EDIT: There is now a summation of the conversation for you new readers, so you don't have to go through all posts in order to get some idea of this. It is located here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=84914&perpage=20&pagenumber=3
Somewhere in the end of the page...

I have suggested this before, here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=74574

The idea is simple: why not make resources handled in quantities rather than units? I dislike the idea that if I don't have oil as a resource I am severely handycapped, as I can't build ANY oil-based units. If I trade oil from the AI, I must pay ridiculous sums and then I can build as many oil-based units as I want. Often have I thought that if I only could buy SOME oil, not all.

This has a potential of being a real spoiler, should it become too complex. Therefore I would suggest keeping it simple. All I am suggesting is that there is more oil-patches scattered around, but they vary in size. If an oil-patch is of a size 50, you could build 50 oil-based units (Or perhaps some units would take 2 oils instead of one?). It could be depleted as before, but then it would disappear completely - no need for gradual emptying as it would become too complex. You could sell, say, 30 of your 120 oil units and keep the 90 for yourself - or you could sell it all if you liked.

This would greatly add to the enjoyment of the game. The missing oil is no catastrophy anymore, as you can relatively easily buy 10 to 30 oil units and make yourself a sufficient tank-army to perhaps invade some more oil-patches.

I would suggest that the amount of oil dictates the maximum number of oil-based units you can have. With 30 oil you can have 30 units. Should five of them be destroyed, you could build five more to replace the destroyed ones. This would keep the system simple and, IMHO, as easy to grasp as the present one - with more realism, of course.

This would also improve trading, as you would want to buy oil even if you already had some and also to invade more oil even though you are filled with it - to trade. Now by owning ten oils is relatively a small benefit when compared to the contrast between zero and one oil!

There have been suggestions that some resources should be used up in making an unit and other should be used to maintain them. For example, a swordman would use up one of your irons and that iron would be lost, but a tank only needs oil to maintain it (to allow it to move) and the oil would return to your reserves when the tank is destroyed. While this would indeed be more realistic, I find it too complex and unnecessary. I think all resources should just dictate the maximum number of possible units. If you want realism, you could of course think that the dead swordsman does not need its sword, so it can be taken back to be used by another unit ;)

One concern that rightly arose from this is what should happen when you have the maximum number of units and your oil-patch is depleted/captured? I think that the solution is simple. The excess units should NOT be disbanded, nor should the movement of such units be restricted (say, you could move only 40 of your 50 tanks in one turn), but I would link this to the overall economy - as the units are even now through maintain-expenses. Having an appropriate number of units would cost you only its normal maintain. Having more than the limit would stress your economy (this could represent smuggling and such - a nation is never completely deprived of something it dearly wants). Lets have an example:
I have 100 oil and 100 tanks. I pay 100gpt for maintain (minus the possible free maintain). Let's say that an oil patch of 40 would be depleted. Thus I would have 60 legal units and 40 excess units. This means that 167% of my units are excess units. Now there are many ways to make the calculations, this is just an example. Let's say that all the excess units 101%-120% (unit numbers 61-72) would cost 2 to maintain instead of one. 121-140 (73-84): 3, 141-160 (85-96): 4, 161-180 (97-100): 5 and so on. This would result in an overall maintain cost of:
60 + 24 + 36 + 48 + 20 = 188gpt. (+88 compared to original)
This would not collapse the economy straight away, but would severely slow you down. Now you could choose to keep those units and either buy more oil or retake the oil-patch, or simply to disband those units that you want.

This would allow for rich nations to decide to have excess units compared to their resources. And even poor nations could hang on for a while with excess units if need be. The penalty could IMO be a bit greater still - the step could be 10% instead of 20%.

All in all, I think this would be simple and interesting. It would allow more strategy concerning the resources and would prevent the game from coming to a dead end due to a missing oil-resource. I would not implement any storages for oil or some such without a careful consideration, as I would not want to build those storages all around and worry about them. Some refineries or other would perhaps be fine, if they would, say, allow you to in effect have 150 oil units while having in reality only 100. Anyway, what do you guys think of this?

I agree, some amounts for resources, rather than all-or-nothing, would be nice. Its very important, however, that it not needlessly complicate the game. Here's my own idea (I'll let other people judge whether its more or less complicated than Shyrramar's):

Instead of giving you limitless access, each strategic resource tile creates one "unit" of that resource every certain number of turns, for example, an iron deposit creates one iron ore icon every five turns, or each oil field creates one barrel of oil icon every other turn, etc. Then, your trade advisor screen keeps track of how many of each resource you've accumulated. Each time you start building a unit or improvement that requires that resource, your stockpile is depleted by 1. Personally, I wouldn't add the complication of resources for maintanence of units, although this could be added just by having certain units or improvments require a resource each turn they exist rather than just the turn you start building them. (In that case, you'd probably have to crank things up so that an oil field produced more than one oil barrel per turn).

When trading with other civs, you could either trade lump sum amounts from your stockpile, or you could make a resource-per-turn arrangement, if you had enough sources of the resource to spare.

Basically, each strategic resource would be similar to the gold in your treasury: you'd have a per-turn income (from tiles you controlled and from trade agreements), an amount stockpiled (that you could use when building things or trading lump sumps), and expenses (from per-turn trade agreements). It'd be pretty easy to show this graphically on the trade advisor screen, with a row of icons for each resource type and your surplus/deficit each turn shown just like the surplus/deficit food on the city screen.

It sounds good, judgement :goodjob: . I would be careful with the stockpiles, though. It could lead into "resource-warehouses" and all sorts of other improvements that in my opinion are tiresome.

If you implement the resource-upkeep model, what do you suggest should happen when you lose your resources, if the link to economy does not satisfy you? I think that this is the most crucial part of this: it should be easy to handle that situation and it should not result in too radical consequences.

i'd suggest that either of these systmes gets used for the luxuries too.

i hate the way luxuries are now. how can the same sorce of spices or dyes satisfy both a small one city nation with no leftovers(to trade) and a huge empire (that includes that same city).

something like each lux provides some number of points (for lack of a better term) that you can assign (or have the computer assign for you evenly) across your empire.

or at the very least, something like each resourse can only affect 10 cities, and after that size, you need to get another one (by trade or otherwise)

I actually suggested this in the abovementioned thread, but for some reason people didn't like it - perhaps they thought it would make it unnecessarily complex. I think it is a fine idea. You could make a certain number of happy faces with each luxury (could also vary depending on the source), just like you said. It would not be complex IMO. The computer could do it for those that don't like to micromanage, otherwise you could choose the cities affected by the luxuries. Even if there were more luxuries than cities, you could never make more than one happy with one luxury (if you don't have a marketplace). This could actually bring more strategy to luxuries too, as with marketplace you could choose to make one city VERY happy, but leave others less affected.

Eeeeer...Am I the only one who needs military alliances that doesn't include YOUR country?
For example, you could ask the aztecs to fight the french and don't get involve against the french, except that you'll really have to pay a lot to the aztecs...
This is the British/French/Spanish/Arabs strategy of all 19th and 20th century...

Originally posted by Shyrramar
It sounds good, judgement :goodjob: . I would be careful with the stockpiles, though. It could lead into "resource-warehouses" and all sorts of other improvements that in my opinion are tiresome.

Yeah, I'd keep the stockpiles abstract, just like the treasury. There wouldn't be any improvements involved, just icons on your trade advisor screen.

If you implement the resource-upkeep model, what do you suggest should happen when you lose your resources, if the link to economy does not satisfy you? I think that this is the most crucial part of this: it should be easy to handle that situation and it should not result in too radical consequences.
Well, like I said, I'd prefer not to have resource-upkeep, since it would complicate things uneccessarily IMHO. However, if it was used, nothing immediate would happen when you lost a supply of a resource, since you'd presumably still have some stockpiled. An advisor could warn you that "Our reserves of oil are getting low" and you'd of course try to secure another source before your stockpile ran out. The only radical consequences would be once your stockpile ran out, and those consequences wouldn't be any worse than what happens if you let your treasury get to zero.

I do like your idea of essentially being able to substitute extra gold for the resource, but on the other hand, sometimes a fun strategy is to try to deprive your rivals of resources they need, and that strategy wouldn't be as fun if all that happened to them was that they lost a little extra gold. And if the entire rest of the world is unwilling or unable to sell you oil and you've used up all you have, you ought to be in some serious trouble. To mitigate this, resources like oil would be more common, so that most civs, even small ones, were likely to have a least one or two sources, letting them field at least some of the resource-requiring units. After all, in the real world, few nations can't get access to any of a resource they need, its more a question of having access to enough.

Oil and coal are really the only resources that is more applicable for "upkeep" than for creation of a unit or improvement (although one could make a case for saltpeter). Like you said, it would be needlessly complicated to have those get used for upkeep but others get used for creation only, and my preferred solution would be to have all resources for creation only. One could imagine that part of the process of building a tank unit involves setting aside enough oil to fuel the tanks. Civ 2 had certain units that required food as well as gold for upkeep, and as I recall, they got rid of that for Civ 3 to streamline the game. That makes me doubt they'd be willing to add in something like units requiring both gold and oil for upkeep, but you never know.

I like the idea of Shyrramar much. It is easy to understand and logical in itself. This system can be used for luxuries and pop as well. :goodjob:

I agree with judgement. Here's my tangent:
An RTS-style resource system would work great IMO. Every resource deposit has a very large amount of the resource (but could vary, say 500-2000), and produces one every few turns by default.
Tile improvements, however, would improve resource output as well as F/S/C output. For example, an oil field would contain 2000 oil and would begin producing 1 oil every 2 turns as soon as a road was built to it. (which would remain abstract, showing up only in the trade screen, or possibly military screen) When a mine is built on the oil tile, oil production increases to 1 per turn. Some resources would have a specific improvement for them, in this case an oil refinery, or maybe a pipeline. When one of these is built on the tile, production increases to 3 per turn.
When one of the following happens, oil production is halted, but all harvested oil remains in your "treasury":
1. a hostile unit is on the oil tile
2. improvements are pillaged
3. connection to the tile is lost
4. the tile "converts" to enemy territory

Units would use up a certain number of resources when created, and not return them to the stockpile when destroyed. Also, only oil and coal would be required for maintenance, maybe one every 3 or 5 turns, depending on the unit. This would represent the increased value of fossil fuels, while not complicating the system much. If you ended up with more units than you resource supply could handle, Shyrramar's cost formula would come into effect.

This system would provide a new levelv of realism, without over-complicating the game or using entirely concepts new to players.

originally posted by judgement
I do like your idea of essentially being able to substitute extra gold for the resource, but on the other hand, sometimes a fun strategy is to try to deprive your rivals of resources they need, and that strategy wouldn't be as fun if all that happened to them was that they lost a little extra gold. And if the entire rest of the world is unwilling or unable to sell you oil and you've used up all you have, you ought to be in some serious trouble. To mitigate this, resources like oil would be more common, so that most civs, even small ones, were likely to have a least one or two sources, letting them field at least some of the resource-requiring units. After all, in the real world, few nations can't get access to any of a resource they need, its more a question of having access to enough.

