[Feature] Limited Resource Effects

[Leoreth]

This is the development for the "Limited Resource Effects" feature. The branch name is "resources", see here on how to access it and how this thread is supposed to work.

So far, this branch includes the following changes:
- resources only provide direct health/happiness to a limited number of cities
- the number of affected cities depends on the resource, e.g. grain affects only one city per resource, seafood two, livestock and other health resources three, most happiness resources three as well, resources from wonders affect up to ten cities (numbers still subject to change)
- in consequence, it is desirable for large empires to acquire multiple instances of one resource
- if insufficient resources exist in the empire to supply all cities, cities with higher culture get precedence
- other effects from resources (including happiness/heath from buildings) still affect all cities even with only one instance

Things that still need to be done:
- show available resource effects compared to a city's culture rank in the city screen and domestic advisor
- add a civilopedia entry explaining the new rules
- remove changes previously made to the resource trade AI (valuing resources differently by empire size)
- make the AI aware of the new rules when valuing resources including trade (i.e. evaluating how many resources are needed etc.)

Try and discuss here, I will keep you updated on further changes.

 

[Tigranes]

What about strategic resources? Do you have any plans to include them in this feature or they will be governed by vanila rules?

 

[Leoreth]

As mentioned, for now they behave as usual (you need one instance to build their units, and multiple instances are only relevant for corporations). This branch is only concerned with health and happiness at the moment. I have some ideas how to handle strategic resources differently but I'm not sure if they can make it into 1.16. I would rather keep features limited.

 

[cmakk1012]

What about strategic resources? Do you have any plans to include them in this feature or they will be governed by vanila rules?

We Civ5 now

 

[Jarlaxe Baenre]

Could there be +/- buttons, like with specialists, to ensure that a city has access to a resource / doesn't have access to a resource?

 

[Leoreth]

No, that would be too much micromanagement I think.

 

[Steb]

- if insufficient resources exist in the empire to supply all cities, cities with higher culture get precedence

How does this work exactly? Is it per resource calculation?

For example, if there are multiple happiness resources with one instance, do the cultured cities get them all, perhaps having excess happiness, while other cities get none? Or do the other cities get the extra happiness resources once the cultured cities have enough for their happiness?

What about cases where a city is on/near a happiness resource that should give happiness only to other cities?

 

[Leoreth]

For example, if there are multiple happiness resources with one instance, do the cultured cities get them all, perhaps having excess happiness, while other cities get none?

Yes.

If you want to grow wide, it is better to focus on having multiples of a few resources, while resource diversity is good for tall empires.

What about cases where a city is on/near a happiness resource that should give happiness only to other cities?

Then that's what happens, location of resources has no influence.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Then that's what happens, location of resources has no influence.

What if you're having a part of your empire cut off from your core, like e.g. when you are European and acquired Mexico through the Conquerer's event before researching the tech needed for Ocean trading?

 

[Steb]

Yes.

If you want to grow wide, it is better to focus on having multiples of a few resources, while resource diversity is good for tall empires.

I quite like this actually. I was going to say that the cities that produce the luxuries should benefit from them, but of course they still do, through the economic benefits of exploitation (tile yields).

Thinking about the history of my country, New France received the economic benefits from the fur trade, not the benefit of having nobles proudly showing off their castor hats.

 

[Leoreth]

What if you're having a part of your empire cut off from your core, like e.g. when you are European and acquired Mexico through the Conquerer's event before researching the tech needed for Ocean trading?

The vanilla resource rules already allow for entirely separate trade networks with access to different resources. If say Mexico and Spain are not connected by trade routes they only have access to the resources produced within their own network, and otherwise the same rules apply.

I quite like this actually. I was going to say that the cities that produce the luxuries should benefit from them, but of course they still do, through the economic benefits of exploitation (tile yields).

Thinking about the history of my country, New France received the economic benefits from the fur trade, not the benefit of having nobles proudly showing off their castor hats.

Right. The idea here is two address to other frequent requests, first to give culture more impact on the game and second to give more of a character and distinction between colonies and the metropole. Using culture to distribute resources will concentrate happiness (and by extension, population growth and commerce) in core / old world cities, while colonies will remain small and focussed on extractive industries. At the same time civics and building happiness buildings allow you to influence to what extent this divide is pronounced in your civilization.

I'm sure it will take some tries to get the balance between these elements right, but it's a pretty good start.

