Need opinion one some idea for ressource-bonus mechanics

[LeBashar]

I work on a mod and search a way to improve the ressources-bonus gameplay. My objective is to make the trade of theses bonus obligatory, and make them the heart of an empire growing and source of wealth. But also, if possible, make them the first reason why empire goes at war because I really think in fact the only real first reason why people fight is when they can't still live at peace and make profit-making trade. I think it is the main problem of civ that ressources-bonus are practically never the reason of a war : wealth bonus because anyone has many, strategic bonus because if you hasn't you can't beat the powerful army of the owner.

So I want to have your opinions on somes ideas. I want to know if you found them realistics, but also if you think the IA could play well without huge change, and at last, If you think they are doables in cviIV without to painful work.

1- For all bonus, make a raw version and a trade version. For example, mine produce gold ore, and each city with a forge produce gold ingot.
->each version are tradable, but of course the refined version are more numerous as your empire grow, and can't give your customer the way to produce himself the bonus, so, it is far more profitable to trade them. The interesting idea of this is, in my mind, the tradable production of an empire grow (or fall) with the number of cities you have, I think is a good way to avoid the problem of illimited ressources, without make a complete revolution in the gameplay (like establish depletion or quantified ressources). Of course for these can done the best, the ressource-bonus generation should be have a very unfair distribution throught the map, to give each player a chance to have a ressource to trade.
->the problem : limit the building construction by bonus is doable, make building produce refined ressource is doable also, but the problem I can't solve is to remove their production if the raw ressource disapair after constructions, and reapair if the raw material acces is restablished. But this is the key of this idea, because it is stategic to trade raw material usless for you at someone that need it : because you control the raw production, you can easily crash his economy with embargo if this can really stop the production of refined ressource in his whole empire. The more he will produce refined item, the more an embargo will be painfull for him (stop his own refined exportation, stop his bonus with refined product, stop production abilty of unit that need that refined product, etc.)

2- Transform corporations, create more, and use them to produce refined ressources. For exemple, we could have the gold foundry guild which can product gold ingot if the city as raw gold.
->this can solve the product problem of the previous idea, because corporation already stop product is bonus is remove.
->problems : we need nearly 20 corp for all ressources because each corp can product only one. This make an overflow of corp in the city and probably make the whole thing unplayable. Secondly, I don't know if the IA should understand that in this way, the distribution of your corp to the ennemy cities is undesirable. Furthermore, the foundation of one specific corp should be conditioned by the presence of the correct ressource in your hand, and nothing else (and different player should "found" same corp if they have the same raw material).

3- Give the refined production capability to wonder. For exemple, there may be a "gold foundry" which can be built only one time and produce 5 gold ingot with raw gold acces (at the time of contruction). After that, gold ingot like as "hit-movies" and other hit-bonus, unreproductible, undestructible.
->All over the ages, this can done trade productions at all civs, if the wonder-refinery are well distributed in the tech tree to avoid the only one player can build them all.
->problems : it is not very realistic, and we always have the problem that the refined production remain even if the initial raw product is lost, and can be lost to your ennemy if the city with the "refinery" wonder if lost (hum well, I'm not sure of that).

4- Remove all map bonus in a new map, and create them with primitves improvements. For exemple, before you could build a mine, un neolithic age, you can build a ore carry, on any terrain. These improvement has very huge chance to make appear a ressource-bonus mining type. For animals, you have chance to meet them like lions or wolf : if your unit encounter savage horse or cow, you can capture them and bring back to your territory, build a pasture and fix them in your land to begun breeding. The type of animal depend of the terrain, so there will be a natural unfair distribution throught the civs like for exemple pig in forest, horses in larges plains, sheep in temperates hills, etc. Same thing with farm : a farm has good chance to discover special bonus cereal, and after that, you can spread it to other farms if the terrain type is the good one.
->problems : the commerce should be effective in early ages, but as the time progress, each player can spread in his land all animals an cereals (if he has the corrects terrain-type but it should not be very difficult in a medium wise empire) and in fine, all trade will be stop as same as the original civ. Furtermore, it don't change nothing for mined ressources.

That's all my ideas for now, please tell me what do you think of

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Welcome to CFC.

Good ideas.

I have been thinking along similar lines for a long time but have not been able to figure out how to make it work. This is mostly because it will require some SDK work which I am not willing to attempt.

My thought on this in particular were that the raw ore had no value and that the smelter would require the resource in the working area of the city and provide 2 or more of the refined product. This would sometimes mean having to put a city where you would not normally have one.

It conflicts with the current real world situation where ore can be mined in one area and processed on the other side of the planet. E.G. Australian iron ore being exported to China where they turn it into steel, or Australian garnet sands sent to Germany for sand paper production.

The loss of a resource shutting down a building and thus the loss of the produced resource sounds good but you would need someway of deciding where that lost production was being used. If you have plenty spare then there is no problem but if you are trading all your excess you would need to decide which trade deal to terminate.

 

[Voyhkah]

Hmmmm... I'm working on something a bit like this...

