How to use Production, Gold, and Faith in Civ 7?

[xehgre]

1. Dynamic resources: I agree with @BuchiTaton here. One level of transformation is all that is needed. Any further and I think we start teetering on it no longer being Civ.

2. Manpower: I think the current population framework is a good abstraction for this. We need specialist to play the biggest role in yield gains from districts. The district building should not add flat yields to the district but instead provide the specialist yield bonuses as well as providing unique capabilities to the city (power for other city, trade routes, special projects, manufactured goods). Having all units cost population will significantly raise the usefulness of Food (with or with a migration system in place) making population more important. We could individualize the population tagging them with class, religion, ethnicity, etc. If doing that plays into some kind of internal government mechanics. In it's simplest form you could have a parliament or cabinet that provides quest like City states do. Each city could offer a quest and ignoring or completing them could affect loyalty and happiness for that city. The quest would be determined by the population in that city

4. Renewable, moveable Resources: Very cool ideas, I haven't given this much thought but my first impression is. I just don't see this being balanced, I think it will always being the right play to renew resources if it's available early in the game. If it's later in the game, I am unsure if it would matter. Also, I feel the AI will never be good at this making the AI feel incompetent.

5. depleting resources. Another cool idea, based on civ general structure a lot of things standout to me as implementation issues. How/when is the map seeded with these items, how many deposits are we seeding into the map, Are we going to be restructuring our city every time we find a resource.

The biggest win for having depleting resources to me is creating instability in acquiring resources. This could help force nations to actually trade with each another.

With a bit of abstraction I think we can get most of what we want here.

1. in uncontrolled lands, only scouts can see resources.
2. You must be working the tile to actual receive the resource.
3. Resources are revealed on the map from multiple technology, Example some iron deposit show up after researching Bronze working. Then more deposit will reveal themselves once Deep Mining as been researched.
4. We could have different sized deposit. Small deposit could be something you 'harvest' from a hex, while large deposit require an improvement to be built on them.
5. Using the natural disaster system we can have events that would stop resources accumulation. A mining accident, could stop an iron mine from generate iron for 10 turns.
6. Spies can disrupt resource accumulation.951

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

My mention of capitalism/communism and government is more in relation to the (accurate) notion that the government can or cannot do certain things under capitalism (like having much less control over what gets produced); I contend that since the player in Civ represents the society more than the government, capitalism shouldn't actually translate into much of a loss of control by the player (since the player is the businessmen as much as he is the government).

There are two primary problems with assuming that the gamer is playing all aspects of the society:

1. It means, potentially, that the gamer can do anything he/she/it wants: change hats, become the businessman and grab all the resources available. Change hats, become the parliament and pass whatever laws you want. Change hats, become the Spirit of the People, and start/end/avoid any unpleasantness from lack of food, amenities, or room. Sounds more like a digital Ego Boost than a game.

2. Why did the game design place so much emphasis on all the named, animated, voice-acted Leaders if no one is supposed to identify with them? And I think the negative reaction to the bland Avatars in Humankind shows that people ARE identifying with the Civ Leaders, not the 'spirit of the Civ'. And if they were identifying themselves as the Civ, then why didn't the game design save a lot of resources and simply give the gamer a digital recreation of that Spirit? Why not play USA as Uncle Sam, play England as John Bull?

You may think of yourself as the entire Civilization while playing, but that's not how the game is designed and, I suspect, not how most gamers see themselves.

Furthermore, without a Fixed Point for the player: a single place from where he/she/them give orders and make things happen, the game loses focus. How do you define - or for that matter, why bother defining - a Government or society for the in-game Civ when the player doesn't play as anyone subject to the government, and the restrictions or bonuses from the government or type of society?

I'm sorry, but I'm going to keep playing and thinking and suggesting based on the idea that one plays Civ subject to inconveniences raised by the type of government, society, culture, religion, etc that the game throws at you while playing as a Leader of that Civ. Otherwise, at least to me, the game makes even less sense than it does now and becomes pointless.

 

[Zaarin]

Why did the game design place so much emphasis on all the named, animated, voice-acted Leaders if no one is supposed to identify with them? And I think the negative reaction to the bland Avatars in Humankind shows that people ARE identifying with the Civ Leaders, not the 'spirit of the Civ'.

