance. food and water will be necessary for population growth. Clay pits will have to be mined and will be used by various buildings to produce specific items such as ceramic bits (currency/gold). I am also hoping that the caravan system can be enhanced so resources can be moved along the routes. So as it stands, my intentions are to have essentially all resources be local, with the only exception being mana (potentially).
Micro is bad, there just isn't an abnormally high level of it when you use a sufficiently complex resource system because the system itself is handling what gets abstracted into idiocy in the simpler systems. You can even do full blown supply trains carrying replacement gear and ammo without having to make a single mouse click to run it. We have just as much micro now as we would with a demand driven, migrating population extracting and developing raw materials into discrete finished products through multiple stages.
Automation of complex systems is what computers are designed for.
Actually, micro isn't THAT bad if it gains a good degree of automation. I'd like to point people to a game called Distant Worlds. It has about 20 strategic resources required to assemble whatever ship you want. Construction doesn't move foward unless you have such resources, however it hardly becomes a hassle to micromanage them, because there's an extensive "private" sector of automated ships which move around gathering resources and shipping them to your starports and such. The lesson we could extract from this? Locally situate resources, but have a robust and automated system for shipping them.
What I envision is caravans gaining a greater importance on the game. As you build them and hook your cities around with roads (which should progress into better versions more promptly than they do at the moment) creating a trade network, the game would run a node-based pathfinding algorythm to determine a kind of "shipping time" for goods. So if you have a metal mine on one end of your empire, the cities closest to it would have a higher availabilty of the resource, and would train units that require metal faster than those further away. How to improve such dynamics would consist of constructing trading centers (which would speed up the trade flow), and by guarding routes (links), so if the longer they traveled a particular route it'd improve from road to trail and so on and increase the shipping speed on that link.
The real magic here would be fine tuning the numbers so the game keeps differences among cities even in a mature game or a game with road spam.
Yeah, the question is "what are caravans actually capable of?" Right now, they are primitive. And that is being generous. But the xml is full of refereces to "Caravan"-related things.
It would be very nice to have a caravan manager type UI that you can manage trade routes as detailed as you like, with an "automated" option for those that don't like to micromanage such things. Day of Discovery had a nice trade management UI that was very simple.
I really don't like how clay, obsidian, marble, forest, etc. give you generic "materials." It's just far too generic. I mean, why take the time to make different tiles for all of these things if they are just going to produce a resource titled "materials?" It's way too dumbed down.
It will take me some time, but I'll figure out how to modify this stuff. It will take some time, but I will get it eventually.
Going back to the OP, the specific problem of new outposts building military units could be solved by the way people are handled
As we have it, pop growth is by an absolute number each turn, such that 1 person breeds as fast as 500. Military units are fairly small in number, so training them doesn't hit population much.
If we had population growth scaling with size, as it does implicitly with civ, say by increasing pop growth by 1 per city level, and military units had more people in them, larger cities would be more capable of producing military units and we wouldn't just be able to train them on the frontiers. This would also give some meaning to population besides for acquiring city level - you'd need a high pop to keep your armies going.
A real economy with tech advancements slowly leading to highly productive farming lands that needed less workers to run would be able to shift the scale of war production by massive amounts too.
The real world history of food production versus army size shows what you can do with a gradual shift away from agriculture as the primary occupation.
Agreed.
Some beta testers wanted a fairly extreme micro -- tracking ore by city, transporting it to where it would be processed, tracking to where the metal would be crafted into weapons, tracking the weapons produced to storage where it would later be distributed to the units that would equip them, etc.Civ4 has a moderate position -- some resources are global, some local, and transportation can make a local into a global. There is little micro, and what there is is made pretty easy by the great UI.Elemental took an extreme position -- extremely simple. I understand not implementing the 'extreme' micro suggestions, but going to the 'extremely simple' instead of a more moderate position suggests who the intended market is.
Well yeah, put me into that "I voted for extreme micro" group. [I understand & accept that they decided not to implement this system, since the majority of the players wouldn't like it...]