I think that your strategic aspect is interesting, but I still believe that my cost-system would work fine as well. Losing one oil-field isn't really that bad for a wealthy nation, but losing almost all would plunge the civ into chaos. Think about the costs if you had 100 tanks and your oil would fall down into 10 units. Depending on the exact system, you could well be paying more than 10gpt for the last excess units! This would force the civ to disband its units or turn its whole economy to war only - which should (if the AI is formulated properly) cause it to quickly seek end to its disastrous war.

On the other hand some stockpiling could be fine - I just still don't fully like the idea of resource-harvesting. Perhaps the cost should simulate the usage of harvested stockpiles? Somehow I think it would become tedious to watch your resource-stockpiles - we must keep in mind that there are a lot of those resources! In all cases I think that you simply cannot make a system that allows you to trade 100 oil from other civs, construct 100 tanks and then lose all your oil without any consequences. This could be solved by introducing maintain-costs, but as you said, this is to be avoided.

My system is simple, but still more realistic than the current system (what wouldn't be?). I leave it to others to decide if it is too simple. I do agree, that resource-harvesting is more realistic and not too complicated either, but I still maintain that it would become boring. I'd like the resources to be something in the background, something you needn't worry about if you had enough of it, and not too disastrous if you had little of it, but totally devastating if you had none - and this situation should be based on your folly not on some bad luck, which happens all too often. The maximum unit number would be real easy to grasp. You simply could have a certain number of oil-based units and that's that.

Originally posted by WWWeasel
When a mine is built on the oil tile, oil production increases to 1 per turn. Some resources would have a specific improvement for them, in this case an oil refinery, or maybe a pipeline. When one of these is built on the tile, production increases to 3 per turn.

I would personally avoid this. I think that no mine or anything should affect the amount of oil pumped. It would of course be more realistic, but imagine the tediousness of mining all your resources (and you would also want to irrigate those tiles). Even if this should be accepted, I am certainly against any specific improvements. You could perhaps have some tech that would add 50% to your resources as a side-effect (as replaceable parts increase your worker strength - there are no "super-workers" or Civ2-styled engineers), but please no improvements. The workers are a weak link of the game already. I dread the idea of putting my workers to build an oil-pipeline, then stables to horses and so on. One could argue, that only the oil-pipelines are needed, but I think that they are too much already: the road-network can represent this IMO.

Units would use up a certain number of resources when created, and not return them to the stockpile when destroyed. Also, only oil and coal would be required for maintenance, maybe one every 3 or 5 turns, depending on the unit. This would represent the increased value of fossil fuels, while not complicating the system much. If you ended up with more units than you resource supply could handle, Shyrramar's cost formula would come into effect.

This too is a fine idea in theory, but I wouldn't recommend it into the game. No one could easily calculate the amount of oil needed. Say, you get 5 oil per turn. You want to build an army of 100 tanks. If you build 3 tanks per turn (on average, as your cities finish them in different times, a fact that adds another variable into the equation, but it need not be addressed here), can you create your army and maintain it assuming you have nothing in your stockpiles? Of course you can by all means build 3 tanks per turn in the beginning, but when you have 50 tanks, they would require 10 oils for upkeep already! You would be stuck when you reached 15 tanks. Then should we think that you would get, say, 50 oils per turn. This would make a ridiculous relation between the amount of units you can build per turn compared to your upkeep. If one tank took one oil per 5 turns, you could maintain 250 tanks - of which you could atleast in the beginning build 50 per turn. No Civ could build 50 tanks a turn, so the actual amount of oil harvested would be irrelevant.

One could of course argue, that the upkeep should be less (one in ten turns) and build cost higher - but that would make it even more difficult to ordinary non-mathematicians to calculate the unit-cap (Although mathematicians rarely can calculate. It is said: "there are three kinds of mathematicians; those who can and those who can't count" :rolleyes: ). And add your trading to this equation and you are in trouble. The situation would soon be very much like with corruption now: no mere mortal can calculate your intended citys will-be corruption and rarely can one even guess it. If you have something like 80% corruption in a city producing 13 shields, how much would your courthouse affect?

Anyway, my point is simply this: it should be either possible to easily calculate the needed resources (and by easy I mean like city growth and the food consumed) or it should not be necessary. My system represents the former - the exact calculations are irrelevant if the player understands that "this is how many units I can have, anything extra costs some" and that having 150% of allowed units would be very costy, 200% would be pure horror.

Thanks for the great comments and ideas, by the way. I think this is important enough to be fully pondered from all possible aspects. :thanx:

Originally posted by Shyrramar
I think that your strategic aspect is interesting, but I still believe that my cost-system would work fine as well. Losing one oil-field isn't really that bad for a wealthy nation, but losing almost all would plunge the civ into chaos. Think about the costs if you had 100 tanks and your oil would fall down into 10 units. Depending on the exact system, you could well be paying more than 10gpt for the last excess units! This would force the civ to disband its units or turn its whole economy to war only - which should (if the AI is formulated properly) cause it to quickly seek end to its disastrous war.

Yes, I see how making the costs extreme enough could have a big effect on a civ without resource access. However, I'll give an example from a recent game of mine for why I'm still not convinced. I was Persia, with a good sized empire on one continent, but way behind in techs. The Indians were dominating the other continent and were leading the game. In exchange for sparing another, weaker civ from the wrath of my Immortals, I was able to acquire Gunpowder, and as soon as Saltpeter showed up on the map, I noticed that India's only source was on a small island where the had just recently built a small city, which didn't yet have a harbor. I sailed a caravel over near their big continental cities, and sure enough, they were defended by pikemen and war elephants only. I knew India had researched Gunpowder along time ago cause they had frigates sailing around. I thought to myself, "Self, now is the time to invade India, before the discover Nationalism or connect their saltpeter-island city with a harbor." But first, before I did so, I quickly conquered a Russian city that was near Russia's second source of saltpeter, to make sure that Russia wouldn't be able to sell any to India.

Now, neither of our proposed resource systems would have changed the course of my war, since the AI wasn't smart enough to rush a harbor in its saltpeter-island-city. But if the AI was smarter, or India had been a human opponent in multiplayer, the result would have been very different. With the current rules, on the very turn India got their harbor, they could have started building Musketmen in every city on their continent, as well as immediately upgraded all their Pikemen, making my invasion with Immortals much more difficult (I probably wouldn't have won). Even if I conquered their island city right away, 1 turn after they built the harbor, it would have been too late, production of Musketmen would already have started and the upgrading would already have happened. This I think, is one of out complaints about the current system: that one little source of saltpeter, for as little as a single turn, could let India upgrade and begin building as many units as the want, no matter how big their empire.

With your suggestion, as I understand it (please correct me if I misunderstand) as soon as India built their harbor, they could upgrade or start building a only certain number of Musketmen, dictated by the size of the saltpeter resource. Let's just say, for this example, that saltpeter is an "upkeep" resource, like oil (which could be sensible, since you'd need to periodically resupply for Musketmen with new ammunition). And lets say that their saltpeter resource is big enough to let them maintain 20 Musketman units without paying extra gold (this was a relatively small map, I don't remember exactly the size). My invasion plans are hurt, because I know the Indians can now field 20 Musketmen against me, although its not as bad as the current rules, under which they'd have Musketmen everywhere. Now, one thing I like about your suggestion is that I can simply conquer India's island city, deprive them of their saltpeter, and watch them start paying huge amounts of gold to maintain their 20 Musketmen. But India was the dominant power, with vastly more gold than me and way ahead in tech, too. If I was at war with them, its likely they could have afforded pretty huge amounts to keep those 20 Musketmen long going long enough for me to give up and agree to peace, or for them to discover Nationalism and start making Riflemen (of course, if Riflemen also required saltpeter, that'd be another whole story, but for now assume the current rule). Simply having access to 1 source of saltpeter for as little as 1 turn would give the Indians a huge boost defensively, and probably doom my invasion, even though it might also be very hard on their economy.

With my suggestion (stockpiling, but no upkeep), once the Indians connected their saltpeter, they'd only be able to build Musketmen slowly, at whatever pace the resource tile produced resource "units", maybe one per turn, or one every other turn, or whatever. If I acted fast enough to conquer that island city before too many turns had gone by, I could be confident that the Indians hadn't had time to mine very much saltpeter yet, and that my Immortals would only be faced by a few Musketmen when they landed on India's continent.

Thinking about this example, its not obvious to me which suggestion is better. Of course, Civ 4 could certainly combine them, having both stockpiling and resource-upkeep (or, they might ignore both ideas and leave things the way they are now :( ). But it sure is fun to think about, and try to understand the advantages and disadvantages of various ideas. If only Firaxis would pay us for it :lol: .

On the other hand some stockpiling could be fine - I just still don't fully like the idea of resource-harvesting. Perhaps the cost should simulate the usage of harvested stockpiles? Somehow I think it would become tedious to watch your resource-stockpiles - we must keep in mind that there are a lot of those resources!

Maybe, its true there are many different resources, but its wouldn't really be anymore tedious than keeping an eye on your treasury. If you have iron left in the stockpile, you can build swordsmen, if you run out, you can't, simple enough.

In all cases I think that you simply cannot make a system that allows you to trade 100 oil from other civs, construct 100 tanks and then lose all your oil without any consequences. This could be solved by introducing maintain-costs, but as you said, this is to be avoided.

I admit its flawed, but its still better than the current system, where you can trade for 1 oil resource from another civ, build as many tanks as you want, then lose the oil access and not have any consequences. My suggestion would limit the number of tanks you could build to a finite number, without changing the rest of the game much at all.

My system is simple, but still more realistic than the current system (what wouldn't be?). I leave it to others to decide if it is too simple. I do agree, that resource-harvesting is more realistic and not too complicated either, but I still maintain that it would become boring. I'd like the resources to be something in the background, something you needn't worry about if you had enough of it, and not too disastrous if you had little of it, but totally devastating if you had none - and this situation should be based on your folly not on some bad luck, which happens all too often. The maximum unit number would be real easy to grasp. You simply could have a certain number of oil-based units and that's that.

I think we agree that both systems are simple and an improvement on the current system, but maybe what we're deciding here is that a combination of the two ideas would be worse than either idea alone. As long as you didn't have to worry about upkeep, my idea would also keep you from worrying too much about resources: having some in your stockpile lets you build new units, but if you run out, you don't have to worry about the units you already built.

Basically, with your upkeep-but-no-stockpile idea, you only have to pay attention to how many of each resource you have access to, there's no stockpile amount to worry about, while with my stockpile-but-no-upkeep idea, the number in your stockpile is the only thing you really pay attention to, and access is only important for growing your stockpile. Its only if you had both stockpile-and-upkeep that you have to perform difficult calculations to determine how many units to build.

Thanks for the great comments and ideas, by the way. I think this is important enough to be fully pondered from all possible aspects. :thanx:
Hey, this is more fun than working... :p

In the midst of typing that last long post, I thought of a twist on the resource-upkeep idea that would make it more acceptable to me.

As Shyrramar suggests it, each resource tile gives you a finite number of units you can build/maintain, and then if you exceed that number (because you lost access to some of your resources) your maintanance costs can skyrocket.

