What about an escalating cost scale based on need vs availability?
Say I have 10 units that need Oil and I'm generating 12 Oil -> build and maintenance costs are normal
But if I have 11 units that need Oil and I'm generating 10 Oil -> build and maintenance costs increase by 50%
If I have more than 5 units more than I'm generating -> build and maintenance costs increase by 100%
If 10 units more than I'm generating -> build and maintenance costs increase by 200%
This brings some economics into the game, since typically there's some source or some substitute for any need, just at higher and higher costs. It still creates value to having access to resources, but isn't as punishing if you don't.
Of all the resources, I think Oil is the only one that isn’t handled well[1].
Horses, Iron and Niter[2] work pretty well. The resources feel important, but not having them isn’t a death sentence, and the fact these resources are largely focused on units feels thematic.
Coal and Nuke are largely focused on power, and I’m quite okay with that.
Oil feels silly though. I don’t tend to use it for power, which I’m totally okay with. Oil Powerplants feels like something that should generally pretty niche outside of a player just having lots of oil and wanting to leverage that. Oil is key for late game units, but in a way which is very blunt - I like the idea of units without Oil being weaker but in practice that doesn’t actually happen. Instead, you just don’t build Infantry, Tanks etc if you don’t have Oil.
But the bigger problem is that, because Oil is just focused on units, it doesn’t have any real impact on your economy. That feels wrong.
If you are in the modern era technologically, your empire should really
require oil. It should be a integral part of your overall economy, not just a hurdle your Military need to get over.
eg Maybe Cities have a flat oil maintenance requirement; or maybe having x oil in reserve adds housing or amenities to Cities; or x oil reserve gives you additional trade routes.
I like the resource rules generally and I like the power rules. But I think Oil and it’s impact on a player’s overall economy is the missing piece. If Oil was more integral to your economy, then there would be real reason to try securing Oil and real reasons to have conflict over Oil, something the game doesn’t currently have at all.
[1] Well, Aluminium as maintenance is a bit silly. It would be better if you just paid flat Aluminium for Aircraft rather than having it be a maintenance cost.
[2] Thematically Niter is a bit weird, because in real life people could manufacture the stuff, but it works in terms of gameplay. They really could cover off the thematic bit by just having Armories or some other building produce or even a Policy Card provide Niter.
Maintenance costs are ripe for a revamp. I'd like to see the Palace give you a few units at the current maintenance costs (or something close), but require an investment in Encampments to be able to maintain additional land units without a steep maintenance cost increase, Harbours for additional naval units, etc.
But yes, as a broader topic, in Civ 6 the incentive to invest in generating gold is that it allows you to skip generating production altogether. In prior versions of Civ the incentive to invest in generating gold was that a growing infrastructure required higher and higher gold income to keep it functioning. The current situation isn't just an issue with military maintenance, but building and infrastructure maintenance generally. It's not necessarily "wrong", it just makes growing your empire less interesting (to me). Rather than gold being something you need to divert resources towards judiciously, trying not to be too soon or too late with your investment, it's something you want to get as much of as quickly as you can. The Civ 6 economic system doesn't worry about the inflationary impact of a growing money supply.
Agreed.
The key thing is gold maintenance costs should fluctuate. The fact gold maintenance is fixed, and so always predictable and controlled, means it’s never an issue. But if gold maintenance costs could “jump up” from time to time and or your gold supply could suddenly drop off, then you’d have to watch and manage gold much more proactively (instead of just hoarding it until you chop in Big Ben).
