Finite Resources - a question...?

[Willem]

The first is incredibly non-transparent to the player. You should be able to see everything easily from looking at the game as it currently is. Having a current impact depend on the state of the world that existed in the past (that has no current visible indicator anywhere) is a terrible idea.

The player's going to know which cities actually existed when you first hooked up the resource and be able to remember that. How is it any different than knowing which cities have a Library and which don't?

The second and third: how do they interact?

In the same way that real life economic decisions are handled. Larger cities are going to have more of a demand for a product. Distance from the source is going to have an impact on the cost of delivering a product to a market, and hence the profit margin.

Distance isn't great; do you count ocean tiles?

Why not, provided you have the appropriate tech. If you can't trade over ocean tiles until Astronomy, then that gets factored in.

What about ties?

Another part of the formula kicks in. If 2 cities are the same size but one is a single tile further, the precedance goes to the closer one. In an exact tie, flip a coin. I don't see why you find it so complicated.

Read the first page of the thread, lots of problems with any allocation mechanism.

It's just a question of finding the proper formula.

You are suggesting a strict chronological order; you're suggesting that only the early cities you build will be able to access the resource, and that cities you settle or acquire later will be get resource access.

No, only those cities that exist at the time of hooking up the resource will get supplied from that particular one. Anything after that will have to wait until a new supply source is found.

Do the resource access of a particular resource is set forever and ever when the resource is first connected?

If that prevents the exploit of destroying your own improvement then yes.

How is that logical or transparent? Player's shouldn't have to remember the entire micro-history of the game.

Again, how is it any different than remembering which city has a Library and which one doesn't?

I severely doubt that a larger army will ever be not useful.

It would depend on the situation at the time. If you have enough soldiers to fulfill your needs for the moment, and still have a surplus of a resource, then it could be beneficial to trade off your excess for the time being. If your needs change later, then you simply cancel the trade deal and use the resource yourself.

Either you'll want to hoard the resources and not trade them, or you won't want the extra resources and so the whole cap system becomes irrelevant.

Since we don't really know how the finite resource system is going to work yet, it's kind of pointless to debate the merits of hoarding vs. trading.

If you absolutely had to make luxury goods limited, the easiest way to allocate them would be to have them automatically allocated to your cities with the most unhappy citizens (ie net unhappy faces - happy faces).

Well that could easily be another factor in the formula for determning where the resources go of course. You're carrying on as if I'm establishing a firm set of rules here. I'm merely trying to offer suggestions as to how to make the other resources finite as well. I just think overall it would be better if all resources were treated in the same way.

 

[Ahriman]

The player's going to know which cities actually existed when you first hooked up the resource and be able to remember that. How is it any different than knowing which cities have a Library and which don't?

Because I can load a savegame of a match that I haven't played for a month and go to the city screen of a city and see if it has a library or not. I don't have to remember anything; the library is still there.

But there is no in-game reminder of when I connected a resource, or of the age of cities I have. I just have to remember this? Even if I have half a dozen different resources and 10 different cities and am playing in 3 games at once?

Also: how would your system work for resources acquired via trade? They apply only to cities that I have when I first enter a trade deal with player X?
What if I cancel the trade deal, then make it again? Same cities?
So I also have to remember which cities I controlled when I first entered a trade deal with player X?

In the same way that real life economic decisions are handled. Larger cities are going to have more of a demand for a product. Distance from the source is going to have an impact on the cost of delivering a product to a market, and hence the profit margin.

OMG, so you're going to create a realistic demand model?
How is that simple and transparent?
I need to be able to instantly at a glance look at a resource and know how it affects me. Not to go through some complex multi-variable formula.

The more things you "factor in", the more of a nightmare the mechanism becomes.

No, only those cities that exist at the time of hooking up the resource will get supplied from a particular resource. Anything after that will have to wait until a new supply source is found.

Right! Which is a strict chronological order! Early built cities get the resource, later cities don't. Even if later cities are giant metropoli, and the early cities are a tiny size 2 village that I just built to claim that bronze resource, or to block off the mountain pass.