I've always taken the leader as the personified Spirit of the Civ. It's not fun interacting with a faceless spreadsheet, with a generic lackey, or even with Lady Liberty. The leaders are there to make diplomacy feel more personable and to give a face to friendships and rivalries (though I feel like Civ5 did this better than Civ6 simply because the AI actually behaved differently in Civ5 beyond a single neurotic fixation). TBH this is why I'm all for a return to "one civ, one leader" and adamantly against "one leader, two civs."

You may think of yourself as the entire Civilization while playing, but that's not how the game is designed and, I suspect, not how most gamers see themselves.

I think the existence of civs like Greece, Phoenicia, Maya, and even Civ6's hybrid Joseon/Three Kingdoms Korea demonstrate Evie's point that the civ and therefore the player has to be bigger than the state or the government.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

A more complex game that incorporate these ideas would be great, as a player of historical City Builders, Grand Strategy, RTS and 4X games would love it. But I see unlikely some points to ever be at that level of detail in CIV franchise that shines by its "board gamey" mechanics and aesthetic. So each point should be adapted to CIV level.

1- Dynamic Resources. Changing labels is not needed most resources can show different aspects/moments of their historical role without lose their straightforward game classification. Your examples:
* COPPER:
- Can be used by Workshop to produce the Manufactured Good Jewelry (Luxury history covered).
- Reduce the cost of Ancient Age militar units (Bronze weapons covered).
- Needed to produce in Factory the Manufactured Good Electronics (Production and Amenity covered).
*COTTON:
- Bonus to Fishery
- Can be used to produce the Manufactured Good Textiles.
- Ruduce cost of Infantry units in the proper Era.

The average player in the average game length would be overhelmed by changes of dozens of resources every few turns. CIV abstract even the most basic elements of the chain of production of anything, in-game your civ basically works with raw natural resources. Add some bonus and just one level of transformation from Natural Resources to Manufactured Goods would be and improvement. The whole idea of have a couple of Strategic Resources each era even if is exagerated for some and reduced for others is to give players something to get hold of, the rest can be abstracted or just plain ignored (lets be honest we can have a very long list of strategic resources from the WW2 but the game should pick just a few to be accessible to everyone).

2- Manpower. I would use the term Denizen (is awkard to Research Citizenship if you have Citizen since start ), each Denizen with their own Class (social class/job/profession) that would add for the Social and Goverment mechanics. We can have all your population with a Class like Artists, Clerics, Farmers, Laborers, Merchants, Scholars, Warriors, etc.

3- Here give identity to your Population is also a key element, each Ideology the player incorporate would impact (mostly and greatly positively) X or Y social Class, Heritage and Religion. Of course some down side could be added to any choise but these should be lesser to not turn CIV in a management game.

4- Agree in general. Have crops and livestocks that can be propagated, depletable minerals and new synthetic replacement of natural resources would add to the dynamic of the game and shake the status quo each game. It just need to be ballanced.

5- Like the previous point is OK if it is ballanced to not need to change too much. A general Prospection Expedition could be one of the Research Line projects. you chose a territory (City) to be prospected and this reveals both Artifacts and Resources.

We're very close . . .

1. I don't see the need to label Resources at all. The old definitions of Bonus, Strategic, Luxury do not apply when any Resource may have elements of any or all of the definitions, depending on other conditions. Copper is Copper. What it does for you depends on how you use it, which in turn depends on your level of Technology and other in-game events. So:
Copper:
- One of Resources Required to research the technology Metalworking. (The others being the early Metals Gold, Silver, and possibly Lead)
- Can be used by Family Workshop to produce Manufactured Good Jewelry (Luxury)
- Reduces cost of Bronze-using military units AND
- Provides Bonus to Social Policy Warrior Class (Because Bronze is relatively scarce and expensive, so gives rise to small elite groups of Warriors with political and cultural effects as well as military)
Cotton:
- One of the Resources Required to research the technology Weaving (The others being Hemp and Flax or access to Marsh or Floodplain (reeds))
- With Weaving, provides Bonus to Fishing Boats and food from Marsh or Floodplains
- One of the Resources required for Manufactured Good Textiles (The others being Wool and Flax)
- Required for the Project Electrification (of a City)

And note that these two fairly basic resources, available for most of the game, only change their Effects 3 - 4 times, not "every few turns". I would expect that most Resources would change effects even less, although increases in the production techniques and technologies (Deep Mines, Open Pit Mines, Mechanized Agriculture, etc) might change the Amount you can get from each tile of a resource throughout the game.

