Today we’re talking about different ways we can streamline the creation of resources. A long time ago, we wanted to put in a system where I could mine ore which could be turned into ingots and so on. Basically, one resource being turned into another resource.
Of course we can already do some of this through existing buildings (e.g. imagine a metals exchange building with an upkeep of 1 metal per turn, which produces 5 gilder per turn). What we really need is to be able to switch them off (via population? - if they are not staffed then they don't operate and don't cost the upkeep?) or even switch them into reverse/ a different mode (upkeep of 10 guilder per turn and produces 1 metal) The real question is how many resources. the current number seems workable - more may be interesting but may also be a proliferation and turn the game into supply chain management (and with global resources this isn't very interesting as there is no logistics of getting stuff from one place to another)
we have already had that with the market (it was generating money by selling food, although that wasn't made clear - it might have been better to have a building that sold all surplus food, or be able to close a market without destroying it if you needed the extra food, perhaps producing 2 gilders for every food sold (equal to the surplus food), but having 1 guilder maintainance)
You may also get some bonus for conducting the trade (diplomatic capital? prestige?) but perhaps also some penalty (easier for opponents to gather information on you)
As for the proliferation of a vast number of resources, we already have that in the form of books, sand Golem tokens, midnight stones etc. It would be nice to do more with those than to just sell them or do one quest. It might be better to make some of those less unique, and reuse them in a number of different ways. (boost to research, crafting of unique weapons for heros, or potentially squads) I am thinking of things like Flame swords (4 metal 1 crystal and one midnight stone) or wolf pelt armour (4 wolf pelts plus one resource). Perhaps this could be handled via the trader (or some new crafter) and you might need to find or research the templates for particular items (or deduce them from an example of the item)
In short keep the global resources simple and global, but introduce some way of using the more unique drops into something like special resources - make have more uses, and don't make them all unique, and enable the use of these with the standard resources.
It would be cool to have a more complex eco system [we've talked a lot about this during the beta - Camp1/2/3 eco system post by Froggie], but yeah...perhaps most of the players wouldn't like it.
Yop, totally agree that we need to know where Elemental want to go before putting idea together. Like I said before, if the refine system is implemented just to add some "realism" (instead of using 8 ore that we abstractly transform into iron, we do transform this ore to make iron) then I don't think it's a good idea. It just add some layer that don't add anything but realism, wich is not that bad but not needed. I would also point another game that I really liked to play and I was thrilled that it was in sale with impulse :X3.Best real-time spacial 4X I've played. I love to create a vast and powerful business that bring me million/hour. The system here is huge for ressource: you can create and mine everything. But like someone else said, with this kind of system, we absolutly need a huge trading system and we dont have this. does the game need such a system? Perhaps not since it's WAR of magic. And I think that is why we need to know what the dev and Frogboy had in mind when creating Elemental.More city building then war? More magic then city building? A little bit of everything? How many "turn" a game should last in average? That is all we need to know before , in my opinion, posting some idea about what should be and what souldn't be.
"Camp 1/2/3/4" is from a very old (May 2009) discussion about how the economy should work. Taking into account the lengthy post sizes (and the 23 pages), it's probably the single longest thread on the forums. IIRC this was all before any version of the game was publicly available.
You can tell someone has been around here a while if they throw terms like "camp 1" around. The goal in camp 1 was a highly sophisticated production economy, where you'd mine ore, send it to be processed, send that to be turned into swords, then stockpile the swords. If you need troops in a hurry, you can use the stockpile of swords and not have to wait 10 turns per unit while swords get made (since you already made them).
The idea there is that with resource stockpiles and advanced production, raiding supply lines becomes viable and sieging the city that has the smelters actually cuts them off from the rest of the economy, which would wreak havok. It also meant that the sieged city could only use whatever it could make itself or had in storage (so if you had swords piled up there you could churn out units, but if you didn't your guys are using pointy sticks).
In the end what we actually got wasn't quite like any of the camps, but is closer to camp 2/4 then it is to camp 1.
Having something like ingots would as others have said be pointless, they would just be placeholders for other resources. Having something like steel in which to make better weapons however would be a good idea. Having the ability to change gold into iron however might be very OP and diversity killing. It would reduce strategy, make trading with other players, and questing for resources pointless.
People seem to agree the best idea for producing extra resources like steel would be a building like a blacksmith. Some people however seem to think it would be pointless because you would only ever need one. However what if the blacksmith functioned like a market and used materials and iron up and pumped out so much steel per turn instead of instantly at the press of a button? On side note a way to turn off markets and blacksmiths would be nice.
Rather then sub resources I would like to see more unique resources scattered across the map. Something like spice in CIV? To encourage diplomacy and trading of resources. Also you should be able to set trade deals up with other players that function on a per turn bases. Like 1 iron for 2 gold per turn for 30 turns.