Well that could easily be another factor in the formula for determning where the resources go of course.

A "formula" is just a bad idea. You need to know this info at a glance, not to calculate it.

carrying on as if I'm establishing a firm set of rules here.

If you can't establish a simple firm set of rules, then the mechanism doesn't work. I am saying that *every* finite implementation of luxuries will have at least some confusing factor.

Simplest by far is the current system of luxuries affecting all your cities.

Luxury/health goods already work very differently from strategic resources in other ways, and even if you make them both "finite" in some sense then they will still operate very differently.
Strategic resources are needed to build units, luxury/health resources have no effect unless a city's unhealth/unhappy is past a threshold.

 

[Willem]

If you can't establish a simple firm set of rules, then the mechanism doesn't work. I am saying that *every* finite implementation of luxuries will have at least some confusing factor.

Well fine, then let the player decide where the resources go. Have a special resource screen that allows you to allocate all your resources to where you want them to go. It just doesn't make any sense that one type of resource is finite while the others aren't. It also limits trade possibilities when you only need a single source for your entire empire. It would be much better if you need to wheel and deal your way to health and happiness.

 

[Ahriman]

Well fine, then let the player decide where the resources go.

And then you have annoying micromanagement.

It would be much better if you need to wheel and deal your way to health and happiness

This is easily achieved with infinite resources by just having map scripts that appropriately seed resources, so that only a few different resources appear near you, but with multiple copies of each, and you have to trade for more.

Its not hard to do this by tweaking the current system rather then devising something entirely new.

 

[snapple232]

I have to agree with Ahriman here. Too many armchair designers try to solve problems by throwing formulas and rules at them. Basically any implementation of finite luxury resources could work given the correct parameters, but there's something to be said for elegant solutions.

My biggest gripe in fact with Civilization IV was all the "mathy" and unintuitive rules that governed everything from combat to war weariness to trade routes. None of those systems were obvious to the player unless they looked up the complicated mathematical formulas behind them.

Complexity doesn't equal depth, nor does realism equal good gameplay. The end goal for every addition to the game should be "How does this make the game more fun?", not "This is unrealistic, so what rules can I apply to make it realistic?".

 

[Blkbird]

The whole concept of food resources, especially the land-based ones, isn't realistic or logical to begin with: Realistically, crops aren't "found" at some places, but planted at designated locations ever since the invention of agriculture. Even if you say, "but there were wild rice before humans cultivated them", you have to know that wild crops all have significantly lower yields than cultivars (it's the primary reason humans created those cultivars), and "farming wild rice" would obviously be an oxymoron.

What *would* work, though, is if we think "Rice" as "soil especially suited for rice, with wild rice growing there". That way, "having Rice within my border" would mean "discovering wild rice and developing the ability to cultivate it and plant it elsewhere", and "building a Farm on a Rice" would mean "farming (cultivated) rice on this especially fertile soil", which naturally provides unusually high yield. In this scenario, having a single Rice would mean you know rice-farming, and therefore your entire civilization can benefit from it, as you would be farming rice not only where it's discovered, everywhere in regular farms.

 

[Willem]

This is easily achieved with infinite resources by just having map scripts that appropriately seed resources, so that only a few different resources appear near you, but with multiple copies of each, and you have to trade for more.

Its not hard to do this by tweaking the current system rather then devising something entirely new.

