Big fan of KISS (keep it simple stupid)but I also think that some complexity would do some good .As i said ive done tons of posts ,this is a post that I posted a while back,it covers alot of material around this subject so be warned grab a coke and a pack of smokes before you sit down to read it.
enjoy
1. trade everything,food,resorces,weapons,raw goods ,maufactured goods,techs,workers(slaves)
2. different production system,useing workers ie. population or beast of burden ie,horses and cattle, in your city center for raw production capacity and material ie. resorces, neccesary for that item.
3. every tile having resorce, some of these tiles would be simple,ie.forest having wood resorce,hills having stone etc. others more paticular such as gold ,oil,iron,etc.
4. resorce veins,this could be represented by shields,same as production and food shields in civ2 and 3.
5. All production items would require more than just a connection to a resorce,rather x amount of that resorce.
6 growing resorces,should be able to grow "living" resorces ie.horses,wheat,cattle,corn etc.growing these resorces would require technology advances to grow in extreme northern and southern latitudes,would also require new tiles, such as cold weather plains,temprate grasslands,etc.
7. A tiered road and port system allowing a limit on the amount of resorces to move through your empire,each level of tier allowing more resorces to be used or traded by a city.
8. improvments that would turn raw resorces into finished resorces ie.weapons factory,tank factory,textile mills,breweries etc. these improvements should have a significant maintanance applied to them to balance the benefit.That benefit being more commerce and happiness for finished product than raw. Some units and improvements would require finished product to build.
9. resorces having a set amount would require x amount of population and or x amount of beast of burden to access. multiple improvements on the resorce would lessen the amount of required population by x%
10. roads and ports would have a maintanance cost applied to limt the spread of road networks.This would help in the concept of supply on the battle field and balance toward trade.
11. 3 types of cities
A. the basic civ style city responsible for growth,science,production and culture.
B. collonies responsible for resorce collection outside of cultural borders.
c. millitary cities ,responsible for the production and training of offensive units,ie. army bases, naval ports, air bases.These would collect finished materials and population % (or shields in my idea) to produce multiple units per turn proveded enough resorces are available.
12. All resorces and excess population would go into a general slush fund ,such as gold does now,and be imported or exported to be used by cities and civs depending on what level trade network connects them to other cities and or civs.
13. city improvements to multiply amounts of resorces,such as a refinery would increase the amount of oil being produced in a citie by X%
14.creation of an open market relating to diplomacy.
if this is at all interesting below is a more detailed discription.
discription of resorces:
resorces-this should be a simlpe shield set up tiles would read 10 shields ,20 shields ,30 shields all variable but in incraments of ten to keep it simple, these are raw goods,oil ,grain,silk,etc.. and finshed goods ,food, armor,ammo,cloth etc..there are 3 basic types of these resorce/shields.
1-growth.should include high capacity grain ex-wheat.low copacity grain. ex-corn .high cappacity meat, ex-cows ,wild meats-game,low capacity fish-exe-crab,medium capacity fish exe-shellfish,domesticated fish exe-fish
2production-should be broken down into 3 catagorys-building material,ie clay,stone,hard wood,steel and aluminium.building capacity,this should be population shields and beast of burden shields.ie horses and cow.supply shields,food ,iron,oil,coal and uranium.
3luxurie this is the simplest of all.
collection of resorces:
how to collect these resorces is this,everything should be in shield form including population, say 10 shields for every population ,these shields along with beast of burden shields carry out the grunt work for the civ,building improvements, collecting resorces, building , supplieing millitary and so on .In collecting of resorces every resorce shield should require a population shield or beast of burden to collect it ,this could be an automatic thing in much the same way it is now,but the shields are neccesary( i'll explain down the road). To increase the amoant of a resorce that is being collected you should have improvements that you can continue to add to each improvemaent adding a 10% increase in collection.ex-A tile outside of city A has 10 shields of iron .you would have to allocate 10 population shields to harvest all 10 shileds ,now you add a mine .the amount of required population shields to collect the iron decrease to 9 .add another mine and it decreases again to 8 and so on.of course to make it ballanced your going to have to have a maintanance cost on every improvement,thats the job of cottages and towns.