What if, instead, there was some cost associated with retrieving a resource. Each tile would let you maintain as many units as you wanted, but the more you maintained, the more expensive it would be. Say, for example, the first 20 tanks supported by each tile are free, the next twenty cost an extra gold to pump the extra oil, the next 20 an extra 2 gold, etc.

Then, if you had access to 5 oil resources, you could support 100 tanks without any extra cost. Just like in Shyrramar's original suggestion, if you then lost access to some of your oil, your costs would go up. If you went down to access to 4 tiles, you'd pay 20 extra gold per turn for accelerated pumping of oil from those 4 oil fields, and if you lost all but 1 oil tile, you could still keep all 100 tanks, but the cost of pumping that much oil each turn from one small field would be really huge. The difference from Shyrramar's suggestion, though, is that if you lost all oil tiles, you would be in serious trouble - unable to support you tanks.

I guess the reason I'm not convinced on the original idea is that my brain keeps asking "If you don't have any oil, how does paying a lot of gold per turn magically make oil to fuel your tanks? That oil has to come from somewhere!" Nevertheless, I am senstive to the concern that losing access to a resource should not be catastrophic. With a simplistic "each oil tile supports 20 tanks" approach, if you drop from 5 tiles to 4, you lose 20 tanks, and if you drop from 5 to 1, you lose 80, and that's no fun. Shyrramar's "substitute-extra-gold idea" lets you keep all 100 tanks, just at increased cost, when you go from 5 tiles to 4 or even to 1, and I like that, but I also like the ability to deprive a rival of all oil so I don't have to worry about them fielding tanks against me. With what I'm suggesting here, losing some of your oil would be just like in Shyrramar's suggestion, but losing all of it would indeed be catastrophic. As long as there was enough oil on the map that depriving someone of every source of oil was pretty difficult to do, it shouldn't be too big a problem.

Originally posted by WWWeasel

Tile improvements, however, would improve resource output as well as F/S/C output. For example, an oil field would contain 2000 oil and would begin producing 1 oil every 2 turns as soon as a road was built to it. (which would remain abstract, showing up only in the trade screen, or possibly military screen) When a mine is built on the oil tile, oil production increases to 1 per turn. Some resources would have a specific improvement for them, in this case an oil refinery, or maybe a pipeline. When one of these is built on the tile, production increases to 3 per turn.
When one of the following happens, oil production is halted, but all harvested oil remains in your "treasury":
1. a hostile unit is on the oil tile
2. improvements are pillaged
3. connection to the tile is lost
4. the tile "converts" to enemy territory

I like this idea, although its true that specific tile improvements for specific resources might overly complicate things. What might be cool, though, is if you clicked "Build Mine" on a tile with oil, the graphic was different, looking like an oil rig instead of a tunnel entrance. In any case, I do like the idea that building a mine on a resource would increase the speed at which it was produced and filled up your stockpile.

Alternatively, if there were no stockpile but resources still produced only a finite amount (Shyrramar's orginal idea), then building a mine on an oil field could increase the number of units you could support from that tile, or, increase the number you could support without paying extra to extract it faster (see my previous post).

It's always seemed strange to me that to get extra production out of normal hills, you build a mine, but to get oil out of the ground, you just build a road there.

Great comments, Judgement! Let's see if I can contribute some thoughts...

About the example. I agree, that your system would work better in that situation, though I think that both of use are trying to prevent that sort of situation entirely. Am I correct? A great nation such as India there should NOT be dependent of only one saltpeter (that's what I hate about the current system: no matter how good you are doing, chances are that your game will be ruined by the Missing Resource Demon). The points (to which I agree) you made about depriving your enemy of a resource should follow from your active campaign. With this I mean that you should EARN it by conquering your foe's oilfields (for example). With this it should indeed follow that the nation in question would be in deep doodoo...

...but still not without any resources. They can trade it, of course, but apart from that, they can still acquire SOME oil. You expressed your doubts about this, but I think it is realistic: there are always black market smugglers available. Heck, Iraq could sell oil for banned goods even though UN had imposed sanctions on it and the most powerful nation on Earth was keenly supervising it! I think that it is impossible for any nation to be left completely without resources, if it had money. But it is expensive, of course.

Thinking about this example, its not obvious to me which suggestion is better. Of course, Civ 4 could certainly combine them, having both stockpiling and resource-upkeep (or, they might ignore both ideas and leave things the way they are now ). But it sure is fun to think about, and try to understand the advantages and disadvantages of various ideas. If only Firaxis would pay us for it .

I think that in the light of this example, your suggestion gets the longer straw. This is an isolated (and should not happen in future) case, so I am with you in this overall puzzlement. But that's just the fun of it. If it had one obvious solution, you could just state it and pack your bags and go home, but this way I will probably have something to do for the next couple of days :) . If only indeed :lol:

Maybe, its true there are many different resources, but its wouldn't really be anymore tedious than keeping an eye on your treasury. If you have iron left in the stockpile, you can build swordsmen, if you run out, you can't, simple enough.

Treasury is one thing, resources are a dozen. But I agree that neither of these suggestions are too tedious.

I think we agree that both systems are simple and an improvement on the current system, but maybe what we're deciding here is that a combination of the two ideas would be worse than either idea alone. As long as you didn't have to worry about upkeep, my idea would also keep you from worrying too much about resources: having some in your stockpile lets you build new units, but if you run out, you don't have to worry about the units you already built.

I'm with you. There is one thing that I don't understand, though. There are (as far as I can see) two options: either implement maintaining or not. What would be your suggestion? You have said, that maintaining isn't what you want, but are you then committing yourself to this: if I have 100 tanks build and I lose all my oil, nothing happens - except that I can't build any more? If something should happen, what? This should, IMO, be decided so that I could see your suggestion as a whole, not as parts. As parts it seems a good system, but I can't grasp the big picture. Perhaps you could shed some light on this matter?

Hey, this is more fun than working...

I couldn't agree more :)

The difference from Shyrramar's suggestion, though, is that if you lost all oil tiles, you would be in serious trouble - unable to support you tanks.

What would this mean exactly? The idea seems good, but this point should be stressed. This is a good point to explain my cost-idea a bit. (This will be perhaps tedious to read, feel free to skip)

The exact mathematical formulation should be a bit more complicated compared to what I suggested earlier, as it would blow in your face in the unhappy case that you had no oil at all. If you do the "Old and Crafty Mathematician Trick" things get easier: make limits. There are problems in the %-system. If I have one oil (oh joy!), my first tank would cost one gold as usual (one must remember, that some governments pay some of your upkeep - this is not considered here). Second would actually be 200% the limit, so it WOULD cost (if using 10% increments) 11 gpt, but I think it should cost you 2. If should work so that if in 10% increments you would be paying more than 1 more for each unit, it should be 1 instead. So if you had one oil, the costs of your tanks would be: 1,2,3,... and so on. So 10 tanks would cost you 55 gpt. 20 tanks would cost you 210 gpt and 30 tanks 465 gpt. Only a VERY wealthy nation can support 30+ tanks without severe consequences to its economy. However, with ten oils the situation would be like this:
tank# 1-10: 1gpt, #11: 2gpt, #12: 3gpt. So the numbers would be: 10 tanks: 10gpt, 20: 10 + 55 = 65gpt, 30: 220gpt. This might be seen as a good or as a bad thing: the difference between 1 and 10 oils is big at first, but gets smaller when you reach larger numbers. This is due to the fact, that 10 is the point where the %-change is exactly the minimum change, namely 1. After this the %-change will be smaller than 1, so with 20 oils the situation would look like this:
#1-20: 1gpt, #21-22: 2gpt, #23-24: 3gpt. And the numbers:
10 tanks: 10gpt, 20: 20gpt, 30: 60gpt, 40: 150gpt, 50: 290gpt (my head is beginning to hurt; I need a calculator! Arithmetic sum can only help so much...:cry: )
What we can (or can't) see from this is that as the oil gets above 10 the excess units become comparatively a bit less costly (per unit). With 100 oil the cost of supporting 200 units would be: 100 + 20 + ... + 110 = 100 + 650 = 750gpt. That's 3,75gpt per unit. Whereas with 20 oil the cost of supporting 120 units would be:
1370gpt! (That's 11,4gpt/unit).

The exact numbers could of course (and should) be modified. One problem remains here: how to deal with the situation that you have no oil? That should be clearly different from having one oil (or should it), so beginning with an upkeep of 2 is hardly a solution. Perhaps the climbing rate of the cost should be doubled? Well, this is something I have to think due time, I will not pursue this here any longer.

"If you don't have any oil, how does paying a lot of gold per turn magically make oil to fuel your tanks? That oil has to come from somewhere!"

My thought is that by smuggling, not by paying enough gold to magicians ;) . There are always those who would sell that stuff if the price was high enough. Bigger operations increase the possibility of getting caught and money needed. In addition, if you have some oil, this could simulate your nation's struggles to save oil by supervising and limiting its use, and to use more energy to pump it faster as well as getting it to the units faster.

but I also like the ability to deprive a rival of all oil so I don't have to worry about them fielding tanks against me.

This would of course be fun, but is it realistic at all? Could you really do that in real world? And I simply hate the idea of great nations having no chance to defend against your cavalry because they happen to have no saltpeter. They should atleast be able to get SOME of it, which would not cause certain doom, but a terrible disadvantage - which is realistic and has happened in history repeatedly.

I think I will retire now. Hopefully this answered some questions (and even better, created more questions!). I should try to make a coherent presentation of my system soon, so that it could be easily defended or shot down or improved. Now I fear that it takes a lot of energy to concentrate on it...

Originally posted by Shyrramar
there are always black market smugglers available....
My thought is that by smuggling, not by paying enough gold to magicians ;) . There are always those who would sell that stuff if the price was high enough. Bigger operations increase the possibility of getting caught and money needed. In addition, if you have some oil, this could simulate your nation's struggles to save oil by supervising and limiting its use, and to use more energy to pump it faster as well as getting it to the units faster...

(my comments about comletely depriving a nation of a resource)

This would of course be fun, but is it realistic at all? Could you really do that in real world? And I simply hate the idea of great nations having no chance to defend against your cavalry because they happen to have no saltpeter. They should atleast be able to get SOME of it, which would not cause certain doom, but a terrible disadvantage - which is realistic and has happened in history repeatedly.
That's a valid point, I guess I have to agree.

I'm with you. There is one thing that I don't understand, though. There are (as far as I can see) two options: either implement maintaining or not. What would be your suggestion? You have said, that maintaining isn't what you want, but are you then committing yourself to this: if I have 100 tanks build and I lose all my oil, nothing happens - except that I can't build any more? If something should happen, what? This should, IMO, be decided so that I could see your suggestion as a whole, not as parts. As parts it seems a good system, but I can't grasp the big picture. Perhaps you could shed some light on this matter?
My original suggestion was simply stockpiling - that is, instead of resources being infinite, as they are now, the resource tiles produce a certain amount of the resource per turn, which you can save up, trade, or use to produce things as you see fit. I'm not really excited about resource-upkeep, but since it was part of your suggestion, I tried to explore how it might fit into my suggestion as well. Without resource-upkeep, as you say, if I lose all my oil, I simply can't build any new tanks, nothing happens to the ones I have. I don't think that's too terrible, since its what happens in the current rules (I admit its not realistic, though).