2. Just a thought from looking at your 'Class Titles': Artist, Cleric, Merchant, Scholar could also all be Specialist titles, so perhaps the game could simply define the population as Laborer (general population points working the tiles, like Farmer, Rancher or Miner) or Specialist (more specific Specialist population working the Districts and Buildings). That would simplify definitions throughout the game and therefore the attributes that the gamer has to keep track of.

3. This simplified definition could still tie in with Ideology, since the perceived identification of individual with Ideology has historically tended to also tie in with profession and urban/rural lifestyle, which are still defined by the terms Laborer and Specialist.

5. Agree. The game does not need individual units for every possible purpose. A single Expedition or Explorer unit can look for everything that's appropriate to look for when it is sent out. What the Unit 'looks for' could change as the game progresses and requirements get more specific: New Animals, New Plants, New Minerals in 3000 BCE or Ancient Era, and Oil, Aluminum, Uranium in 1930 CE or Modern Era. You could only specify an individual Resource, perhaps, with a certain level of Technology or even with a special Great Person: Great Explorers - which could include Great Archeologists, Prospectors, or historical expedition leaders.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I think the existence of civs like Greece, Phoenicia, Maya, and even Civ6's hybrid Joseon/Three Kingdoms Korea demonstrate Evie's point that the civ and therefore the player has to be bigger than the state or the government.

But even in these cases the game provides a single Leader to identify with - even if semi or completely Legendary.
And one of the on-going problems Civ has is in including and representing Civs that had no individual Leader or single government, like the Greek, Swiss, Mayan, Phoenician or Italian city states because the Civs historically lacked a single Leader/political Focus for the player to accept and play as.

Not saying that the entire design concept is good or bad, just that it appears to be a commercial winner but that it also has serious problems representing all of the historical variations in government, leadership, and even coherence of various cultures and polities, quite aside from the logistical problems of coming up with adequate 'named' Leaders and languages for some Civs

 

[Zaarin]

But even in these cases the game provides a single Leader to identify with - even if semi or completely Legendary.
And one of the on-going problems Civ has is in including and representing Civs that had no individual Leader or single government, like the Greek, Swiss, Mayan, Phoenician or Italian city states because the Civs historically lacked a single Leader/political Focus for the player to accept and play as.

Not saying that the entire design concept is good or bad, just that it appears to be a commercial winner but that it also has serious problems representing all of the historical variations in government, leadership, and even coherence of various cultures and polities, quite aside from the logistical problems of coming up with adequate 'named' Leaders and languages for some Civs

I don't really see the same issue. I don't think anyone has had any issue with Pericles, K'inich Janaab' Pakal (this despite the existence of a somewhat unified Mayan state in Mayapan), or Dido leading their respective civs. I don't think anyone would complain about Mohawk war chief and statesman Joseph Brant/Thayendanegea leading the Haudenosaunee, who if one wishes to get overly technical were technically a confederation of five different civs (plus the even more distantly related Tuscarora, eventually). Leaders like Catherine de Medici and Gandhi never even led their civilizations in any formal capacity (granted both choices have been criticized, fairly and unfairly). I don't think there's any hard prerequisite that a civ leader ever led the entire civilization as long as they are interesting and can serve as the embodiment of their civilization for purposes of diplomacy and forming friendships and rivalries with the AI (that's why I've warmed up to CdM TBH).

(Civilizations like the Minoans, Harappans, and Olmecs who have no certain language or leaders are a different problem.)

 

[BuchiTaton]

About the role of both player and AI characters. The main Humankind avatars problems are 1- Generic visual design, 2- Worsened by hundreds of sameface custom/random characters, and 3- The changing nature of the whole culture that make harder to track even who are the others players.
CIV already have deep tradition of famous historical figures as civ avatars so I dont think it would ever change. BUT, I am sure a lot of people would love to have a CIV like game were civ avatars are fictional personification, every country have characters like Uncle Sam or Britannia and there are a lot of Japanese media that use this kind of ideas.