Either way, perhaps the Civ4 style resource system could work very well in EWoM as well...like you've said it has global and local resources & moderate amount of micro -> perhaps this would please everyone.
I reckon that compromise worked well. A resource is available in every city that it is connected to through the trade network. The lack of a "network" in Elemental is detrimental and I think that needs to be added. Instead of caravans, I think pioneers should be able to create roads like in AoW;SM. This connects cities to the network and allows them to share resources. Creating roads should cost money - that will help reduce the effect of city spam a little, as you won't be able to plop a city down anywhere and start churning out the best units straight away.
However, this would require the resource collection mechanism to be changed, since there's currently only one global total. The stats would have to be tracked independently per network, which gets messy.
Or maybe use the Colonization method - resources are gathered in cities and can be transported between cities through automated trade routes. This would benefit gameplay in that instead of spamming a huge army by pumping out units in every city, you're forced to create a network that funnels resources into a few unit producing super cities. These routes would have to be protected and should be a prime target for an enemy army, to disrupt that civ's supply chain and ruin its economy.
With a good UI and a well-designed game, 'extreme micro' would take a modicum of time/effort to set up but then should run fairly smoothly and only need tweaking as things change (techs, resource availability, obsolescence of items, enemy actions, etc.).
Better this sort of 'extreme micro' than the 'extremely simple' we now have.
I'm going to come out in this thread and say that I'm a MAJOR fan of global resources.
a) It's intelligent from a gameplay standpoint. It alleviates the problems of unnecessary micromanagement. Why is it unnecessary? Because all of the players would eventually find ways to utilize far-flung resources and instead of us having to bend over backwards to do this, the game does it for us. The problem is that it's an unnecessary step. It adds a level of complexity that is detrimental to gameplay (notice the word is gameplay, not workjob).
It's historically accurate. The only resources that weren't global was ACTUALLY FOOD. The only resource no one complains about being global is the only resource that shouldn't be global. Metal is transportable. Timber is transportable. Food spoils and is only transportable for certain distances. If anything, food shouldn't be transportable.
Keep all the resources global. You're making a game, not a job. If you wanna play global micromanagement, go play US Government.
You sir, WINS THE INTERNET!!!!
Oh, so what you're saying is All The Players would come up with a Strategy....damn. Here I thought this was a Strategy game and not risk, which is a strategy game made for ages 12 and up. I'm a lot closer to "Up" and a lot less closer to 12.
I'm not saying I'm completely against Globals, I'm not. Some things should be Global. But having everything Global is making the game ridiculously stupid and easy and is RUINING Game-play. This is why we're having the PROBLEMS we're having in game now. Because this system is TOO SIMPLE.
All I heard was "hurp-durp." And I heard that because your point is that you just want more unnecessary micromanagement. There is no need to have to personally, one by one, build supply depots to send all your metal to the capital so you can send it to your port city so you can use it to fashion cannons that you then have to transport to your city on another continent so you can outfit that random siege unit you're building on the frontlines. Did I mention you have to manage all this, and if you don't do this, your production gets stalled?
Essentially what you want is to be forced to waste your time. There is no strategy in bureaucratic logistics. There is no upside to time-wasting. Real strategy isn't moving around specific pieces of metal, it's about figuring out how to marshal those resources to win. The fact that the game does the tedious and unnecessary task of building supply dumps and moving around the materials for us means that we can spend more time on the real strategy of the game. God forbid people want to play the game, and not play "Elemental: Waste of Money".
The first word in the thread title is, "[Gameplay]". Start your own thread and start it off with "[WorkJob]" like I already suggested.
Ummm. Global resources are historically accurate? For one, resources on planet Earth are NEVER global, except for air. Can you please let me know what other resources on this planet that are truly global? Even water isn't, otherwise we would not have distributed water to our homes, dams, water purity systems, etc. Maybe you have servants bringing you everything... Who knows.
Second, what exactly is "historical" about a magical fantasy world. Oh wait, was that a typo? Did you mean "hysterically?"
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