Basically, there are two sets of choices: resource-upkeep or not, and stockpiling or not. Either one of those choices would involve making resources finite as opposed to Civ 3's as-much-as-you-want-from-a-single-tile approach. I think our discussion shows that either one would be a good idea, but that combining them might make things overly complicated.


What would this mean exactly? The idea seems good, but this point should be stressed. This is a good point to explain my cost-idea a bit. (This will be perhaps tedious to read, feel free to skip)

The idea you're asking about here was completely seperate from the stockpiling idea - it was just a way to modify your resource-upkeep idea so that it was still possible to completely deprive a nation of a resource. Since I concede that your comments about the black market, smuggling, etc, are valid, perhaps you should consider my suggested modification withdrawn.

The exact numbers could of course (and should) be modified. One problem remains here: how to deal with the situation that you have no oil? That should be clearly different from having one oil (or should it), so beginning with an upkeep of 2 is hardly a solution. Perhaps the climbing rate of the cost should be doubled? Well, this is something I have to think due time, I will not pursue this here any longer.

I'll think on it as well, but I must say that its complications like this that make me think it might be simpler to avoid resource-upkeep entirely.

Maybe the black-market cost should just be a simple function of how much of the resource you need, i.e., the first 10 cost 1 gold, the next 10 cost 2, etc. That way, If you have 100 tanks but only enough oil for 90, the extra maintanence cost is the same as if you have 10 tanks and no oil source at all. Supporting 20 tanks with no source would be much more expensive (more than twice as much - 3 times as much if you use my example numbers), and it would be the same as supporting 110 if you only had sources enough for 90. This would be nice and simple, and could all be summed up on some advisor screen with some text such as :
Oil supplies:90 Fuel requirements:100 Extra Cost:10gold.
There would of course need to be a similar line for any other upkeep-related resources like coal or saltpeter.

I think the most important thing is that there's general agreement that having access to more than one tile worth of a resource should somehow be better than only having one, even if you aren't selling any to another civ. And really big civs should really feel the need for multiple sources. As RoddyVR said, its dumb that one tile can supply a huge empire, but the same tile could supply a tiny, one-city civ and there wouldn't be anything left over.

Whatever idea they use to address this, lets just hope they address it somehow! And, naturally, something relatively simple and easy to understand and use.

I'd like to chime in on the discussion of a new resource/luxury system. Perhaps a single instance of a resource/luxury would be needed in order to supply the whole nation. However, additional instances of this same resource/luxury would have to be acquired before they can be traded. Suppose we are talking about sources of gems. A single source of gems would serve the whole nation. However, since this nation is sufficiently large (determined by # of cities relative to OCN), it must acquire at least n+1 sources of gems in order to trade, and when it does, it may not make a trade that would leave it with fewer than n gem resources.

As stated above, n would be determined by number of cities relative to OCN. Here is one possibility; n=(number_of_cities DIV OCN) +1.

From one city up to OCN-1, a single instance is required (n=1).
From OCN up to 2*OCN-1, two are required (n=2).
From (m-1)*OCN up to m*OCN-1, m are required (n=m).

Originally posted by ShiplordAtvar
A single source of gems would serve the whole nation. However, since this nation is sufficiently large (determined by # of cities relative to OCN), it must acquire at least n+1 sources of gems in order to trade, and when it does, it may not make a trade that would leave it with fewer than n gem resources.

Well, that certainly would be simple, and avoid stockpiles and/or resource-upkeep altogether. But wouldn't it be weird that, in a situation in which you need three gems in order to trade, acquiring your second source gives you absolutely no benefit? This might be confusing for some. Also, what would happen if you were <OCN-1 and had two sources, so you traded one away, and the in the meantime, you grew to be >OCN. Would the trade continue? When the 20 turns were up, would you be allowed to renew the trade? If so, it would be silly that you could renew it but not cancel it and start a new trade with someone else, but if not, it would be confusing. "What do you mean I don't have any spare gems to trade? What have I been sending the Aztecs for the last 20 turns?" And keep in mind that a lot of less-than-fanatical players don't really know about OCN (its not in the civilopedia anywhere), so it would be extra confusing for them: the number of resources needed before trade was possible would seem arbitrary and random. Furthermore, I think its bad enough that the corruption calculation sets a specific number of cities which is "optimal" - I certainly don't like the idea of extending that concept into other parts of the game. I don't want to have to think to myself "should I conquer that city? No, if I do, I'll be over OCN, and I won't be able to trade my extra gems anymore." And logically, why would one additional city suddenly stop me from having enough extra gems to trade?

This is a tough topic: how to have a resource/luxury system thats easy to understand and use, but better than the current system. I don't mean to be too critical of anyone's ideas, my own certainly has its flaws. I'm just glad people are posting suggestions on this issue! Hopefully the developers will come up with something that we can all accept as an improvement over Civ 3 (which I think was, for the most part, a big improvement over Civ 2).

@ShiplordAtvar

I agree with judgement here to some extent. I think that your idea is good, although it can't be used as such (as it would actually make the resource/luxury-system more complicated than it is now and would not help in the real problem: one resource means you can have infinite units, none means no units at all). I thought of something similar with this when I proposed that the luxuries should be able to do only a number of citizens happy. I believe that the main point in your suggestion is to link the needed resources to the number of cities, but the OCN is not the solution IMO. I like the change to become gradual in resources and luxuries. If the luxuries affected only a certain number of cities, you could reach the point where you would need more luxuries to be able to keep your people happy AND trade them. This system would also allow trading in smaller scale: you don't have to trade one luxury at a time or you can trade more than one. I think that our idea is essentially the same, I would just personally avoid the sharp cutter based on some arbitrary OCN (the reasons being the same as judgement's).

Or did you have something else in mind? Good suggestion there, though :)

what if you could build a tank with out oil? this tank would be weaker and/or more expesive than normal tanks.

I think Judgement's idea was a reply to this: you could build more tanks than you got oil, but their maintenance cost would be greater. They should not be weaker, though. That would needlessly create two types of all resource-dependent units: a weak and a normal one. In any case, it MIGHT work with tanks, but hardly with, say, swordsmen. What would you need a weak swordsman for? And it is an odd idea, that swordsman with wooden swords... ;)

I made some calculations concerning the upkeep of excess units. By following judgement's simple logic I made a formula that counts the needed upkeep in relation to your oil-supplies and your units. This might be a bit hard to look at if you are not used to mathematical formulations, but the idea should be simple. You pay 1 gpt in upkeep for every allowed unit. So 70 tanks would cost 70gpt if you had >70 oil. For every excess unit you would pay more - and this sum would rise up rapidly. The first idea was with steps of 10, but I also tested with steps of 5. So unit numbers 71-80 would cost you 2gpt, #81-90 3gpt and so on.

First the used symbols:
r = the number of resource-units (oil-units, for example).
n = the number of your units dependent of the resource.
s = the used step (the cost would rise after 10, 5, or b excess units)
m = integer((n - r) / s), this is used to calculate easily the needed cost. It simply gives you the (integer) number of whole steps. If you had 88 units and 60 oil, the number of whole steps (if s = 10) would be 2. The first additional step would cost you s*2, the second s*3 and so on.
t = n - r - s*m. This seems ugly, but actually only gives you the excess units that do not comprise a whole step, the decimals of ((n - r) / s) if you will. So in the example above, t would be 8, marking the number of units of the third (but not complete) step.

Now for the formula. I used arithmetic sum to get this. I spare you of the details.
The cost would be:
r + 5m*(m + 3) + t*(m + 2)

Let us have an example. I have 37 oils and 72 units depending on them. What would they cost me? (let the step be 10)
r = 37
n = 72
s = 10
m = int((n - r) / s) = int((72-37) / 10) = int(3.5) = 3
t = n - r - s*m = 72 - 37 - 10*3 = 35 - 30 = 5
The cost would thereby be:
37 + 5*3*(3 + 3) + 10*(3 + 2) = 15*6 + 10*5 = 90 + 50 = 140 gpt

If the step was 5, the result would be:
37 + 15*9 + 40 = 77 + 135 = 212.

What does this mean in practice, then? First of all it means that it is relatively cheap to have some excess units, so you didn't need to worry about it (exactly my point). 10 excess units would in effect cost you 10 extra (as they would normally cost you 10, now they cost you 20), if using the 10-step. With 5-step the cost would be 5 + 10 = 15. But if would be disastrous to have a large amount of excess units.

Here I have tried to make a presentation of the costs with steps 10 and 5. I would prefer the 5-step system, as it would make the costs rise more quickly. It also seems that some of the variables should still be changed, as there seems to be too small an effect with having more oil. Or perhaps not. The difference between having 100 oil and having 10 oil is still very significant. With 10 oil you would be paying (depending on the steps) 550 or 955 gpt for 100 units, and 100gpt with 100 oil. The difference is huge, as it should be. I think it should be practically impossible to have 100 tanks with 10 oil, but quite common to have 20 tanks with 10 oil. Still, one's economy could handle for a short time 100 tanks with 10 oil, if necessary.

Well, I seem to be quite at loss how to insert the graphics. Perhaps someone could help me?

I will look more into this. And add the picture later. I try to attach it, but I think you must download it then..

In summation. This system of calculation may be hard to look at, but is quite simple to program. The idea of the calculation is easy to grasp even if it is hard to count the exact numbers. Depending on the step, you simply begin to pay more for every unit that exceeds the limit dictated by your resources. This way you can afford quite easily a small number of excess units (so if you lose one patch, you wouldn't be in very serious trouble, you could either get a new one of build other units to replace the excess ones and then disband the excess units - or sell them to other nations, which should certainly be possible in cIV! - or even decide to pay the extra gold), but a large number of excess units would be disastrous - not on the first turn, though. With steps of 5 the cost would rise up more rapidly - which I deem good - and would make it more important to have the resources. With steps of 10, I feel that there is too little difference in having 10 or 30 oil.

Anyway, here are the numbers, as the picture is still missing:

with steps of 10:
10 oil : 10 tanks = 10gpt, 30=60, 50=150, 100=550, 150=1200, 200=2100
30 oil : 10=10, 30=30, 50=80, 100=380, 150=930, 200=1730
50 : 10,30,50=10,30,50, 100=250, 150=700, 200=1400
100 : 10,30,50,100=10,30,50,100, 150=300, 200=750

With steps of 5:
10 : 10=10, 30=80, 50=230, 100=955, 150=1970, 200=3620
30 : 10,30=10,30, 50=70, 100=520, 150=1470, 200=2920
50 : 100=300, 150=1050, 200=2300
100 : 150=350, 200=1100

well the swordsman could be weaker in defense, or cost more shields. A non-oiled(?) tank could have just one movement point instead of two. But here come the question: Should this units be upgradeable to "normal units"? I say no.