 

[Pickly]

I've been thinking along similar lines as well for economy changes, and have come up with some further ideas:


1. Multiple health and happiness resources of the same type have diminishing returns, rather than health and happiness only coming from the first one. This could encourage more complex trade by encouraging empires to go for an even distribution of resources, rather than just one type of each, and/or would encourage more wars to go after more of these resources.

2. Combat, stat, production time, or maintenance bonuses for units that require resources. This is vaguely based off of the Civ 5 system, the idea being that if you have too few resources for the units that require them, the units take some penalties. It's not as restrictive, but still would have a similar effect.

 

[LeBashar]

@pickly
Intersting first idea but I think it is not as much to make a real difference. I want the ownership of resource become really the heart of early empire growing or starvation. I want the export of your rare resource be the first reason of other nation become ally (if you trade with them) or ennemy/envious (if you choose to not).
And the other facts : border conflicts, different religion etc. make the last steps to decide if the will be conflicts.

Because in very early empire, it seem it really was the export of a special resource which is the begining of all : trade of salt, trade of metals or tools, which make city-state become so powerful and famous because they knew the "secret" of one usefull resource for all humans.

I don't like the second idea : civIV is a completely non quantified system, with no depletion, no erosion nor wearing of anything. I think it is to huge change to try to make it, and above all, not good for gameplay. It should be a totaly different game with a new goal at achieve survival of human specie in an univers with entropy. Surely intresting, but different game. Furthermore, I was not convince by the other mod with theses choices, it make something "too much" not fun too play (or unplayable with old computers, especially the mine...) and not really more realistic, or not as much. I want the game still be a game. I want try to found the significants things, and let simplistic all others.

My goal for now is, with the civIV game, try to found modification doable to make the game dependent of real growing civilisation factors, and not only the pursuit of one victory goal. For exemple, a civ begining war for claim new territory should not be push by the choice of domination victory, but by the necessity of have new farms, mines, resources or else, and the domination victory become eventualy a result of these, and not the objective. (OK, in the game it is the civ and leader trait which decide the way of a civ act, but in fact it is their original lands which make theses traits : plenty resource make sedentary high cultural civ, harsh lands make people easily insterested to go elsewhere, and so on. Traits not be a cause but a consequence, with constant feedbacks)
In this way of mind, the growing of population should be a huge factor of expansion, because we should can't "stop" the city growing. People steal grow even if their land can't support them so that a good reason to take weapons and invade other less poplated lands, but it is and another problem

First I wish solve the resource problem

@Dancing Hoskuld
Well, I also think it is important to let any city able to refine any ore, even if it is imported. It is realistic, and can give strategic opportunities in the game without useless more complexity. Two state of resource make 2x trading opportunities. With a prevalence of raw or refined version in function of the number of resource plot of the map : more plot than cities result as raw resource become more numerous than refined, and vice-versa.

The loss of a resource shutting down a building and thus the loss of the produced resource sounds good but you would need someway of deciding where that lost production was being used. If you have plenty spare then there is no problem but if you are trading all your excess you would need to decide which trade deal to terminate.

That's right, now the game already make choices to stop your cities acces to the resource before begun to stop trades with another civs. And I don't know if there is a specific choice (different of just stop the first in the computer list of trades pacts).

But I think it should be not so difficult to make :
- bonus production stoped by lost of raw resource, because there is already some feature which funtion like that in the game
- popup for give the player a way to choice what use of bonus he will lost (use for him, or which trade pact)
- and for the IA, a kind of priority choice to decide the same
Can somes python or sdk genius confirm that ?

 

[Pickly]

@pickly
Intersting first idea but I think it is not as much to make a real difference. I want the ownership of resource become really the heart of early empire growing or starvation. I want the export of your rare resource be the first reason of other nation become ally (if you trade with them) or ennemy/envious (if you choose to not).
And the other facts : border conflicts, different religion etc. make the last steps to decide if the will be conflicts.

To make anything like this work, you'd need to have a way of limiting the amount of resources on a map, which none of your ideas would actually do. Otherwise, the civilization would simply expand and get more resources to cover what they were missing

I don't like the second idea : civIV is a completely non quantified system, with no depletion, no erosion nor wearing of anything.

There is no erosion or wearing out in my idea. The idea is that the amount of resources you have at a time gives some sort of bonuses or penalties based on the resources you have at a time (As in, have three iron and no iron using units mean iron using units build faster, for an example.) No wearing out, no resource depletion, nothing of that sort.

(You'll also need some way to deal with civilization only needing one of a resource in some way, as otherwise once most of all civilizations get at least one of the basics, there is no reason to trade.)

 

[LeBashar]

I can modify the resource distribution on the map by modify the bonus's spread factor. I have already make some adjust to make them more packed and less fairly spread. But it is not as much because as you said, when a civ has at least one of each the trade is over. But it could be sufficiant in the begining, and if the resource's locations are very unmixed, even a big empire can't have all of them. Furthermore, if the refined production depend on a building, the technological different between choices of civ's can make neighbour able to refine the ore you have and vice versa. At least in early ages. In modern era I want all the developpement conditioned by oil, rubber and rare metals but I don't really thank how for now.

Ok for your second idea, I have not understand this. But it seem it is a huge change in the civ core, no ? Is there any mod or someone already done something like that ?