"He who control the spice control the universe", another good game .
No, I'm not interested in x ore= 1 ingot over y time frame logistics, it's just not Fantasy. I might have read a novel or two or played a Role Playing session where a particular potion or spell had certain reagents that was central to the plot but it's like a drop in the ocean compared to the main fantasy themes. I just don't want to get bogged down by it when I'm looking at immersing myself into a bigger picture fantasy world.Fantasy focuses more on where a thing is made or who made the thing than the sum of every component required to make it. Elemental is a Fantasy world not a medieval one.It's sufficient that a blacksmith must use iron to make a sword. Where it becomes really interesting is when and how the Blacksmith becomes a Great Blacksmith or even a Named blacksmith as the sword then becomes a greater quality sword or even a named sword. The satisfaction of making that story unfold will always be more fondly recalled than a micro management tour de force involving 15 base items, 10 production facilities and 3 level 4 towns locked down by turn 85.On a less relevant topic but something that has been mentioned a few times on this thread as to the type of resources available. I do find it a shame that the magical transformation of the land does not create new resources types ( like herbs ) or interact with the existing resources in interesting ways, and it is only after the land around the ore teems with flora that we can strip mine the place. I understand the game mechanic but it does throw me out of the narrative. I'm sure it's been discussed so enough said.
Could we get a clarification on what you mean by "streamline" the creation of resources? It seems that the resource system as it stands now is very streamlined. What do you see as the incentive/payoff of changing the current system? Currently we have essentially 3 primary resources to worry about (guildar, materials, and metal) and 1.1 will add population and mana to that list. There are also a handful of secondary resources (e.g. crystal, horses, wargs). I find managing these to be sufficiently interesting and would rather it not be further complicated.
That depends on how it is done. It can be balanced if it is in small quatities (thus taking up population to run the buildings and tile slots, therefore incurring an opprotunity cost which will increas substancially as you do more swapping) or by making it so ineffeciant to do that unless you have more of the resource(s) you are giving up than you could possibly use in a reasonable timeframe it would not be a good idea.
I would like to see both be availible, with the refining step being a choice about what global resource I will get and converters for turning lots of one thing into another.
Example: Say I have a city that I have focused on gold production and it has a metal mine. I have thousands of unused metal and lots of income for it, but I need more gold. I would like to be able to build buildings that turn the ore from the mine into goods that can be sold for more income, rather than smelting it into metal to add to the vast amounts I already have. Then if I still need more gold, there could be an alchemist structue that takes metal (say 8) and some other resources (say 1 crystal and 8 materials) and produces 8 gold (or some other number that would make trading with others better if there is a friendly person to trade with).
You could have small scale converters and large scale, but for the effecient (in terms of resources in and resources out), it seems better to me to require it to be in the same town the resources to be converted are. People that do not care for the extra complexity can just build the structures to produce the logical global resource (in the case of the example, they would produce metal) and be done with it. Those that ignore it can still play, but they cannot expect to play compeditively on a high level (online against people that take every advantage and the hardest AI) where the opponents do everything else and well or better than them and maximize their income.
Summary:
- Simple global economy.
- Complex local economy that can be ignored, but if used well can provide a notable boost to your effectiveness in the game.
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The only time having to build more buildings to get your economy going could seriously make the game less fun is the early game, and that needs fixing anyways. It would be good that if there are to be more steps in production to make changes to how the early game plays (make it practical to start adventuring and fighting monsters as soon as the first town is founded) at the same time so that then there is less turns where you just end turn.
Ah, I think I was camp 4. I still think that would be the best option.
I think resources present an opportunity to make each game very different from another game. Basic mundane things like wood, iron, food etc. don't excite me very much any more. It wouldn't bother me a bit if stuff like that was just automatic.
What I would like to see resource wise is an eleborate network of rare resources that you can use to put spells and special equipment together. There should be so many resource types that you would have to play 5 or more games to see them all, and depending on the exact combination that you have access to, your research trees and paths to victory would be very different for each combination.
I would also like to see resources change depending on the type of magic that you imbue your kingdom with. So you would have maybe ten resources with a nuetral, useless version placed in the 'dead world', and as the land takes on your particular magic influence, it changes to something useful to your flavor of magic.
So for example, lets say you have a resource called a 'petrified forest' on the dead world. If you spread chaos magic there you might change it to 'eternal forest fire' that produces 'hyperflame charcoal' that gives you access to certain fire spells. While if you spread life or nature magic there it would revitalize into a 'verdant grove' that produces 'golden apples' that could allow you to recruit unicorns or something.
If the different factions could use more magic types to change the terrain other than 'life' and 'death' magic, the world map could end up as a very diverse and interesting fantasy world. At that point, you could introduce a trading system where sovereigns could obtain resources outside of their sphere of magic, that when combined with the resources they have, could unlock special content. So if you have 'golden apples' and you trade for 'hyperflame charcoal' you can use the two resources to recruit 'fairae dragons' or something.