This is exactly the way it works right now, and as far as I'm concerned it sucks, no matter how you tweak it. Trading in Civ is a joke, once you make a deal for a single resource with someone that's it. I'd rather deal with the micromanagement and have a dynamic trading system than just maintain a repeat of how things are now, which is what we seem to be getting. It's boring and completely unrealistic. The only other option is to have some form of Corporation that makes use of the those excess resources in some way, but I've seen no indication that anything like that is going to be in the game. If you want things to work exactly as they are now that's your option, but I was hoping for something better. And it doesn't sound like we're going to get it. It will just be the same old, same old.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Wow Ahriman, you quickly went from sounding like someone who had reasonable concerns about Finite Resources, to yet another person whose simply afraid that they might actually have to rethink their game-play strategies (or, more accurately, EXPLOITS) for the first time in a long while. You & Snapple whinge about how such a system will "limit trade opportunities", yet totally ignore the fact that infinite resources already ENSURES that trading opportunities are virtually non-existent. You say "whats to stop a player from hording iron to build as many iron-based units as possible?" Hmmm, try MAINTENANCE-in CivV it might not be in the interest of your economy to build hundreds of units-iron based or not-especially now that you can't hold them all in your cities (also, what if maximum unit numbers are limited by man-power?)
At least in the system we propose their is a reason for people to *BUY* your resources-even if they already have it. That isn't the case in CivIV, which is LAME (the US of A has its own Oil, but it still buys Oil from OPEC, that could never happen in the CivIII & CivIV worlds). If you were to apply benefits to trading resources &/or a cap on the maximum benefit accrued from multiple copies of a resource, then there is even more reason for a player *not* to hoard a resource (but in CivIV there was very often little choice but to "hoard" my resources, as most other players usually already *had* 1 copy of the resource I had to trade).
There is nothing overly complex or unintuitive in the options I've put forward-no more so than determining the amount of culture a city needs to expand its borders, or how much science or commerce your city generates-all easily checkable by entering the city screen & seeing it with your own two eyes-& putting the cursor over it to get *all* the info you want. Though realism is part of my reason for wanting Finite Resources, I'm also motivated by the desire to see the improvement in Civ-Civ interactions (via diplomacy or war). In the real world, many wars & trade deals are driven by the desire to acquire resources-even ones the nation in question already has, why should it be any different in CivV?

Aussie.

 

[SJSerio]

The whole concept of food resources, especially the land-based ones, isn't realistic or logical to begin with: Realistically, crops aren't "found" at some places, but planted at designated locations ever since the invention of agriculture. Even if you say, "but there were wild rice before humans cultivated them", you have to know that wild crops all have significantly lower yields than cultivars (it's the primary reason humans created those cultivars), and "farming wild rice" would obviously be an oxymoron.

What *would* work, though, is if we think "Rice" as "soil especially suited for rice, with wild rice growing there". That way, "having Rice within my border" would mean "discovering wild rice and developing the ability to cultivate it and plant it elsewhere", and "building a Farm on a Rice" would mean "farming (cultivated) rice on this especially fertile soil", which naturally provides unusually high yield. In this scenario, having a single Rice would mean you know rice-farming, and therefore your entire civilization can benefit from it, as you would be farming rice not only where it's discovered, everywhere in regular farms.

I think that the "soil esecially suited for rice" is the idea. It is a way to differentiate the different crops and is more of an aesthetic idea. I never really though of the Wheat as being discovered in an area. More like an area ideal for growing the crop. When I make maps, I try to place them by region and terrain in order to diversify and specialize some civs.

This is exactly the way it works right now, and as far as I'm concerned it sucks, no matter how you tweak it. Trading in Civ is a joke, once you make a deal for a single resource with someone that's it. I'd rather deal with the micromanagement and have a dynamic trading system than just maintain a repeat of how things are now, which is what we seem to be getting. It's boring and completely unrealistic. The only other option is to have some form of Corporation that makes use of the those excess resources in some way, but I've seen no indication that anything like that is going to be in the game. If you want things to work exactly as they are now that's your option, but I was hoping for something better. And it doesn't sound like we're going to get it. It will just be the same old, same old.

I absolutely agree with this. That is why all resources have to be finite and have a means to make them so. They increase the value of the resource. Only having strategic resources be finite, however, and only strategic resources have any value. In Civ IV, they were the only resource really necessary to have multiple of in case something happened and you lost one source. They were also too often the only resource traded. Personally, whenever I had multiple access to a resource that other nations did not, I would always hoard it and do my best to prevent other nations from trading that resource to my friends/enemies. Again, that is why finite resources makes sense... it just needs to be implemented for all types of resources.