Movement of resorces within the civ:
to move the resorces the road network and trade needs to change.first i think that you should have more than just a road that connects to be able to collect that resorce,there should be stages of road ,each increasing the amount of resorce that can be moved.back to city A: your collecting 10 shields of iron from your iron tile and the city is connected by a levl 1 road (each level should be able to move 10 shields per turn)city A also has 2 other iron tiles ,each with 10 shields .they are also connected to the city with a level one road. now you have 30 iron shields in city A.to move these shields in total to your capitol would require a level 3 ( for 30 shields) road.obviosly to be able to trade with other nations, is going to require building up of a road network or trade network..to handle trade on coastal cities, ports should handle this and should be treated as the same as roads .each port you build in a city increases your export/import capacity by 10,there is a point i want to make about supply on this but later.
How to use the resorces:
how to use the resorces-first of all tiles that dont have resorces should have 3 basic shields :clay for grassland and plains, hard woods for forest/jungle and stone for hills .All improvements should require a raw good and a prodution amount (raw goods would be building matreial shields and production would be population shields)ex. a foundry should require 5 stone shields or 5 hard wood shields and 15 production shields. outside of building basic millitary,science,and gold, all improvemnts should be for increasing the capacity of shields.ex.city A has 30 iron in the city ,build a foundry and now you icrease your capacity by 50% ,now CityA is producing 45 shields of iron.
back to building the foundry,you have 3 population in your city(30 shields)cityB is collecting 20 stone and is connected to the capitol by level 2 road. that means you have accass to 20 stone in city A(every resorce should use the road indapently ,all resorces go into a general slush fund and roads are the limits on how much a city can import/ export)each iron tile has 3 mines on it (keep in mind that every improvement decreases your population needs by 10%) which would only require 7 of the 10 population shields to collect the resorce ,meaning there are 3 population shields left over on each tile .those shields go back to the city and become your production shields or hammers as we know them in civ 4,meaning that the 9 production shields(3 from each mine) will take 2 turns to build the foundry that requires 15 shields ,with 3 shields left over for the next turn.
for units this should require x amount of population shields and x amount of building material shields. Most units should have a supply shiled attached to them and used every turn ex. legions should have a food shield that they need to be supplied with that is automaticly taken out of the slush at the begining of the turn,rather than stopping the unit if supply is cut it should have collateral damage applied to it every turn. some units having higher % of collateral than others.units that run on fuel should have the highest% ,while foot units the lowest.the amount that that can be supplied depends on the road the unit it is traveling on ,a level 1 road can supply up to 10 shields,because units that require fuel along with food will require more supply shields ,you wont be able to move large amounts of armor in enemy terratory unless thier trade network is built up .as for navy ,your ports should determine when your navy is out of supply ,this should aslo work for trade,each port level should grant one tile of supply . in other words a level 3 port would mean that your gally can move 3 tiles out from the city before it begins to recieve collateral damage .as for trade it should be 3 tiles for every level of the port.this is the base level and as techs increase the amaont of tiles for port level would increase
Growing resorces:
in general, grasslands ,plains and hills should have 1 food shield respectavly,farms and techs would increase this of course but for the most part they are low yeild. flood plains would have 2 shields,untill cultivation .This tech would allow the first civ and only the first to see the wheat resorce, once you begin to farm wheat you can use a wheat shield to grow new fields ex. civA researches cultivation and has a wheat icon pop up in one of thiere tiles ,with a shield of ten,they place ten pop shields to harvest. ten shields of wheat go to the city,they take one shield of wheat and place it on a empty flood plain tile and another wheat icon pops up in that tile ,this should be ten shields no matter what .that civ can also trades the wheat shield to other civs and the wheat shield should also act like religion in that it would naturally grow to their civs along trade routes,now to grow beasts of burden would require grain shields,if you discover domestication and you can grow wheat ,you should be able to take a horse shield and a wheat shield to create new horse resorces in an empty tile
live stock shields should also break down like this ;horse shields should be used for millitary,and production.cows should break down to food and production. you should be able to "grow"cows and horses in any terrain.pigs are only for food,sheep are for luxery and food. pigs can grow only in plains and grassland ,sheep in hill tiles.
corn,rice and wheat would have also have limmits on where they can be grown.
Building of units:
as i said all improvements outside of science and gold are for improving your collection amount or turning raw goods into finished product.