I made some more tests with this (after I figured out how Excel works...) and here are some graphs. These range from number of units being 20, 40, ... , 100 and resources ranging from 10 to 100 (marked with "r"). These all made with different steps (earlier marked with "s"), and as I forgot to mark them, they are:
steps of 3: upper left corner
steps of 5: upper right
steps of 7: lower left
steps of 10: lower right

What we can see here (pay attention to the scales, they differ some!) is that with lower steps the costs rise more quickly (obviously). With 10 resources and 100 units the costs are following:
s = 3, cost = 1500
s = 5, cost = almost 1000
s = 7, cost = about 730
s = 10, cost = 550

I would go with 5 or 7. perhaps with 7. I would then be paying seven times more from the units than with 100 resources. This would make it virtually impossible to have 100 tanks with 10 oil. But 50 tanks would "only" cost you about 250 gpt. That's five times more than normally.

What I like about the ones with smaller steps is that the difference between having little or a lot of resources is bigger. This would increase the benefit if you invaded 20 oil more, increasing your 10 oils to 30, if you had, say, 60 units. The difference would be something like this:
s = 3, difference between 10 and 30 oils: 275gpt
s = 5, 170gpt
s = 7, 120gpt
s = 10, 90gpt

Some comments, anyone? Does this formula satisfy you? Which of the steps do you like? The difference is huge, so you should think something of them.

Here's the pic. I would put in midst of my text, but I don't know how. It's not in the internet, so I can't press the IMG (?), so this is attached.

And here are the same graphs with unit numbers varying between 20 and 200, instead of 20 and 100.

this I's one of my favorite ideas.
good work guys.

that old game deadlock, is a good turm based strategy that does something like this with resources, not the upkeep thing but having a difference between work required and resources required to build something, it was a good game a lot of good ideas that could apply here.

total anihilation did something like that with resources required for upkeep every unit could take a number of energy and/or metal per turn, these could even be negative and produce resources.

Shyrramar:
good work but think a little more about what you're doing here that arithmetic summ is a parabola. wouldn't it be easier to give the formula as:

the upkeep cost linear, and if the you have more than the amount your resources would allow, add cost proportional to the difference squared

or in pseudocode

cost=C1*units;
if(units-resuorces>0)
{
cost=cost+C2*(units-resources)^2;
}

and your idea also would work in the version where you have to pay resources per turn, in fact it would pay to manage better your resources: it would cost the same amount of resource but a bunch less gold if you only use enough resource for 90 of 100 tanks for 10 turns than if you gave resource for the full 100 for 9 turns and no resource for the 10th.
which would make planning very important, and resource management a little too important

I had an idea like that back when Civ3 was being made. I was told that would be too much micromanagement. My idea was that for each turn, your cities could be allocated a certain number (tonage?) of resources.

i.e., iron would act like gpt, in that you get maybe 50 iron per turn. You have 2 cities that require 10 iron per turn for Swordsmen, using 20 ipt, but leave 30ipt elsewhere, which could be used to help rush something. (Units would have a resource per turn requirement to be built).

Yeah, I'm afraid that all the ideas we're suggesting here, cool as they are, might be considered too complex/too much micromanagement.

I had a thought last night on a simple modification of the current "one-tile-can-produce-as-much-as-you-want" scheme that would address the logical inconsistencies without introducing any new complications to the game at all. Simply put, take the idea to its logical conclusion: any tile can supply its resource to as many cities as its connected to, regardless of which civs those cities are part of. As we've discussed, logically, if one tile is enough to supply my entire empire when I have 50 cities, then if I have only 5 cities I should have a surplus to trade to other civs. With this very simple modification, you would always have a surplus to trade to other civs whenever you had access to a resource, no matter how big your empire, and no matter how many civs you wanted to trade it to.

The issues with this suggestion (as I see them) are that (1) the only incentives to get a second tile of a resource is in case your first runs out or to deprive a rival of it, and (2) having a single tile is now significantly more powerful since you can trade it as many times as you want, presumably generating significantly more income, etc. To address those issues, simply make the following additional simple modification: the chance of a resource becoming "exhausted" is related to how many cities are using it, simulating the "finite-ness" of each resource source.

The combined suggestion is thus this: One tile can supply as many cities, from as many different civs, as you want it to, but its more likely to run out the more cities it supplies. As far as I've thought it through so far, the results would be as follows:

1) You'd have an incentive to try to acquire more sources as your empire grows: getting a second source not only gives you a backup in case your first runs out, but it also decreases the chances that either source will run out, since each is now supplying only half your cities.

2) To balance the greater benefit from a single tile, you'd have a disincentive to trade a resource to every other civ since each civ you traded it to would increase the number of cities using your tile, increasing its odds of becoming exhausted. You could trade something to a small civ for a relatively small amount in return, but if you're going to trade something to a big civ with lots of cities, make sure you get a lot in exchange, because you're significantly increasing the resource's odds of disappearing. You're better off not trading to too many other civs at once unless you have multiple sources yourself.

3) You'd have a reason to want to acquire more of a resource by trade even if you already have it. If I already have oil but my empire is large, I might still be interested in buying some from a neighbor as well, because by doing so I decrease the chances that my own supply will run out: my own source now only supplies half my cities, while the trade source supplies the other half.

4) How much a civ wants in exchange for a resource would become dependant not only on how big you are but how big they are and how many sources they have. A small civ with many sources might happily sell you some relatively cheaply, since they're not worried about running out, but a big civ with few sources would be more reluctant and would ask for more in exchange, since they're already using the resources in a lot of cities back home. This would make shopping around to buy a resource more interesting and more realistic.

The beauty of this idea (as opposed to my other "stockpiling" idea, and many of the other cool ideas proposed here) is that it requires almost no change to the user interface, but resolves the logical inconsistency of the current system. The only interface change I see would be that on the screen where you're negotiating with a rival, next to the word "Cities" it should parenthetically add the number the civ has, allowing you to see at a glance how big their empire is without expanding the list and counting the entries. But that would be a very minor addition and useful anyway. And, of course, the same screen would not gray out resources if you only had one source, since they would still be tradeable in that case.

One last thing, as I've suggested elsewhere: resources should not always reappear somewhere else on the same turn they disappear, instead, these two events should be governed by separate random numbers (with potentially different odds, so that the number of tiles of a resource could tend to increase or decrease throughout the game). This would be even more important with the proposed change to resource usage, because otherwise, a really big empire would worry less about exhausting their resources since chances are good they'd immediately reappear somewhere else within the empire anyway.

Originally posted by Suki
Shyrramar:
good work but think a little more about what you're doing here that arithmetic summ is a parabola. wouldn't it be easier to give the formula as:

the upkeep cost linear, and if the you have more than the amount your resources would allow, add cost proportional to the difference squared


Yes the formula is in effect a parabola. I have of course thought of parabolas and exponential functions, but there are two reasons I had in making the formula as it is.

(1) The formula is based on a simple idea of how the cost would rise. The idea is easy to grasp even for those who aren't math-experts and the effects would be easy to calculate and to control. The idea is that once you unit number exceeded your resources, each unit would cost two gpt instead of one (or it works just as fine with the allowed units costing nothing). If the step was ten, then you would know that each exceeding unit would cost first two, then three and so on. This would be very easy to understand. If the function was made parabolic, it would become abstract.

(2) The actual code is unimportant. The maths involved is relatively simple to coders, so it should not present a problem. There is no need to make the code any simpler. In effect it is a parabola, but with important differences caused by the integer-part of the formula. It could be turned into a parabola that followed along the lines of this function and then turned into integers, but I am not sure of this and will not pursue the matter for now. The integers might have an effect on the parabola so that it wouldn't actually work.

So the point here is simply this: It is not important if the actual formula is easy or not - both suggested are easy enough. What IS important is that players can easily calculate their losses. This is what my system allows.

And another point: the parabola cannot be made as simple as you have suggested. My formula includes first-degree terms whereas the suggested one does not...

and your idea also would work in the version where you have to pay resources per turn, in fact it would pay to manage better your resources: it would cost the same amount of resource but a bunch less gold if you only use enough resource for 90 of 100 tanks for 10 turns than if you gave resource for the full 100 for 9 turns and no resource for the 10th.
which would make planning very important, and resource management a little too important

It is a good idea, but something I would rather avoid. I do not like the idea of being forced to "manage" your resources. I like the same idea applying to resources as not applies to money: I know in theory where it is coming from, I know how to get more, but I don't have to pay attention to the cash-flow if it is okay. Same idea here. You would know where the resources come from and how to acquire more. If you have less units than resources, you needn't worry. When your units exceed the number (this would of course be shown in detail in trade-advisor or some other advisor) allowed, you would begin to lose money. This I know is easily fixed (either buy more resources or disband your units). I can also easily calculate that I can afford having 10 extra units. The advisor screen would also show the exact amount of extra money you are paying.

I would also dread the idea of having to somehow remember which turn some units would cost something and which not.

Those are good comments, though. I would like to hear some more comments on the matter :goodjob:

Originally posted by Chieftess
I had an idea like that back when Civ3 was being made. I was told that would be too much micromanagement. My idea was that for each turn, your cities could be allocated a certain number (tonage?) of resources.

i.e., iron would act like gpt, in that you get maybe 50 iron per turn. You have 2 cities that require 10 iron per turn for Swordsmen, using 20 ipt, but leave 30ipt elsewhere, which could be used to help rush something. (Units would have a resource per turn requirement to be built).

I would like to point out why this wouldn't cause micromanagement - not so much to answer you as to answer those who complain about the micromanagement. I agree that this sort of resource-handling could lead to micromanagement. Your idea seems good, but could indeed be a bit complex to actually use in the game. It is hard to say until playtesting if it would work.

In the system now things are as easy as they can be. You have a resource, you can build how many units you want to. You don't, you can't build any units. You can buy an infinite stack of resources from others and you can sell them if you have more than one. Simple, but has many flaws.

My system would works as this. You have a resource, but that resource is not infinite. It can support a certain number of units. This would be a mere number, so it would not cause any trouble. You can also decide to sell SOME of the resource to others, or buy SOME more. The difference in trade would be that you didn't simply buy "oil", but perhaps "30 oil" - no different from gold. Okay then, this is easy. :) It has actually produced NO micromanagement and no complexity whatsoever. You only need to keep an eye of the number of resources being used. An advisor could pop up and say: "Sire, Washington is building a tank, but our resources is low. Shall it build it anyway?" This way you needn't worry about that either - not more than of your money currently.

What would this fix?
It would fix the problem of No Oil. A real game breaker. If you have no oil, you should pay ridiculous amounts of money to get it - and you many not even be able to get it anyway. My system assumes that resources are more common, but they would not contain an infinite amount of the resource. This way it should be almost impossible to be left COMPLETELY without oil, but more common to have too little of it. This would allow a small army of, say, tanks created to invade more oil. It's pretty hard to invade rubber and oil with riflemen and knights!

The only part of this what could be called complex is the situation where you have too many units compared to your resources - either by simply building too many units or by loss of resources. The exact effects of this have been debated. Here are the thoughts presented about this:
(1) Your excess units would be randomly (?) disbanded - exactly as when exceeding your treasury.
(2) Your excess units (which of them?) would get penalties to their ADM.
(3) You could only move the allowed number of units each turn.
(4) You would pay extra for the units - representing smuggling and black market sales and other related things.

Now the first is too harsh. Losing your city for one turn and then recapturing it would mean that you excess units would have already been gone? The second is possible, but I wouldn't like it in my game: which units, how much? It is not out of question, though. Now the third would be too complex and would result in micromanagement, although perhaps being the most realistic of them all. I would go for the fourth. This would not cause any short-term catastrophies, so you could easily pay the extra during war, but would in the long run severely slow your economy. It would be easy to handle and would not bring any new concepts into the game.