Colonization is the exact system I thought of when I saw this discussion. Fits almost seamlessly to be honest. You construct a building that is capable of making a product. You have to staff it with population (including sometimes a specialist). The more population you put into it, the more of that item you could make. As you climbed the tech tree, you could put more people into that production line and the odds of creating a master specialist went up. You even had to use them to create knowledge or influence or anything else. You could set up caravans that transported one product to another place. There was a huge number of resources to be dealt with. For instance, you would mine mountains for metal, which would have to be smelted to make metal bars or whatever, which would then be sent somewhere else to be turned into guns or something else. More over, it was somewhat complex while still being really simple to manage and keep track of. Ever since I saw this post, I've been thinking of Colonization.
Although I was originally for camp 1, I was pretty happy with the direction things went. I still think camp 1 "economics" could be made to work, but I don' think it could be a tweak I think it would involve a major gutting and rework from the ground up, and really you would end up with a different game.
One thing I had pictured which I thought would be fun is if you discovered "mithril" and started making mithril swords, you could click on an existing swordsman unit, choose to upgrade, and then like in Civ V you could upgrade the unit, but unlike Civ V it would not be a cost in gold, you actually could go into the design screen for that unit and swap the obsolete equipment for the new equipment. Maybe you would have two different unit templates "swordsman" and "elite swordsman" and you design elite swordsman as an upgrade path, and you have to have all the required items in your resource pool to perform the upgrade.
I have a ton of thoughts on this, but really nothing that wasn't said twenty times in the original thread on the subject.
I don't want to spend time shipping shit from one place to another I don't want to spend a single mouse click messing with a complex resource system.
Fortunately, I don't have to. I should be able to click on my enchanted paladin or whatever and have all the resources, from top to bottom, create themselves.
For those of you thinking it's too complicated, too much to manage, this post is for you.
Civ is the brain dead simple approach. You abstract away the complicated resource system, and use a complicated bonus system instead. You don't make machine guns, rifles, uniforms, any of that stuff. You build a barracks. Instead of different kinds of food, you build a grocer, super market, etcetera. You spam the living shit out of your various settlements with one building after another providing various bonuses for resources that don't exist in a discrete fashion, just as modifiers for those buildings.
You still build all the crap that makes the world go round, it just doesn't actually make anything. Your only concern for city x is what city x needs. You're not really building an empire at all. If you had actual resources, you wouldn't need to build everything related to producing better troops faster at every place you need to build troops from. A wee bit of automation takes care of it just fine with zero input from you.
Want resources stockpiled at a city? Build a store house. Want weapons and armor stockpiled at a city? Build an armory. You still build the forge, the barracks, the market, etcetera, but it's managing actual resources that have tactical and strategic importance. Your caravans carry actual supplies, your cities hold actual supplies. You can be raided for them, your enemy can be raided for them. Instead of spending ridiculous amounts of time building a unit with good equipment, you'd be making the equipment as you went along and actually creating the unit would be instantaneous with the resources already there. You'd get to think and plan, it would actually be entertaining to develop an empire.
It could be almost entirely automated. You already build all the crap now, it's just that with a real system in place you'd be building an empire, instead of just a city. Strategic depth to combat would go through the roof, time spent managing resources would not.
The resources are there and they are working, I don't see any point in complicating things. It's not broken so don't fix it.
What is broken though is combat, unit design, quests, magic, etc.
However, the economy is being changed already. It will be going to be based around your population and will focus on cities rather than resource tiles for the most part. As it is changing, it makes perfect sense to evaluate if there is a way to make the economy work better in the new model.
I'm just worried about the direction of this game, I find resource management incredibly boring. The change in how population works was the least needed improvement to the game imo. I say give us fun gameplay elements first, then improve the economic model!
I think the advantage of a system like this is that instead of having city "level up" moments where you pick a "level up" bonus for the city, it's handled by specialists. Want to create a city that's specialized in weapon production? Assign as many specialists to forges/smelters/etc as you can. It gives you similar effects but in a much more seamless and intuititive way. (20 guys working as blacksmiths = more weapons then 10 guys working there. That's a lot better then "20% more weapons" when the city grows to level 3.)
If we get other city options later, the same system can apply to that. Want to build city walls that are manned in addition to your garrison in the event of an attack? Put specialists on the wall as town guards. Want to boost mana production? Assign specialists to pray at the temple, or whatever it is we do for mana in 1.1.
The system really offers a lot of flexibility.