In building of units,simple defensives units should be able to build inside your city but offensive units should require something eles,military bases either army,navy or airforse. these should function similer to cities but you can only build units in them.resorces neccesary for the building of units should be allocated here,in your cities you should be building the capacity for millitary might but not the millitary. this would not include ancient times but i think once you get to the bronze age it should come into play.to make a legion would require a weapons factory improvement. in city A this factory takes x amount of iron shields and turns that into x amount of weapons ,these shields go into a slush fund that incompases your intire empire, and when you go to your army base it gives you options to build units depending on what shields you have available in the fund .these shields can be traded to other civs.ie the iran contra affair.
On the subject of trade:
this resorce driven model clearly needs to happen on a national ,international level and infistructure determins how much access indivisual cities have,this was why I suggested road and port levels to detrmin this access.You shouldnt have to move resorces around to build items ,this is far to much micro managment ,my thinking is build an infistrucure that naturally moves the material around for you ,and build the infistrucure in cities that 1 allows you to have access to material and the enhancement of that material, 2 to build improvemrnts that are very goal spacific for a city,ie. education cities,production cities,trade cities,and growth cities.By restricting movement of resorces in levels of road and port infistrucure and the addition of a general slush for all resorces, we create the speacialized cities and a larger scope of commerce and trade.
trade range:
Trade should have a range,only being able to move a certain amount of resorces over a certain amount of tiles before it has to move to a trade spacific improvement such as a market or port within a city.this range would improve as technology advances but should be kept a small range in the beggining.This would allow building of trade spacific cities and key to a good trade/commerce model.
open market:
If trade is limited by infistructure,than commerce goes along with it ,by the limiting how far trade can happen it becomes neccesary to make a general slush for resorces in much the same as it is done on the national level,it will be on th international level.It will be neccesarry to create an open market that civs sell and buy resorces from.roads and ports allow the access of these resorces making it neccesarry that trade would have to involve any civs geographicly between 2 civs trading.Again this is infistructure that creates this movement of resorces and would be an automatic movement rather than micro management.In true form large port facilities and markets purchase all goods available to them and resell on the open market ,some goods imported and exported in the same port at a profit.This is handled in the private sector,not by the goverment,the goverments role in this is the building of infistructure to handle the trade.
fluctuating costs:
In game play you would have resorces moving through your civ that you dont use, those resorces should have a commerce attached to them perhaps one gold for every resorce that passes through a port or market in your civ( all resorces should have free range within a civ ).This would mean that the original cost that is set would be higher by the time that it gets to its destination ,the further from the sorce of the resorce the more expensive it is .the civ that the resorce originated from would not profit entirely from the resorce ,it would get its selling price that it set, once its purchased but every port and market that handled this good would get one gold for every resorce.The ending price would depend on how many ports and markets it passed through.
A simple plan for monopoly markets:
This is a complicated issue that begs to be addressed,I think a simple solution would be to add a % of cost for every civ that does not have the resorce add to this the % of demand in comparison to what is available on the open market .This is added to a base cost depending on the resorce.I am open for suggestions here.Obviosly if the market is flooded than the price would drop, if its limited the price would spike .how to get this im not sure.
Indipendant trade:
There should be a division of tradable resorces and how they are handled,simple resorces can be traded on the open market,however goverment resorces such as weapons and stratigic supply(uranium,gasoline)should be traded indapendatly and between civs ,with no civs profiting from the trade other than the 2 civs.
blockades and embargoes:
By creating open markets to handle trade and making it neccesary for other civs to handle the movement of some of this trade,we create some very interesting options for stratagy. Embargoes and blockaids become very powerfull tools .Embargo would mean that you could create a break in a trade link,if this is the bulk of commerce (which i think it should be)than it becomes a way to cripple a civ without even firing a shot.Embargo against a civ would not allow any goods originating from that civ to pass through your ports or markets.
blockades would block all goods from entering a civ,and because the neccesary for levels of ports to access the trade network ie. trade cities ,blockade would be a viable stratagy
I ralize this is kind of a book but none the less here you go
Talk about wealthy, productive, and populated. And somehow they do it with miniscule land. The power of trade is underestimated in Civ IV.
) it would make the game much more interesting, it would not make the game better gamewise, which is where they have their goals on.