Now I have argued (whether my arguments are sound or not) that everyone could grasp the simple idea of paying two gold instead of one in upkeep, and then three, and then four. It is countable, and understandable. The exact formula may look a bit hard, but that is not something a common player should worry about. The developers would think that as simple (Compare to the corruption calculations!) and modders should be able to understand the mechanics.

The more I think of it, two things become clearer and clearer: SOME change is needed and this suggestion is fully possible, if not the best.

@Judgement: Once again you astound me with your innovative thinking. :eek: These sort of ideas are sorely needed - we don't want to bang our heads into the same wall all the time :wallbash: Let me try to ask some questions about it...

Originally posted by judgement
Yeah, I'm afraid that all the ideas we're suggesting here, cool as they are, might be considered too complex/too much micromanagement.

Do you still think so, after all my ranting? :rolleyes:

The issues with this suggestion (as I see them) are that (1) the only incentives to get a second tile of a resource is in case your first runs out or to deprive a rival of it, and (2) having a single tile is now significantly more powerful since you can trade it as many times as you want, presumably generating significantly more income, etc. To address those issues, simply make the following additional simple modification: the chance of a resource becoming "exhausted" is related to how many cities are using it, simulating the "finite-ness" of each resource source.

This idea has potential, I must admit. I am bit sceptic, though. This would of course assume that there aren't more resources than there are currently in the game, right? With more, this idea would have no significance as virtually all civs would have their resources. If less...well, perhaps less would even be tolerated if the probabilities are handled well and AI would indeed sell it (and NOT from outrageous sums).

1) You'd have an incentive to try to acquire more sources as your empire grows: getting a second source not only gives you a backup in case your first runs out, but it also decreases the chances that either source will run out, since each is now supplying only half your cities.


I'm with you mate! :goodjob:

2) To balance the greater benefit from a single tile, you'd have a disincentive to trade a resource to every other civ since each civ you traded it to would increase the number of cities using your tile, increasing its odds of becoming exhausted. You could trade something to a small civ for a relatively small amount in return, but if you're going to trade something to a big civ with lots of cities, make sure you get a lot in exchange, because you're significantly increasing the resource's odds of disappearing. You're better off not trading to too many other civs at once unless you have multiple sources yourself.

Here is your weak spot, in my opinion. :undecide:
The probabilities would be impossible for mere mortals to handle. It would remain abstract. You would only be vaguely aware that selling it abroad would increase your risk of losing your resources, but you would certainly not understand the risks involved. Even mathematicians would have hard time trying to figure out if they should sell their only resource to a third civ or not, even if they could calculate the exact risks. This would of course increase tactics, but I think that you should always understand the rules and parameters that you play within to actually REALLY use tactics, and to really enjoy the game. That's the thing behind the popularity of games like chess: few rules, endless possibilities. Each move's effects are concrete and understandable. That's where MOO3 went awry, I think: atleast I had NO IDEA of the mechanics behind my economy - why it was soaring now when just a moments ago I was losing tons of gold per turn?

This change in probability should either be simply displayed somewhere or made simple enough for everybody to grasp - as I have tried to do with my resource-cost-model.

The beauty of this idea (as opposed to my other "stockpiling" idea, and many of the other cool ideas proposed here) is that it requires almost no change to the user interface, but resolves the logical inconsistency of the current system. The only interface change I see would be that on the screen where you're negotiating with a rival, next to the word "Cities" it should parenthetically add the number the civ has, allowing you to see at a glance how big their empire is without expanding the list and counting the entries. But that would be a very minor addition and useful anyway. And, of course, the same screen would not gray out resources if you only had one source, since they would still be tradeable in that case.

I agree with you on this. This would indeed not change the interface (not by much, anyway). But I think the same applies to my system, does it not?

One last thing, as I've suggested elsewhere: resources should not always reappear somewhere else on the same turn they disappear, instead, these two events should be governed by separate random numbers (with potentially different odds, so that the number of tiles of a resource could tend to increase or decrease throughout the game). This would be even more important with the proposed change to resource usage, because otherwise, a really big empire would worry less about exhausting their resources since chances are good they'd immediately reappear somewhere else within the empire anyway.

This is of course irrelevant to your system, and it is good that it is so, as I think it is a bad idea. Sorry. :D
For starters let me defend the current system: it makes it certain that at any given time there are always enough resources to go by. So the game wouldn't break because there was only one civ having oil.
Then why is your suggestion not good? Because it could cause a snowball effect. Let's say that all 5 resources of oil are being used by 7 civs globally. Now one disappears. This would mean that the remaining oils are subject to a bigger stress of running out too. This would either cause the remaining civs not to sell their oil to the civ left without the oil, or not. If not, then the probability of the remaining oils to disappear would become greater. Then if because of that the fourth oil would disappear, it would of course stress the remaining oils even more. This could cause an effect that would soon have all the oils gone, or simply that many civs would be left without - and in your system it would mean COMPLETELY without.

This would of course be rare, but possible anyhow. And because probabilities work in such a fashion, that it is very probable that something very improbable will happen quite often (like people winning in lottery, which is near impossible). So there would most certainly be many games ruined by missing resources. The current system totally eliminates this risk - even if it is less realistic.

Thank you for your great comments! As I mentioned earlier, I see this as a very important change in the game and it should be pondered most thoroughly. Please do keep the conversation going! :thanx:

Originally posted by Shyrramar

Do you still think so, after all my ranting? :rolleyes:
No, but I don't work for Firaxis, and that's whose opinion matters here. I like your idea (I like my stockpiling idea, too) but this new suggestion is an alternative in case the Civ 4 developers respond to our other ideas the same way the Civ 3 developers responded to Chieftess.

This would of course assume that there aren't more resources than there are currently in the game, right?
Yes, same as the current game, or possibly slightly less to compensate for trading being easier.

Here is your weak spot, in my opinion. :undecide:
The probabilities would be impossible for mere mortals to handle. It would remain abstract. You would only be vaguely aware that selling it abroad would increase your risk of losing your resources, but you would certainly not understand the risks involved. Even mathematicians would have hard time trying to figure out if they should sell their only resource to a third civ or not, even if they could calculate the exact risks. This would of course increase tactics, but I think that you should always understand the rules and parameters that you play within to actually REALLY use tactics, and to really enjoy the game. That's the thing behind the popularity of games like chess: few rules, endless possibilities. Each move's effects are concrete and understandable. That's where MOO3 went awry, I think: atleast I had NO IDEA of the mechanics behind my economy - why it was soaring now when just a moments ago I was losing tons of gold per turn?
An interesting point, but I disagree, both about the math being complicated, and about that being a big problem. Let me see if I can articulate the latter point. If I attack your warrior with my swordsman, I know, based on the simple (easy to grasp) mechanics of the game, that my 3 attack vs. your 1 defense means I have a high probability of success. But there's still no way for me to know ahead of time who will win, or even to know roughly how many times I'll win if I try the same thing 20 times (I could always have a run of good or bad luck). Understanding the mechanics makes it more likely that I can guess what might happen (I'm likely to win most of the time) but its still just a guess. Because random chance is involved, understanding the mechanics can never give me complete knowledge.

I play Civ 3 just fine without knowing the exact probability that my oil resource will disappear on any given turn (BTW, does anyone know this number? As I recall, the number in the editor isn't a simple percent chance per turn - or is it?). Its enough for me to understand that there is some chance, that it is completely random (no way I can affect it), and that when it does happen oil will reappear somewhere else on the map. Being able to calculate the exact probabilty wouldn't really add anything to my game. For that matter, when I attack your warrior with my swordsman, I don't bother to calculate my exact odds of winning, either, I simply rely on my understanding of the mechanics to give me a feeling of whether the odds are reasonably good or not. (I'll admit, though, that some people do make use of those combat calculators to know exactly the odds, but those aren't part of the game as its sold).

Since the resources disappearing would be (and is currently, for that matter) a random event, there's not much point in being able to calculate exactly the odds of it happening. Knowing that there was only a 1% chance of something happening is a small consolation when you get unlucky and it happens. That's why the tank-killed-by-a-spearman is so irritating to people: they think that because they've calculated the odds and the odds are very small, it should never happen to them, but then it does.

I'm rambling on, probably not making my point very well, sorry. You'd know, quite simply, that the more civs that you traded something to, and the bigger they were, the more likely resource disappearance would be. If you had only one source and wanted to safeguard it, you wouldn't trade - you might not know the exact odds of disappearance, but you'd know what to do to minimize those odds (and you wouldn't do anything different even if you knew the exact probability). In the current game, you can't trade when you only have one tile of something anyway, so making it risky to do so isn't so terrible. If you had more than one source, trading wouldn't be too risky, since if you lost one you'd still have access. Resource disappearance is unlikely enough that the chances of more than one source disappearing in rapid sequence would be very small indeed (hopefully even less likely than a tank-losing-to-spearman :p ), so if you had two and you lost one, you simply could avoid renewing trade deals. Essentially, you wouldn't really need to bother calculating odds when deciding whether to trade your resource to a third (or fourth, or whatever) civ. Simply don't trade when you have only one source, unless you're desperate and willing to take the risk, and if you have multiple sources, trade away, but remember to demand more in exchange from civs that have a larger number of cities.

Besides, it wouldn't take a graduate degree in math to add up the total number of cities used by a resource and see how that compares with and without a given trade. If its 50 cities without the trade in question and 55 with it, no big deal, but if its 20 without and 60 with, its pretty obvious you'd triple the disappearance chance. To make this easier, one further interface change: Next to each of your resources on the negotiation screen, it would tell you how many cities currently use it, i.e., replace "Oil (2 extra)" with "3 Oil (24 cities)". (The number of cities could be different for different resources if you have traded some to other civs as well). If your oil is currently being used by 24 cities and your potential trading partner has 8 cities, then the only math you need to do is to compare 24 with 24+8. All the info you need is right there on one screen, no fancy math needed! The only relevence of the fact that you have 3 sources is that you know how much cushion you have in case a source disappears: switching from supplying 24 to 32 cities alters the disappearance odds by the same amount regardless (to be extra clear here, the disappearance odds aren't the same if you have 2 sources, or 4, but the relative change in odds due to the proposed trade is the same).

This change in probability should either be simply displayed somewhere or made simple enough for everybody to grasp - as I have tried to do with my resource-cost-model.

Nowhere does the game display the odds of winning a combat, and yet, even though my attack strength versus your defense strength seems simple enough, the actual odds are quite complex, taking into account terrain and how many hitpoints we each have and whether or not you have defensive bombard and so on. Unless one uses a combat calculator, calculating the exact probability each time one decides whether or not to attack is simply not possible, yet that doesn't stop one from understanding the mechanics and using that knowledge to make an informed decision. Resource disappearance would work the same way: you might need an exterior calculator if you wanted to know the exact chances, but without that you would still know that trading something to a civ with 50 cities would be a lot riskier than to a civ with 5.