Now about the role of the player, even if it is more a "national spirit" than a ruler there are many games like Paradox ones where is clear that the player is above be a mere ruler since there you can change them, still the population must be handled in a way that at least let you feel that they are there with some kind of identity. I hope we can have an accessible form of this in CIV, of course not a VIC3 level but something that let us remember you lead people not sheep.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Now about the role of the player, even if it is more a "national spirit" than a ruler there are many games like Paradox ones where is clear that the player is above be a mere ruler since there you can change them, still the population must be handled in a way that at least let you feel that they are there with some kind of identity. I hope we can have an accessible form of this in CIV, of course not a VIC3 level but something that let us remember you lead people not sheep.

Now here I think you have come closest to what we are all circling.
The Leader, regardless of who they were historically (or mythologically) is simply the personification of the Civ, and a focus for the gamer's identification with the Civ they are playing.

But that does not mean any gamer is forced to 'role-play' anything resembling any real Leader. By the very nature of the game, the gamer has more control over events and decisions than any real Leader ever did, so although the game design places great emphasis and resources into the animated Leaders, and even though we may say and think that "I'm playing Shapur", we ain't even coming close. The 'Leaders' have no effect on the actual play of the game and could be replaced by totally fictional depictions without any links to even the most fictional portrayal of the original Civ - except, of course, that's what Humankind tried, and it Hindenburged.

But the Super Leader, God-Like Spirit of the Civ, Grand Nagus or whatever level we are actually playing at has to have limits, prohibitions, restrictions on what and how well we can accomplish things in the game, or there's really no point to it.

Within this spirit, though, I suggest that any Leader Uniques are out of place in this game. IF the Leader is only an animated symbol, why should there be any game-play elements specifically attached to it? In that case, it opens up the possibility of having sequential Uniques for the Civ itself as it changes through the Eras in ways both vaguely historical and completely different from what actually happened to and with it. I confess, I am heartily sick and tired of playing Civs that turn out to have Uniques almost totally unrelated to the terrain, biome, and situation of the Civ in any particular game, like Genghis' Mongolia on an island without horses - almost as much as having a Leader with a set of military Uniques getting in my way when I'm trying to play a Civ completely peacefully.

 

[BuchiTaton]

Within this spirit, though, I suggest that any Leader Uniques are out of place in this game. IF the Leader is only an animated symbol, why should there be any game-play elements specifically attached to it? In that case, it opens up the possibility of having sequential Uniques for the Civ itself as it changes through the Eras in ways both vaguely historical and completely different from what actually happened to and with it. I confess, I am heartily sick and tired of playing Civs that turn out to have Uniques almost totally unrelated to the terrain, biome, and situation of the Civ in any particular game, like Genghis' Mongolia on an island without horses - almost as much as having a Leader with a set of military Uniques getting in my way when I'm trying to play a Civ completely peacefully.

About this part I think is more in the style of CIV to keep the thematic design of each civ, the main problem is the poor world generation. It should be perfectly possible to program consistent and big map patches that allow every civ on game a good start on their biased terrain.

Do not forget that in a game with 50 civs let everyone to be "flexible" would dilute their gameplay identity significantly. Adaptability is the characteristic design for some civs while other are focused in a couple of paths to win. Even more the weaknesses are turned in game callenges and achievements for many players.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

About this part I think is more in the style of CIV to keep the thematic design of each civ, the main problem is the poor world generation. It should be perfectly possible to program consistent and big map patches that allow every civ on game a good start on their biased terrain.

Do not forget that in a game with 50 civs let everyone to be "flexible" would dilute their gameplay identity significantly. Adaptability is the characteristic design for some civs while other are focused in a couple of paths to win. Even more the weaknesses are turned in game callenges and achievements for many players.

To put it bluntly, if they ever expect me to play any Civ game agai9n, they have to do one of two things:

Make the map generation match any terrain-related Uniques for the Civs OR

Make the Civs' Uniques independent of Terrain/Biome.

Right now, and ever since Civ V and earlier, I cannot count the number of times I have sat down to play Civ and wound up turning off the game in frustration after getting 10 or more successive ridiculous starting positions for the Civ I want to play in that session: Morocco without desert, Norway and England without coast - even Russia without tundra, when Russia's 'Tundra Start' appears to be one of the most 'hard-coded' starting positions in the Civ VI game.