Wow Ahriman, you quickly went from sounding like someone who had reasonable concerns about Finite Resources, to yet another person whose simply afraid that they might actually have to rethink their game-play strategies (or, more accurately, EXPLOITS) for the first time in a long while. You & Snapple whinge about how such a system will "limit trade opportunities", yet totally ignore the fact that infinite resources already ENSURES that trading opportunities are virtually non-existent. You say "whats to stop a player from hording iron to build as many iron-based units as possible?" Hmmm, try MAINTENANCE-in CivV it might not be in the interest of your economy to build hundreds of units-iron based or not-especially now that you can't hold them all in your cities (also, what if maximum unit numbers are limited by man-power?)
At least in the system we propose their is a reason for people to *BUY* your resources-even if they already have it. That isn't the case in CivIV, which is LAME (the US of A has its own Oil, but it still buys Oil from OPEC, that could never happen in the CivIII & CivIV worlds). If you were to apply benefits to trading resources &/or a cap on the maximum benefit accrued from multiple copies of a resource, then there is even more reason for a player *not* to hoard a resource (but in CivIV there was very often little choice but to "hoard" my resources, as most other players usually already *had* 1 copy of the resource I had to trade).
There is nothing overly complex or unintuitive in the options I've put forward-no more so than determining the amount of culture a city needs to expand its borders, or how much science or commerce your city generates-all easily checkable by entering the city screen & seeing it with your own two eyes-& putting the cursor over it to get *all* the info you want. Though realism is part of my reason for wanting Finite Resources, I'm also motivated by the desire to see the improvement in Civ-Civ interactions (via diplomacy or war). In the real world, many wars & trade deals are driven by the desire to acquire resources-even ones the nation in question already has, why should it be any different in CivV?

Aussie.

I have to agree with Aussie here as well. The implications of finite resources, as opposed to infinite, is pretty deep and allows for much greater scenarios. You could say more realistic scenarios, too... but to me, no matter which side of the realism argument that you lie, this is definitely a case where realism improves gameplay, not impedes or inbalances it. (Now take that, realism haters! )

 

[snapple232]

I have to agree with Aussie here as well. The implications of finite resources, as opposed to infinite, is pretty deep and allows for much greater scenarios. You could say more realistic scenarios, too... but to me, no matter which side of the realism argument that you lie, this is definitely a case where realism improves gameplay, not impedes or inbalances it. (Now take that, realism haters! )

I don't have a problem with the concept of finite resources. I just don't necessarily agree with the models proposed in this thread. Most of them try to make it "work" by either imposing mathematical formulas to balance it out, or making up arbitrary rules that players have to memorize and constantly keep in mind. Neither of those options seem optimal to me.

 

[SJSerio]

I don't have a problem with the concept of finite resources. I just don't necessarily agree with the models proposed in this thread. Most of them try to make it "work" by either imposing mathematical formulas to balance it out, or making up arbitrary rules that players have to memorize and constantly keep in mind. Neither of those options seem optimal to me.

Ever watched the show Numb3rs? MAthematical formulas can be applied to just about anything.

Seriously, though, mathematics is the basic science that governs any video game. Whether they are Strategy games, Role Playing, Physics (like brick breaker or pong), Puzzle, Action or even Trivia, they all use mathematics to determine various aspects mechanics of the game. The same can be said to be true of non-electronic games from Dungeons and Dragons to Monopoly to Chutes and Ladders.

 

[snapple232]

Ever watched the show Numb3rs? MAthematical formulas can be applied to just about anything.

Seriously, though, mathematics is the basic science that governs any video game. Whether they are Strategy games, Role Playing, Physics (like brick breaker or pong), Puzzle, Action or even Trivia, they all use mathematics to determine various aspects mechanics of the game. The same can be said to be true of non-electronic games from Dungeons and Dragons to Monopoly to Chutes and Ladders.