Colonization is a great game (guess what I did all day this past Columbus Day) but the resource model works for the theme of the game; the emergence of independent European economies in the New World. Elemental is a fantasy game whose emphasis (I had/have/will continue to hope) is on the unfolding of a fantasy narrative. Narratives that emerge from gameplay should be more like reading Silmarillion or the Earthsea cycle. We don't really care where the ore came from, where the ingots were smelted, where the weapons were forged; we do care about the heroes and their nations, the battles and quests and adventures that make the fantasy world interesting.
Tinkering with the economic model is not the only strategic element in the game. For the crowd that wants more strategy and more options in the economic sphere, the way to go is with stratgic narrative decisions. Think along the lines of the blessed (they're that good) EU series (especially Crusader Kings, EU3, EU:Rome in which dynamic narrative events influence the direction of gameplay, all depending on the current in-game situation). Diffusing Elemental's game focus into a frivolous economic model is not the way forward.
"City level up moments" are cool (except that you can't inspect the city after the popup), it keeps the game focused on the restoration of Elemental and the War of Magic. To keep it balanced, have specializing a city towards one type of output impose penalties on other outputs.
Having various ore types and other resource types would make for a more strategic feel to the game. I.E. We'd all be fighting over resources AND shards. Maybe IRON ORE which would have to be mined, smelted, etc. before being used to upgrade troops. If a kingdom/empire doesn't have any iron mines, they'd have to trade for it or conquer/settle a location with a mine near it. Since this is a world after a catalysmic event, I'd think that part of the rebuilding process would be to find and secure various resources.
Hmmm. I remember colonization and EU series different than most of you I guess.
Colonization (great game for it's day) was basically a trading type game, right? One of the fundamental aspects of the game was getting the finished goods right? I played it, and am hoping I am not getting it confused bits and pieces, with others like stronghold, settlers, LoTR, etc... They all get murky until I break out the old game box...
EU series, (great potential) was kinda crappy. It broke my heart, I heard it was some uber strategy game, that was kind of like a super-size RISK game. Alas, I was deceived. LOL Best part of EUs in my opinion was trying to take over world. But of course that was impossible with the random revolts, 12 million years to convert a provence to your religion, random armies spawning way way inside your country, taking dozens of turns to eradicate. etc...
SO I remember Col as a trading type game, and EU as a random spawning mess of a risk game. (I hated their combat mechanic, so I auto'd all of them).
This game WAS SUPPOSED to be like MoM. Of course it was going to have it's own flavor, updates, changes, nuances etc... But I personally do not think that a more complicated resource system is the answer. Yes it needs fixed. Yes, I agree with "camp1" or whatever that gang's name is (Peace homies...) when they say a more robust resource system would have been nicer. I like the whole "I got 5 swords in inventory, now I can quick build 5 sowrdsman". But do we need to go about it by having me research a shovel to dig a whole, finding iron ore in said whole, researching carbon, finding carbon, researching forging, building a forge, Researching blacksmithing:slash, to make slashing weapons... etc. etc. etc... Yes this is hyperbole, but it suits it's purpose. Wouldn't it be better to make resources more important, more rare in some cases, less rare in other... give you a traveling salesman who sells Weapons (didn't something like that exist in a LoTR series), then use it to rush production if need be. Better yet, how about putting a RUSH button on the build queue, and doing what the other 11 million games do. Punish you for using it too much. (i.e huge resource cost, huge pop cost etc...) We are going back to the 1994 type economy that worked so well of making Population be a huge factor in the economy... why not also do the RUSH button like 1994 if that is what we want.
I personally do not need another "game within a game". The Dynasty system has that covered for me.
Gotta say i dont like the idea, because it makes for way too much micro-management.
Instead of making the crafting and city building more complex how bout we have a complex magic system.
My post was not only on topic, but an addition to the possibilit(ies) of what could be done with the existing and or an expanded Resource List. (appropriate smiley under construction)
I am thinking with my CIV hat this time.
You know what happens if you get to mid- or end- game with no coal/oil/ aluminum? You're screwed! That's what. That's the importance of this thread. While I may not like 'changes' without knowing what changes are going to be necessarily, I'll admit it's needed. Back to Elemental, what if you get x shard and really wanted y type instead.. or no access to end game resources?
Also if we're going for a magic type game more than a CIV type game.. why are we talking about iron? Wheres some mithril and adamantium ? Wouldn't copper or brass be better for conducting magic? I remember an old rpg where the casters got better spells/more powerful by going from a progression like brass -> copper -> silver -> gold -> electrum (Dark Heart of Uukrul if memory serves). Which wouldn't be that bad to start with, could come up with replacements that are more in theme.
The system is a little bit clunky right now. To help streamline the process, an all accessible notification icon/button (no not the red exclamation mark) and a new hotkey to cycle to the next available ready to be improved resource would help improve the process a bit faster and easier, especially for the new players.
After reading through pages of ideas, most of those posted are adding to the resource system rather than streamlining.
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