This would indeed not change the interface (not by much, anyway). But I think the same applies to my system, does it not?
(from elsewhere in your post...)
An advisor could pop up and say: "Sire, Washington is building a tank, but our resources is low. Shall it build it anyway?" This way you needn't worry about that either - not more than of your money currently.
Your system certainly would require less interface overhaul than my "stockpile" system, but more than the (virtually zero) changes in my more recent idea. You admit your idea might require extra advisor popups, and there would need to be some screen somewhere that told you how many you were using and trading out of how many you had total. The latter would be a very minor thing to add, but the former is quite unacceptable: the best improvement of Civ 3 over Civ 2 is how much less often you have to click "Okay".

(In response to my idea about separating the appearance and disappearance of resources)
This is of course irrelevant to your system, and it is good that it is so, as I think it is a bad idea...
... it could cause a snowball effect.

There's no reason the chance of appearance has to be different from the chance of disappearance, and even if it was different, no reason it has to be unrelated. As you say, the more a resource disappears, the more stress on the remaining tiles, increasing the likelihood of disappearance. But the snowball effect is only there if the chance of reappearance remains unchanged. If it also increases as more resources disappear, then scarcity of resources would at worst be temporary: the fewer there were, the more likely that new ones would appear. Likewise, if a few extra oil (or whatever) tiles happened to appear before any of the originals had disappeared, the chance of further appearances could decrease, preventing a snowball in the other direction. The number of oil tiles on the map would vary throughout the game, instead of remaining constant as in Civ 3, but that variation would always tend to return towards the default amount. It would add periods of shortage and periods of surplus to the game, which could be a nice, "realistic" touch.

If would be quite simple to have the computer, on each turn, sum up the total chance than any oil tile will disappear, and assign the same probability to the chance that a new source will be discovered. As resources were used heavily and the disappearance odds increased, the reappearance odds would increase to match. As a variation, the chance of reappearance for some resources could set each turn to 90% or 110% (or whatever, and these could be set in the editor) of the disappearance chance, to allow you to have resources that tended to increase or decrease in number throughout the game, if you so wanted. The reappearance chance would still be tied to the disappearance chance, so the snowball effect would still be eliminated, and the result would be oscillation about and upward or downward trend rather than a fixed value.


Thank you for your great comments! As I mentioned earlier, I see this as a very important change in the game and it should be pondered most thoroughly. Please do keep the conversation going!
I'll try, but judging from those plots you posted, I think I'm up against someone with way more free time than myself.:lol: :goodjob:

Originally posted by judgement
An interesting point, but I disagree, both about the math being complicated, and about that being a big problem. Let me see if I can articulate the latter point. If I attack your warrior with my swordsman, I know, based on the simple (easy to grasp) mechanics of the game, that my 3 attack vs. your 1 defense means I have a high probability of success. But there's still no way for me to know ahead of time who will win, or even to know roughly how many times I'll win if I try the same thing 20 times (I could always have a run of good or bad luck). Understanding the mechanics makes it more likely that I can guess what might happen (I'm likely to win most of the time) but its still just a guess. Because random chance is involved, understanding the mechanics can never give me complete knowledge.

I must in turn disagree with you on this point (who's disagreeing who in what point...and WHY? :crazyeye: ). The difference between understanding probabilities that are between 10 and 90 percent and the probabilities being very small (or big, it does not matter much) if big. I understand that I have relatively good chances of beating up that warrior, as you said. I do it often and get a grip onto the probabilities. Enough to rip my hairs off if my swordsman lost - which is not the case if it lost to a spearman. The counter-argument I will use is actually from your text: people get annoyed when their modern armor lost to a spearman (which is bound to happen time to time). Now the disappearance ratio of the resource should be very small, agreed? It is easy to grasp 1:3 probabilities, as they are often on display. But if something happens very rarely, you don't get a similar touch to it. Like how probable it actually is to win in lottery? There is actually a certain probability of iron disappearing (you asked this somewhere). I don't remember it, but it is something like 1:400. The disappearance ratio must be the divider and 1 the divided. This is the possibility of it disappearing each turn. It happens so rarely now that I almost always express curses when it happens - and I wouldn't understand the difference between 1:200 as it happened only once in 200 turns! (in opposition to my swordmen winning the warrior something like 19 times out of 20 - this is just a throw, nothing calculated or even thought).

Now if I had one oil, I would trade it. If the disappearance ratio was 1:400, 1:200 wouldn't make a difference: I would deem it better to trade than not trade, as I would (in my opinion) be taking a very little risk. The problem here is that you should play the game VERY much in order to grasp to real risk you are taking - due to the very small probabilities.

Do you understand my point? I am not sure if I am getting it across properly. The point is simply that having something happening many, many times during a game gives me an idea of what I should attack with what. But if it happened just a few times in a game, it would be really hard.

I play Civ 3 just fine without knowing the exact probability that my oil resource will disappear on any given turn

This is because you have no choice: you don't affect the outcome. It simply happens if it happens. You can't affect it, so you don't bother about the probabilities, just with a curse when it happens.

I am making this point: if the probability is small, people will not take it into account. If the probability is big, it would be better - but the constant shifting of resources would get on my nerves, anyway. So how to get the probability right: so that it would be big enough to handle and small enough to not cause irritation? Could you actually post some numbers, so we could somehow try to understand how it works?

Don't get me wrong: the idea is good, I have some reservations that I am expressing.

the best improvement of Civ 3 over Civ 2 is how much less often you have to click "Okay".


Good point! :lol: Well, it could be something that you didn't have to press "ok" to. Just a notification that shows up in the right upper corner of your screen or something. All the data would be in the advisor screen, the notification is just a wake up call, so you wouldn't have to check it manually all the time. It could also say someting like "Athens has produced a tank. 5 oil, 7 rubber left". It does indeed get irritating to press OK whenever the advisor comments about my way of handling the treasury! :mad:

There's no reason the chance of appearance has to be different from the chance of disappearance, and even if it was different, no reason it has to be unrelated. As you say, the more a resource disappears, the more stress on the remaining tiles, increasing the likelihood of disappearance.

You totally convinced me with this one! :goodjob: I withdraw my objection: if the probabilities are handled well, I am with you in this. This would, as you said, indeed bring welcome variation to resources. This way a certain time without any oil would actually be interesting - provided that it would take probably about 10 turns until they started popping back! Nice thinking there, pal! :D

I'll try, but judging from those plots you posted, I think I'm up against someone with way more free time than myself.

Yes, beware. There is nothing more dangerous than a man with opinions and way too much time on his hands! :mwaha: :lol:

Different classes of resources could be added too. You could have normal oil but if you invade your neighbor you'll have high quality oil which is better that your normal oil. Or since we are talking about how much a oil resource will last or produce oil units, this high quality oil will be a larger deposit of oil than normal.

The size of deposits is what I would like to see (it's implemented in my system), but different qualities of resources I think would only make the game more complex. I wouldn't like to keep track of what quality my oil is - I should have better things to do (such as invading Russia ;)

Originally posted by Shyrramar
I must in turn disagree with you on this point (who's disagreeing who in what point...and WHY? :crazyeye: ). The difference between understanding probabilities that are between 10 and 90 percent and the probabilities being very small (or big, it does not matter much) if big. I understand that I have relatively good chances of beating up that warrior, as you said. I do it often and get a grip onto the probabilities. Enough to rip my hairs off if my swordsman lost - which is not the case if it lost to a spearman. The counter-argument I will use is actually from your text: people get annoyed when their modern armor lost to a spearman (which is bound to happen time to time). Now the disappearance ratio of the resource should be very small, agreed? It is easy to grasp 1:3 probabilities, as they are often on display. But if something happens very rarely, you don't get a similar touch to it. Like how probable it actually is to win in lottery? There is actually a certain probability of iron disappearing (you asked this somewhere). I don't remember it, but it is something like 1:400. The disappearance ratio must be the divider and 1 the divided. This is the possibility of it disappearing each turn. It happens so rarely now that I almost always express curses when it happens - and I wouldn't understand the difference between 1:200 as it happened only once in 200 turns! (in opposition to my swordmen winning the warrior something like 19 times out of 20 - this is just a throw, nothing calculated or even thought).

Now if I had one oil, I would trade it. If the disappearance ratio was 1:400, 1:200 wouldn't make a difference: I would deem it better to trade than not trade, as I would (in my opinion) be taking a very little risk. The problem here is that you should play the game VERY much in order to grasp to real risk you are taking - due to the very small probabilities.


This is funny, cause we're using the exact same examples to argue opposite sides :lol:
I would agree, its very hard for the human mind to understand the different between 1:200 and 1:400, unlike the difference between 1:2 and 1:4, which is quite obvious. But to me, that argues in favor of my idea: the odds of a resource disappearing are so low that you wouldn't really understand them even if you did calculate them precisely, so why worry about trying?

I guess I do see your point, somewhat, though: its better if the decisions you make are based on understanding. If your brain can't wrap itself around the difference between 1:200 and 1:400, then why would you choose to trade with a civ with 10 cities but not with one with 50 cities - is that what you're asking? Both situations seem the same when the odds of disappearance are small enough?


I am making this point: if the probability is small, people will not take it into account. If the probability is big, it would be better - but the constant shifting of resources would get on my nerves, anyway. So how to get the probability right: so that it would be big enough to handle and small enough to not cause irritation? Could you actually post some numbers, so we could somehow try to understand how it works?

Lets try to come up with some numbers, then. Suppose at first that the world is evenly divided among all the civs in it, so that, if there are 10 civs playing, you have 10% of the territory. Set the per-turn chance of disappearance such that the overall chance of a disappearance occuring to you during the entire duration a resource is relevant (for oil, that's about half of the game, turn-wise) is maybe 1/3 or 1/4. That way, it would happen to you in a reasonable number of your games, but not all. Now, if you either trade your oil to one other civ, or conquer an additional 10% of the map, you'd double the number of cities using the oil, so instead of happening less than half your games, disappearance would happen in the majority of them, although usually only once per game still, more than that would involve a little bad luck. But if you trade the oil to 4 other civs at once, or your empire expands to cover half the map, then its very likely that resource disappearance will happen more than once to you during a typical game (in the cse of covereing half the map, this would be balanced by the fact that you'd probably control more than one source). If you played one game where you kept your resources to yourself, and then played another where you traded them as much as possible, you'd really notice a difference.

Let's assume there are 200 turns in which oil is relevant, and maybe the per-turn chances are such that if 10% of the cities are using a source, it has a 1:400 chance of running out each turn. By my rudimentary calculations, that gives a roughly 39% chance of that source running out before the end of those 200 turns. But if you supply 20% of the cities with that source, the odds are 63% that it will run out before 200 turns, with the average time until depletion being 138 turns. And if you supply half the map, there's a 92% chance of at least one disappearance, with an average of only 55 turns between disappearances.

The point is, although the chance per-turn is quite small (too small for our brains to really digest), over the course of many turns, those small chances add up to larger chances that are big enough to notice and understand. There's a noticeable difference between 39%, 63%, and 92%, and a very noticeable difference between something usually not occuring and something occurring multiple times per game.

I admit these calculations would not be readily available to you during the game, but it wouldn't be hard (or take very many games played) to notice that when you didn't trade many resources and acquired a number of sources roughly proportional to you empire size, you usually had enough, but if you traded a single source to everyone and/or never acquired more as your empire grew huge, you'd frequently have shortages.