There's nothing wrong with mathematical formulas as long as the underlying mechanics are intuitive. If the player has to go onto a website to look up the formula to understand why something happened in the game, that's a problem.

Civ IV combat is an example of a bad implementation of a formula. You can't understand what "first strikes" do unless you get a look at the formula behind it, which is a bad design IMO.

 

[SJSerio]

There's nothing wrong with mathematical formulas as long as the underlying mechanics are intuitive. If the player has to go onto a website to look up the formula to understand why something happened in the game, that's a problem.

Civ IV combat is an example of a bad implementation of a formula. You can't understand what "first strikes" do unless you get a look at the formula behind it, which is a bad design IMO.

Yeah, their are bad implementations, but that is not (just) the formulas, that is the mechanics themselves. Personally, I feel that the computer is there so that these complex formulas can be done. They don't really need to be visible (or known) to the player. In some cases, yeah it does help the player understand, but it is not always necessary for the player to know. There are many mechanics in Civ IV are buried under the hood and unless you are modding the game, you don't really need to understand them, or how they break down, in order to play.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Wow Snapple, if you hate arbitrary rules that make things work-or hate mathematically based approaches to in-game rules, then Civ *really* isn't for you. Practically every single system in Civ, from happiness to warfare, uses "arbitrary" rules with a basis in maths. Do you commit all of your chances of victory in combat *to memory*? I doubt that very much. You probably hover your mouse over your units to tell you the odds of victory-I'm guessing its the same with culture, happiness & any other in-game system. If you're committing all that info to memory, then you've got a better memory than me!!! The systems I've proposed for finite luxury & food resources need not be any more complicated than that-yet still you rail against them. Essentially, it sounds to me like you'd rather have a game with a completely limited trade than have a system which can reasonably approximate the concept of finite resources without forcing the player to actually need to commit any new information to memory!

Aussie.

 

[snapple232]

Wow Snapple, if you hate arbitrary rules that make things work-or hate mathematically based approaches to in-game rules, then Civ *really* isn't for you. Practically every single system in Civ, from happiness to warfare, uses "arbitrary" rules with a basis in maths. Do you commit all of your chances of victory in combat *to memory*? I doubt that very much. You probably hover your mouse over your units to tell you the odds of victory-I'm guessing its the same with culture, happiness & any other in-game system. If you're committing all that info to memory, then you've got a better memory than me!!! The systems I've proposed for finite luxury & food resources need not be any more complicated than that-yet still you rail against them. Essentially, it sounds to me like you'd rather have a game with a completely limited trade than have a system which can reasonably approximate the concept of finite resources without forcing the player to actually need to commit any new information to memory!

Aussie.

I wasn't really referring to you specifically. And I actually do agree that a finite luxury system (if implemented well) would spice up diplomacy and trade.

I just don't think that any of the suggestions in this thread would actually do that, and for that matter I don't think *any* solution to this particular issue would be satisfactory if luxury resources continue to function the way they do in III and IV.

Why? Because making them finite by definition creates the new issue of how to allocate those resources on a city-by-city basis. The happiness cap for each city differs and changes constantly. That turns into a massive juggling game of distributing dozens of resources on a turn-by-turn basis among every city in your empire.

Now you might ask, why not automate it. Well there are two problems with that. First, if resources were automatically assigned, the player would not be able to understand why Lyons has spices, but Paris does not. And what if Paris is at +0 happiness, but Lyons is +1 because of the spices, but the player would rather Paris get it? Okay, so let the player move a spice from Lyons to Paris. Then what happens if Lyons suddenly loses a gold and an ivory due to a deal expiring with Japan, and is now at -2. Does the game steal the spices back from Paris against the player's orders?

So if you can't automate it, and you don't want the player to manually manage the distribution of 8 golds, 5 spices, 7 silvers, 14 wines, and 10 ivorys among 16 cities, then what can you do?