(By the way, I also have a more complex system drawn up that also interacts with trade routes and diplomacy, but that will wait until later in the development process. I realised that I could implement this element of my plans relatively easily while leaving all existing game rules intact.)

 

[Ogi123]

Okay that's interesting idea but would it be possible for consistency sake to do this as one resource instance - one city. Then simply make it that there is more than one resource on plot as in civ5.
Secondary woldn't this encourage even more imperialism because you need more resources and much more stringent city placement?

 

[Leoreth]

Okay that's interesting idea but would it be possible for consistency sake to do this as one resource instance - one city. Then simply make it that there is more than one resource on plot as in civ5.

That was my first idea as well, but it turned out to be much more complicated and would have cluttered unrelated game elements (resource trade, corporations) with no real benefit.

Secondary woldn't this encourage even more imperialism because you need more resources and much more stringent city placement?

Depends. On the imperialism part, every expansion comes with more cities to supply. For city placement, super cities require more happiness as well, so again it is a choice between more diverse or more focused sets of resources. It may be advisable to have several smaller cities which you can supply with the resources you already have.

But I am waiting to see how people interact with this to come to a final conclusion.

 

[Leoreth]

New update:
- available (or lacking) resources and resource effects are displayed in the city screen
- added a civilopedia entry
- added a hint

 

[merijn_v1]

The first city that isn't supplied with a resource is indicated with a white 0. I think it's better if that is also colored red, like cities with a negative supply. It isn't supplied after all.
Example: 600AD China has wheat for Xian and Beijing. Kaifeng isn't supplied and the indication is a white (0). Nanjing with a red (-1).

To fix: replace the >= 0 with > 0 in line 4047 in MainInterface.py

 

[Bautos42]

Maybe some food resources (like grain) could give a +1 bonus instead of +1. That way, imperial centers would grow larger without making the surrounding lands as productive. This could represent e.g. Rome importing grain from Egypt. At the moment, Byzantium/Istanbul grows so large because it has access to lots of food resources. But it was really the political significance that let it grow as large.

Secondly, maybe the culture value could be weighted by the percentage of foreign culture in a city, hence if a city has 40% foreign culture, the resource priority would only be calculated with 60% of the actual culture in the city. This would further encourage the resources to go to the core cities and not to high cultured recently conquered cities. (Note that I'm not entirely sure about the rules applying to culture on city conquest. If most of the culture is lost, this proposal might be unnecessary)

 

[Leoreth]

The first city that isn't supplied with a resource is indicated with a white 0. I think it's better if that is also colored red, like cities with a negative supply. It isn't supplied after all.
Example: 600AD China has wheat for Xian and Beijing. Kaifeng isn't supplied and the indication is a white (0). Nanjing with a red (-1).

To fix: replace the >= 0 with > 0 in line 4047 in MainInterface.py

Oh, right. I had conceptualised this negative number as "how many culture ranks does this city need to gain to have access to this resource", so maybe I should reduce this number by one if less than 1.

Maybe some food resources (like grain) could give a +1 bonus instead of +1. That way, imperial centers would grow larger without making the surrounding lands as productive. This could represent e.g. Rome importing grain from Egypt. At the moment, Byzantium/Istanbul grows so large because it has access to lots of food resources. But it was really the political significance that let it grow as large.

That was part of the more complex system I mentioned above. Something like this will come at some point.

Secondly, maybe the culture value could be weighted by the percentage of foreign culture in a city, hence if a city has 40% foreign culture, the resource priority would only be calculated with 60% of the actual culture in the city. This would further encourage the resources to go to the core cities and not to high cultured recently conquered cities. (Note that I'm not entirely sure about the rules applying to culture on city conquest. If most of the culture is lost, this proposal might be unnecessary)

It already only uses the owner culture value.

 

[citizenofdoom]

Just maybe, "the people in the city's value" Rich city with buy a lot of resource into them means <Larger, More Economically Strong, Many Great People> lure resource into them.
Also increse the instablity of this, Rich and Poor people's distance.

 

[Jarlaxe Baenre]

Just maybe, "the people in the city's value" Rich city with buy a lot of resource into them means <Larger, More Economically Strong, Many Great People> lure resource into them.
Also increse the instablity of this, Rich and Poor people's distance.

What does this mean?

 

[Cosmos1985]

Wouldn't it make sense to allow a city to gain the benefits of a resource in its BFC in addition to this? If a colony on the other side of the world has so much of something that it is able to supply the "motherland" with it, isn't it then fair to say that it is available to the city itself as well?