Yes, I could play a 'counter-intuitive' game: a Mongolia without horses, an England without a navy, a Russia in the jungle or desert, but in that case, why bother? The game supposedly gives me certain conditions, attributes, uniques of each Civ. If it is going to advertise those and then withhold them, the game is dishonest and should not be rewarded by playing it - or buying it in the first place. As I've posted before, I will never again buy a Civ game Sight Unseen: I no longer trust the franchise to deliver a game playable for me.

 

[Zaarin]

To put it bluntly, if they ever expect me to play any Civ game agai9n, they have to do one of two things:

Make the map generation match any terrain-related Uniques for the Civs OR

Make the Civs' Uniques independent of Terrain/Biome.

Right now, and ever since Civ V and earlier, I cannot count the number of times I have sat down to play Civ and wound up turning off the game in frustration after getting 10 or more successive ridiculous starting positions for the Civ I want to play in that session: Morocco without desert, Norway and England without coast - even Russia without tundra, when Russia's 'Tundra Start' appears to be one of the most 'hard-coded' starting positions in the Civ VI game.

I like terrain bonuses. They're a lot of fun. However, as you say, they are super frustrating when they don't work. Late last year, I tried getting back into Civ6 after a hiatus--couldn't get Deserts as Nubia or Mali. Couldn't get Tundra as Canada. I eventually gave up. Start biases need better tuning.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I like terrain bonuses. They're a lot of fun. However, as you say, they are super frustrating when they don't work. Late last year, I tried getting back into Civ6 after a hiatus--couldn't get Deserts as Nubia or Mali. Couldn't get Tundra as Canada. I eventually gave up. Start biases need better tuning.

Of all the frustrating things in Civ VI - and they are Legion - Starting Terrain Relevance is by far the worst. Like you, I have simply given up on a playing session numerous times because of the complete inability of the game as coded to give me a starting position in any way relevant to the Civ I was trying to play.
This is the reason I suggested doing away with any terrain biases for Civs - I don't trust that the design team that produced Civ VI can also produce a game that will actually match map terrain with the civ biases. This despite the fact that in many cases a terrain/climate/biome bias is extremely appropriate for many historical civilizations - we don't picture Egyptian Pyramids rising from the Tundra, nor Monteczuma's Eagle Warriors having a special affinity and capability on the steppes of Central Asia - for our mental image is frequently specific as to place or type of place. But better no Terrain/Civ bonuses or biases than those that work are applied at random. If I want to play a game of pure chance I have bags of old dice from my miniatures days for that and don't need a computer.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

What production actually represents?
it sometimes doesn't really make sense that production is first done by 'recklessly mining a mountain in hopes to find a copper, tin, or iron'. every unit requires different resources to make.
For example
Spearmen requires:
- Wood for spear shaft.
- Copper (and tin, to make bronze) for weapons. later on, iron. and maybe armor if a state in question requires even basic foot soldiers to wear metal armor.
- Leather for armor and beltings
- Cloth for garments, thats it.
Galley (a basic 'sail and oars' warship) requires
- A huge quantity of wood (in case of Egypt, reed had been a material first, and later wood). I guess it requires about one or two Rais (One Rai is 400 square meters) of forest to make an average combat galley. I'm not really accurate about number of forest areas needed to accumulate enough woods to make a particular kind of warships. but pre-iron hull shipbuilding requires 'forestry engineering' and several families of forest growers to do that (and so often these men while being 'peasantry' they were above average peasants i guess).
- Thick clothes for sail, and also materials to make either clothes or threads.
- Hard metal for fastening, and other fittings
- Hemp or other similiar weeds to make ropes
- Tar or other sealants (Lead (Pb) is one of sealants)
- Other materials associated with infantrymen assigned to man ships as fighting force..
That's too much to make accurate resource management and will be micro-intensive. still 'ships are made by materials from mines alone' doesn't really make sense either.
how to get around this?

 

[Evie]

By assuming low that your mines production are actually financing expeditions to bring back wood that's outside the city radius and/or doing low-level trade (too low level to justify representing in game) of some copper fastening for some wood for the ships. Sometime, a little imagination is much better than feature bloat.