Aussie, I went back and read your suggestion which was to have each resource allow a specific # of cities, but completely lose their benefit if you exceed that. So if you have 1 gold you can benefit 3 cities, but if you get a 4th city all 4 cities lose the gold bonus. What happens if you have 1 gold but 2 ivories? "Trade 1 ivory to a foreign civ" you might say. Okay, now what happens if you hook up a 2nd source of gold? Now you have to cancel the ivory deal in order to build a 4th city, losing whatever you were getting in return for the ivory. Then you decide, I want to trade another civ for 2 wines. Everything is going fine until you expand to 6 cities. Now you have to find a 3rd gold, 3rd ivory, and 3rd wine or suffer a massive happiness hit in all 7 cities. And if you can't, you're stuck at 6 cities forever.

If somebody has a truly good solution to all of this, feel free to correct me. But the way I see it, the ways luxury resources work in the first place must change in order to make them quantifiable, and any solution that doesn't do that will either be unworkable or messy.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Sorry, but I really fail to see where your objections lie then Snapple. The system I'm proposing is really just a slight modification of the Corporations of BtS. To explain-1 copy of a Luxury produces +1 happiness *empire wide*, just as always. If, however, you have 2 copies of the same resource (say, wine for example) then you get a secondary bonus-+1 Culture & +1 food per city. The total size of the per-city bonus you get is dependent only on (a) the size of your empire & (b) the total number of copies of that resource you possess. All your cities connected to your trade network benefit equally from these extra resources-no muss, no fuss. You can discover the benefits a given resource is currently granting via the UI-at both the World Map level & the City Screen level, so no need to memorize anything. Of course, it might be necessary to place a cap on the maximum bonus accrued from a single resource-either hard or soft-to increase the likelihood of international trade in resources, but even without such a cap I suspect that opportunities for trade would be much greater than in previous versions of Civ using my system. So we have a "Finite" resource system which is (a) fairly simple to understand, (b) is not debilitating to players who lack access to multiple copies of the resources, (c) encourages greater international trade & (d) provides benefits for those players who-by choice or not-find themselves with smaller empires.
Of course the other system-namely resource dependent buildings-would also fit nicely in with this scheme, & would also be simple to understand & improve both realism & gameplay!

EDIT: Oh & of course a similar approach could be easily applied to both Strategic & Food resources too.

Aussie.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

So if you have 1 gold you can benefit 3 cities, but if you get a 4th city all 4 cities lose the gold bonus. What happens if you have 1 gold but 2 ivories? "Trade 1 ivory to a foreign civ" you might say. Okay, now what happens if you hook up a 2nd source of gold? Now you have to cancel the ivory deal in order to build a 4th city, losing whatever you were getting in return for the ivory.

OK, although what you've quoted above is my *least favourite* approach to the question of finite resources, I'll still answer this question. Why cancel the ivory deal at all? When you have only 3 cities, you're getting a +3 happiness bonus from your gold & ivory (+1 from gold & +2 from ivory), & this falls to +2 happiness when you trade the ivory away, but rises back to +3 happiness when you hook up the gold via a 4th city-only now the happiness is +2 from gold & +1 from ivory. So the happiness balance is just the same, even though your empire is larger-its just you had to *think* about resource availability *before* you expanded. Of course you could cancel the ivory deal if you wanted +4 happiness, but it would probably be better if you went through your list of current luxuries & tried to see if you could trade for another copy of that resource instead. See, though, how there is this generates an *impetus* to trade-even though you already possess a single copy of the resource? Hope that clarifies things.

Aussie.

 

[Ahriman]

Wow Ahriman, you quickly went from sounding like someone who had reasonable concerns about Finite Resources, to yet another person whose simply afraid that they might actually have to rethink their game-play strategies (or, more accurately, EXPLOITS) for the first time in a long while. You & Snapple whinge about how such a system will "limit trade opportunities", yet totally ignore the fact that infinite resources already ENSURES that trading opportunities are virtually non-existent.