I don't recall the exact numbers of resources in Civ 3, but its seems that there's usually roughly as many sources as civs, give or take a few. Maybe a few less of the later game ones like oil, a few more of early ones like iron and horses. Assuming that didn't change, and the per-turn chances were set right, you could look at the map and think things to yourself such as "This is a 10-civ game and I control about 25% of the map, so I probably need 2 or 3 sources to have good odds of not running out. I only have one, I'd better look to get more, and not try trading my single source with others" Or, something like "There are 8 civs in this game and I control roughly 1/8th the map, but somehow I find myself with 3 sources of oil. That's plenty for a nation my size, I should trade some to others."

As an alternative to this system, here's another idea: instead of a random chance each turn for a resource to run out, it could run out after a random number of uses, which is determined when the resource first appears (at the beginning of the game, or later for reappearances). That way, you would know for sure that by trading a resource to multiple partners, you would be shortening its lifespan. I don't like this version as much, but it would remove your complaint about small percentage chances being hard to deal with intelligently.

you wouldn't need to worry much about your oil type because the number of units you could build with it would be mixed together with all the oil types you have in a grand total.

But intead of conquering a Ruissian city with 6 low quallity/small deposits of oil you might be interested in the city next to it which has 2 high quality/large deposits of oil, which are like 8 low quality/small deposits of oil.

@judgement: I just replied your post and in the end decided to have a nice little smiley in it, and guess what? It opened the smileys-window ON TOP OF MY POST, so the reply was gone in a blink of an eye. It's past midnight already, so I would reply to your post tomorrow in greater detail. Let me just ask you one more thing: I got the same probabilities, but I couldn't figure out how you got the average turns between disappearances. It might be the time or the fact that it's been long since my last probabilities, or both, or the fault might be in you. :crazyeye: So could you apply the calculations also? Thanks in advance. As an overall comment: you once again managed to convince me! (and that's a hard thing to do, mind you :nono: :lol: )

Nice job! :goodjob:

EDIT: Oh boy! It seems I am on warlord now. I guess the barbarians will write tougher posts now, and I should be wary of my fingers, as they will now strike the wrong buttons more often (I must get them some more luxuries), or something. But one thing is certain: this is going to get much harder from now on, as you guys become more intelligent - and get to cheat! You now need only press seven buttons to get eight letters, so you can write faster now and overwhelm me with your posts and quick replies.... :cry:

Originally posted by Shyrramar
@judgement... I got the same probabilities, but I couldn't figure out how you got the average turns between disappearances.

Well, if you must know, I made plots of cumulative probability versus number of turns. the 39%, 63%, and 92% were the values at 200 turns, while the "average time until a disappearance" was simply the turn at which the curve crossed 50%. Half the time, a disappearance will happen sooner, half the time, it will take longer. Not the most rigorous, I grant you, and I guess its technically the median turns until a disappearance, which is not exactly the same thing as the average (mean) number of turns between disappearances.

It occurs to me that your trade advisor could also be useful here. Rather than always giving you useless messages like "We should acquire more sources of oil!", the advisor could take into account the size of your empire and the number of sources you have, and say "We should acquire more..." only when the chance of disappearance was abnormally high. In fact, something like "our empire is growing, sire, we should seek more sources of oil" would be even more to the point. If you had plenty, and the chance of disappearance was low, the advice would switch to "We have plenty of oil, sire, lets see if anyone would like to buy some!"

And one final thing on this topic: if you had one oil and so did your friendly neighbor, you could contact them and offer to trade oil for oil. Then you'd each have two sources. The total chance of disappearance would remain the same, but now if your source was the one that vanished, you'd still have access to their source, at least until the trade expired. Vice versa if theirs vanished - they'd have access to yours. You could cover each other's back that way. Maybe, in the same way that the AI civs sometimes contact you and ask to trade world maps, the would occasionally contact you and say something like "Let us pool our oil resources in case either of our oil fields run dry!" (Cleopatra offers Oil and 5 GPT, asks for Oil). The gold might be in there if Egypt is bigger than you, to compensate your for the increased likelihood of losing your source if you have to supply more of her cities than she has to supply of yours.

One of the things I find missing in the resources is the ability to trade from one civ to another via an intermediary. The entire reason that N&S America were discovered was because the Europeans were tired of paying the exorbitant prices for spices and silks. My civ (or the AI) should be able to purchase extra resources (beyond what I need) and sell them to other civs who do not have contact with the supplier (or who the supplier refuses to sell to).

Well, if you must know, I made plots of cumulative probability versus number of turns. the 39%, 63%, and 92% were the values at 200 turns, while the "average time until a disappearance" was simply the turn at which the curve crossed 50%. Half the time, a disappearance will happen sooner, half the time, it will take longer. Not the most rigorous, I grant you, and I guess its technically the median turns until a disappearance, which is not exactly the same thing as the average (mean) number of turns between disappearances.

Of course I must know! I'm nosy! ;)
I know very little of mathematical terms in English, but I try to sound understandable. I think you needn't use plots. The first percents are simple enough to count. If the disappearance probability is 1:200, then the odds for having atleast one disappearance would be the complement of having no disappearances whatsoever:
1 - (199/200)^200 = 39%. With the same calculations you would have 63% and 92 %.

The median it is, and that explains. But I still think there is something wrong there. :confused: With binomical probability/binome probability/I-have-no-idea-what-probability (I don't know if it's the proper term in english) the probs should be easy to calculate. With 1:80 prob of disappearance, the number of disappearances in 200 turns would be:
0: (79/80)^200 = 0,08
1: (200 nCr 1)(1/80)^1*(79/80)^199 = 0,20
2: (200 nCr 2)(1/80)^2*(79/80)^198 = 0,26
It is actually here where the 50% line is crossed. This would make the median disappearances 2, which would mean something like once in 100 turns. Actually, come to think of it, if the probability is 1:80, shouldn't it simply occur once in 80 turns? That's what probabilities mean, isn't it?

This does give a slightly rarer picture of the disappearances. This would of course be corrected by lowering the probability to start with, or make the selling affect the disappearance ratio more.

Whatever the case, I think your calculations have shown that this could indeed work in reality with quite simple formulas.

And what's with the plots, judgement!? So it seems that you are not so busy yourself! Tricky, tricky :nono:

:lol:

Thanks for the calculations, by the way. I think they are an important part of this kind of suggestions: you can't really know it is something you can actually implement until you have a rough idea how it would work actually. :thanx: I am still on the process of actually showing that my new AI-system (or the system is old, but anyway) would actually work. That can't be done with simple numbers, but the idea can be shown and made concrete.

You're a real treat, judgement! :love: :D

@rcoutme: A great idea! This would become as a given in my system (I do advertise a lot, it seems!). You could buy resources even though you had enough - this excess could of course be re-directed. I didn't thought of this, but now that you mention it, it is an important feature - and luckily part of my system :D

EDIT: Welcome to CFC, by the way! :) (silly me didn't notice it in the first place. That's what you get for having the same head summers and winters through! :crazyeye: )

Originally posted by Shyrramar
I know very little of mathematical terms in English, but I try to sound understandable. I think you needn't use plots. The first percents are simple enough to count. If the disappearance probability is 1:200, then the odds for having atleast one disappearance would be the complement of having no disappearances whatsoever:
1 - (199/200)^200 = 39%. With the same calculations you would have 63% and 92 %.

I think you mean 1-(399/400)^200=39% :crazyeye: the 1:200 gives the 63% of course. And for my median calculation, 1-(79/80)^55=50%.


The median it is, and that explains. But I still think there is something wrong there. :confused: With binomical probability/binome probability/I-have-no-idea-what-probability (I don't know if it's the proper term in english) the probs should be easy to calculate. With 1:80 prob of disappearance, the number of disappearances in 200 turns would be:
0: (79/80)^200 = 0,08
1: (200 nCr 1)(1/80)^1*(79/80)^199 = 0,20
2: (200 nCr 2)(1/80)^2*(79/80)^198 = 0,26
It is actually here where the 50% line is crossed. This would make the median disappearances 2, which would mean something like once in 100 turns.

Binomial, in English. Try the same calc for 55 turns:
0: (79/80)^55 = 0.50
1: (55 nCr 1)(1/80)^1*(79/80)^55 = 0.34
etc.
So after 55 turns, 50% chance that nothing has happened, 34% that one has disappeared, and 16% that more than one is gone.

Actually, come to think of it, if the probability is 1:80, shouldn't it simply occur once in 80 turns? That's what probabilities mean, isn't it?

Except that ignores the possibility of more than one occurence.

Congrats on the 100 post milestone by the way. We'd accumulate them a lot a faster if each post wasn't so long, you know :goodjob:

you can't drive cars if your country has no petrol IMHO, so i suggest goin with Shyrramar :>

Originally posted by Shyrramar
Yes the formula is in effect a parabola. I have of course thought of parabolas and exponential functions, but there are two reasons I had in making the formula as it is.

(1) The formula is based on a simple idea of how the cost would rise. The idea is easy to grasp even for those who aren't math-experts and the effects would be easy to calculate and to control... If the function was made parabolic, it would become abstract.

(2) The actual code is unimportant. The maths involved is relatively simple to coders, so it should not present a problem. There is no need to make the code any simpler. In effect it is a parabola, but with important differences caused by the integer-part of the formula. It could be turned into a parabola that followed along the lines of this function and then turned into integers, but I am not sure of this and will not pursue the matter for now. The integers might have an effect on the parabola so that it wouldn't actually work.

So the point here is simply this: It is not important if the actual formula is easy or not - both suggested are easy enough. What IS important is that players can easily calculate their losses. This is what my system allows.


i guess it jsut depends on how a person thinks, for me and people like me, it's easier to visualise in pseudocode, and as a parabola. but is still exactly the same function, the rounding to integent would hardly make a difference, for things like this in fact i'd prefer ther rounding right on the last step to reduce rounding errors, and my version does have a first degree term, right before the if() statment.


It is a good idea, but something I would rather avoid. I do not like the idea of being forced to "manage"

that was prety much my point, that if you want to use the stockpiling system then the way to avoid the problem of micromagement is to just have a constany multiplier for the ones you don't have the oil for since otherwise you'd have to micromanage like this to save money.


This change in probability should either be simply displayed somewhere or made simple enough for everybody to grasp - as I have tried to do with my resource-cost-model.

or, even if there is no stockpiling allowed (or maybe only in cities with a certian improvement (the 'oil' eqyuivalent of a grainary!: hybrid system!)) the game could keep track of the amount of oil left in the source, and maybe with an uncertianty factor, your surveyers could tell you how many more years of it you have left at your current rate of consumption. remember in the real world we can estimate these things they're never complete suprises,

probablilites: remember there is a big difference between a 10^-9 and a 10^-6 chance of getting hit by a car when you cross the street if you cross 10^5 streets in your lifetime! hahaha

I think you mean 1-(399/400)^200=39% the 1:200 gives the 63% of course. And for my median calculation, 1-(79/80)^55=50%.


Indeed :) I calculated the result a long time ago, and just wrote it down... :o

Bi