kryat
King
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2017
- Messages
- 921
A few thoughts about the changes to resources and IZs:
Although we haven’t seen any indications that resources are finite, that would totally be in line with the overall environmental impact philosophy of GS. I don’t think we can rule it out yet. If true, the accumulation bonus cards might also mean that you deplete the sources faster. I sort of miss the days of AoE where your villagers would, one by one, strip mine all the gold out each pocket on the map. I could see this returning for some types of resources, because I think the devs like the idea of making you come to terms with a barren earth if you are aggressive at resource exploitation.
Even with infinite resources though there also is a certain truth in an earlier post about once a unit dies that took a resource to build, that resource is gone forever. Let’s pretend you accumulate 2 horse per turn and it takes 20 to build a horseman. You build your pony and it dies in battle. That’s no longer just turns of production disappearing into the void, but also turns of accumulation. That’s 10 turns you’ll never get back. It’s also a clever limiter in production speed. It will now take at least N turns to accumulate enough resources to build your unit in the first place. Additionally, that new policy card for faster accumulation could make the difference between 2 horsemen out in 40 turns, or 4 out in the same time. BUT, it also means running that card and not using a different card. Classic policy trade-off. Who knows, accumulation might become the new bottleneck instead of production. That would definitely make chopping less valuable.
There’s also some major changes coming to IZs that make them more valuable. We’ve seen several indications that there will be significant choices to make in industrial era and later. I am very curious what the coal plants do. It stands to reason that coal or nuclear plants will cost some strategic resources in per turn upkeep. With this in mind, there should be a massive benefit to using them, given the immense cost. We don’t know yet, but I would expect far more benefit than +3 production in nearby cities.
Although we haven’t seen any indications that resources are finite, that would totally be in line with the overall environmental impact philosophy of GS. I don’t think we can rule it out yet. If true, the accumulation bonus cards might also mean that you deplete the sources faster. I sort of miss the days of AoE where your villagers would, one by one, strip mine all the gold out each pocket on the map. I could see this returning for some types of resources, because I think the devs like the idea of making you come to terms with a barren earth if you are aggressive at resource exploitation.
Even with infinite resources though there also is a certain truth in an earlier post about once a unit dies that took a resource to build, that resource is gone forever. Let’s pretend you accumulate 2 horse per turn and it takes 20 to build a horseman. You build your pony and it dies in battle. That’s no longer just turns of production disappearing into the void, but also turns of accumulation. That’s 10 turns you’ll never get back. It’s also a clever limiter in production speed. It will now take at least N turns to accumulate enough resources to build your unit in the first place. Additionally, that new policy card for faster accumulation could make the difference between 2 horsemen out in 40 turns, or 4 out in the same time. BUT, it also means running that card and not using a different card. Classic policy trade-off. Who knows, accumulation might become the new bottleneck instead of production. That would definitely make chopping less valuable.
There’s also some major changes coming to IZs that make them more valuable. We’ve seen several indications that there will be significant choices to make in industrial era and later. I am very curious what the coal plants do. It stands to reason that coal or nuclear plants will cost some strategic resources in per turn upkeep. With this in mind, there should be a massive benefit to using them, given the immense cost. We don’t know yet, but I would expect far more benefit than +3 production in nearby cities.