Wow, you really are an insulting little whiner, aren't you?
What gave you *any* idea that I am afraid of changing strategic play? Nothing, you just invented that as a personal attack.

For the record, I really don't care much about the trade implications. I can see a few risks either way, but I don't think they're that important.

What I do think is *very* important is how the player deals with the game mechanics. They must be simple, intuitive and transparent. The consequences of any decision must be obvious to the player, and should be linked with the action that the player is taking.

Almost any finite resource system will tend to violate this, either being overly complex (eg building a formula), counterintuitive (building a new city removes the resource availability to my existing cities), non-transparent (resource access depends on the order in which cities were built hundreds of years ago) or micromanagement intensive (manual allocation).

The best finite system I can think of would be to have luxuries automatically allocated to your cities that had the highest excess unhappy people.
That would not be ideal, but wouldn't be too bad.

the systems I've proposed for finite luxury & food resources need not be any more complicated than that

The systems you've proposed all have crippling flaws.
Where is the mouseover text displayed (like combat odds calculator) that explains to you that building this city will remove resource access from your existing cities?

Why? Because making them finite by definition creates the new issue of how to allocate those resources on a city-by-city basis.

Precisely. This is the elegance of the unlimited resource problem; you avoid the city-allocation problem.

Snapple makes an excellent summary of the logistical design problems.

The system I'm proposing is really just a slight modification of the Corporations of BtS.

No, its not. In BTS corporations, nothing you do in city A will affect the benefits accruing in city B. In your system that is not true; you have an externality effect, where capturing or settling a new city will affect the benefits of your other existing cities. Not simple.

In any case, fortunately this is all Moot; Fireaxis have said they're keeping luxuries unlimited, probably because they can see the same transparency issues that we can.

Why cancel the ivory deal at all?

Because without canceling the ivory deal, you would have 4 cities and only 1 ivory resource, and so none of your cities would benefit.

but it would probably be better if you went through your list of current luxuries & tried to see if you could trade for another copy of that resource instead

Why would you be better off importing an entirely new resource than you would be canceling an export of your own resource?

It just makes the whole resource trade system into a complicated nightmare, where it is complex to figure out whether or not trading for an extra copy of a resource will benefit you at all.

It also means that if you ever start getting a large empire, it becomes impossible to benefit from resources at all without us

If I have 9 cities, why should I benefit from 3 ivory resources, but fail to benefit from 1 spice + 1 gold + 1 ivory + 1 gems? I need 3 copies of a resource to get any benefit at all?

Your system encourages massing of particular resources, rather than diversity, which makes no logical sense. People try to trade for things they don't have, not to accumulate more copies of those they do.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Well Ahriman, thanks so much-your long-winded rant actually confirmed my initial belief. The fact that you attack my system as "crippled", without providing one shred of evidence to back your claim, merely proves that you're afraid of anything which will deny you the opportunity to city-spam (indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if you hated City Maintenance & Inflation for those reasons too). Also, your response to Snapple's question highlights the fact that you failed to grasp the bonus happiness concept AT ALL. There are perfectly good reasons for importing another resource to gain the +1 happiness rather than canceling your ivory deal (not least your relations with the other civ), that you can't see them says more about *YOU* than the system. Indeed, your claim that you don't CARE about the implications on Diplomacy reveal that you're not interested in deep gameplay, but just want to play a game that is based on city & unit spamming-& war-mongering. In that case, might I suggest you switch back to Real Time Strategy games, as they sound much more up your alley.
Lastly, it is by no means a moot argument we're having here. The impression that luxury & food resources will be infinite is based on a single, throw-away line from a single reporter-a reporter who got only a brief look at the unfinished product. A lot can change in the coming six months-including how resources work!

 

[Grey2ham]

Could making a more complex resource system (in terms of luxury resources) badly affect the AI players decision making?
Would it be easy/hard to get the AI using it properly? If not it would suggest an 'exploit' like mechanic for the human player to abuse.