(Also, Historically, much of shipbuilding was done with timber that traveled a long way from its point of origin to the actual shipyards - the Royal Navy at its height was fed by baltic and later even Canadian lumber, but still built in the UK).

But giving an early game bonus to shipbuilding to cities with worked wood in their radius could be a neat idea.

 

[criZp]

Trade requires that there is somebody else offering what you want, and they want what you have to offer them. This isn't always the case and that's why your justification doesn't work.

As far as complexity goes, this depends on the number of resources the game models and can be determined by the devs.

 

[Evie]

And your counterpoint relies on the assumption that the only inhabitants of the world are those the game simulate and let the players and AI control. Which makes very little sense. It takes decades if not centuries to build that ship, the idea that in that long period you"re unable to secure lumber off-screen is ridiculous.

There are no significant gameplay benefits to splitting production, other than some hazy notion of "realism" that is not actually a *gameplay* benefit and seems to only ever apply to economy while blithely ignoring how the entire rest of the game is not realistic either, becsuse the purpose of Civ is to be an empire building game with historical flavoring, not a historical simulation game (that's Paradox, and even they still make compromises for gameplay).

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

And your counterpoint relies on the assumption that the only inhabitants of the world are those the game simulate and let the players and AI control. Which makes very little sense. It takes decades if not centuries to build that ship, the idea that in that long period you"re unable to secure lumber off-screen is ridiculous.

There are no significant gameplay benefits to splitting production, other than some hazy notion of "realism" that is not actually a *gameplay* benefit and seems to only ever apply to economy while blithely ignoring how the entire rest of the game is not realistic either, becsuse the purpose of Civ is to be an empire building game with historical flavoring, not a historical simulation game (that's Paradox, and even they still make compromises for gameplay).

Applicable here, I think, is that I've been off-and-on for some time now hunting for historical examples of a Civ's inability to build something they wanted because of lack of natural resources.

And, frankly, there aren't many such examples before the Modern Era.

Yes, the Native American groups had no access to draft animals and horses. And yet, lack of draft animals larger than a Llama (which is not large at all in load-bearing capacity) did not stop the Incas from stretching their empire from one end of South America to the other, so while Wheeled Vehicles certainly make hauling early quantities of materials Easier, their lack doesn't preclude such activity. More proof of this is that long before wheeled anything was available extensive trade was being conducted in Obsidian, Copper, seashells, Pottery and fired clay objects, and probably more perishable materials like wooden objects and woven textiles in and between the Near East, Egypt, and Anatolia in the late Neolithic.

After that, folks in the Mediterranean basin seem to have had no recorded problems getting Tin from places as far away as Afghanistan (BMAC) and Cornwall in Britain to make Bronze - and note that in Civ game standards, Cornwall was Barbarian territory at the time - there's no sign of any concentration of population big enough to be even a City State. One suspects that had they needed to, they could have gotten any other metal from equally far away - we know, for instance, that there was trade in gold and gold objects from the far end of the Black Sea to Greece and Greek cities in the Mediterranean and Obsidian was traded from Sicilan volcanic fields all the way to Babylon even earlier.

In fact, except for extremely high value Luxuries with very specific Origin Points, like Cardamon or desert-plant spices, Chinese Silk, and highly crafted goods like Greek decorated pottery (black and red-ware) or Indian Wootz steel, goods are so easy to obtain that there is almost no mention of any origin for them: you need copper, iron, timber and have the means to pay for it, and Someone will bring it to you.

The exceptions to the generalization of supply of resources come in the Industrial Era and later. Once you need resources not by the dozens or hundred of pounds, but in the thousands of tons, supply and sources become of major importance, and their lack becomes potentially suicidal. All of World War Two can be explained as Them With Lots of Oil versus Them With None (or, at least, Not Enough) and the wide-spread organized searching for new sources of all kinds of Raw Materials in the past 150 - 200 years (Gold Rushes, Oil Booms, etc) and especially the diplomatic maneuvering and military actions to tie up locales with oil, oil palm, iron, timber, coal, etc resources by Industrial Powers in the 19th and 20th and 21st centuries is a New Thing in history: China did not conquer the Central Asian steppes to get horses in the Classical - Medieval Eras, even though she needed them constantly, she traded for them and virtually all of China's "Northern Barbarian" neighbors became rich with Chinese silks, porcelains, lacquered objects and other 'high tech' goods as a result. But modern China did make damn sure she nailed down Manchuria, because that region is one of her prime sources for iron and coal for modern industry.

The lesson for the game might be that the prohibition on being able to form Units or other in-game items of all kinds because of 'lack' of Resources, as nice and simple as it appears and as long a history as it has had, probably needs to change into something else. A simple premise of making it easier and cheaper to build anything that requires resources you have on hand compared to a higher cost that represents all the back-stage maneuvering to get various 'Barbarian', populations invisible but on the map, City State, or individuals from other Civs to provide the required resources woild be all that I think would be necessary.

Changing at some point in the Industrial Era, when requirements in amounts suddenly jump by at least an order of magnitude, BUT manufactured, technological alternatives also become possible, even likely.

 

[criZp]

And your counterpoint relies on the assumption that the only inhabitants of the world are those the game simulate and let the players and AI control. Which makes very little sense. It takes decades if not centuries to build that ship, the idea that in that long period you"re unable to secure lumber off-screen is ridiculous.

For one, in the late game the players will control the entire map and are indeed the only inhabitants of the world. Also, in real it doesn't take many decades to build one boat. If it took that long nobody would bother.

Another point, if the idea is that "lumber mills should increase production of iron-products because your people are actually trading the timber for iron without you knowing it"... Then how come you can't convert stuff like gold/food/etc. directly into production? Surely you could acquire that iron by trading for not only timber, but anything you have.

 

[Evie]

The only pops in the game does not mean the only inhabitants of the world. You're still assuming the only existing people are the simulated ones - the gameplay abstraction.

And yes, I know it doesn't take centuries to build ships. But in game it does. Yet somehow we're fine with that abstraction, but the idea that basic production include some low level trade is a bridge too far? Laughable.

As for your question about food, etc: these resource distinction exist for gameplay reasons (to create broad categories of resources that cover wide area of gameplay: population, production, research. Each resource has a specific gameplay role, and (other than faith and gold which have been discussed so far as in this thread as problematic, and even they aren't nearly as close to overlapping as the notion of subdividing production would be.

Not so with the idea of splitting production down into various resources that are all used for the same purpose (to buildimprovements/units/etc) but with each contributing more or less to producing one item or another. That's not adding a new gameplay mechanism with its own resource; that's splitting down one mechanism and its resource into a dozen resource all for the same mechanism.

And as we now see from Boris, it's not even *especially* realistic for pre-industrial gameplay.

At most I could see something like +X% production speed of wooden ships if you have worked forest in your city radius. Much cleaner a design than the wanton multiplication of resources.

 

[criZp]

The only pops in the game does not mean the only inhabitants of the world. You're still assuming the only existing people are the simulated ones - the gameplay abstraction.

Care to tell me where are those people you're talking about, those not part of any civilization yet somehow still around when all earth is covered in civilizations?

And yes, I know it doesn't take centuries to build ships. But in game it does. Yet somehow we're fine with that abstraction, but the idea that basic production include some low level trade is a bridge too far? Laughable.

"Somehow we're fine with that", because the alternative is that the ancient era should last a thousand years on the standard time setting

As for your question about food, etc: these resource distinction exist for gameplay reasons (to create broad categories of resources that cover wide area of gameplay: population, production, research. Each resource has a specific gameplay role, and (other than faith and gold which have been discussed so far as in this thread as problematic, and even they aren't nearly as close to overlapping as the notion of subdividing production would be.

Yes there are different resources with different functions, but you don't explain why they cannot be traded. The game already allows gold to be traded for resources with other players, so why can't your "low-level trade" also trade gold for resources?

Not so with the idea of splitting production down into various resources that are all used for the same purpose (to buildimprovements/units/etc) but with each contributing more or less to producing one item or another. That's not adding a new gameplay mechanism with its own resource; that's splitting down one mechanism and its resource into a dozen resource all for the same mechanism.

The game already features various resources needed for production. Making timber an entry into the resource catalogue would keep the mechanics all the same.

And as we now see from Boris, it's not even *especially* realistic for pre-industrial gameplay.

So what is the point, not having any resources at all in the pre-industrial part of the game? I mean, that could work as far as I am concerned, if some other mechanic filled the void.