I posted this idea in the supply lines thread, but I feel it deserves a thread of it's own.
As it is now one oil supplies your entire empire with all the oil it would ever need, but I don't think this is right. I think every oil or iron or horse unit should supply, I don't know, 10 units? Or three cities? I'm not sure of the numbers, but if you have a vast 40 city empire 1 oil unit should not be enough for all your needs. I think the amount of units you can build and maintain should somehow be dependant on how much of the necessary resources you have. If you lack enough resources, you should not be able to build anymore. If you lose a resource, then maybe you can no longer maintain some of your army?
I think tieing maintenance with resource quantities is a good way of limiting the amount of armies you can field. Certainly much better than the current 1 gold per unit maintenance costs which are not much of a limitation whatsoever. This also makes resources significantly more important.
As it is now one oil supplies your entire empire with all the oil it would ever need, but I don't think this is right. I think every oil or iron or horse unit should supply, I don't know, 10 units? Or three cities? I'm not sure of the numbers, but if you have a vast 40 city empire 1 oil unit should not be enough for all your needs. I think the amount of units you can build and maintain should somehow be dependant on how much of the necessary resources you have. If you lack enough resources, you should not be able to build anymore. If you lose a resource, then maybe you can no longer maintain some of your army?
I think tieing maintenance with resource quantities is a good way of limiting the amount of armies you can field. Certainly much better than the current 1 gold per unit maintenance costs which are not much of a limitation whatsoever. This also makes resources significantly more important.
!) I think that resources should remain fairly abstract, but that disappearance rates should depend on more 'concrete factors'. One of these is the number of units you currently possess that require that resource on an ongoing basis. So, for example, a civ with 12 tanks in the field will be twice as likely to lose their one of their sources of oil than a civ with only 6 tanks in the field! In addition, if you build 20 units requiring iron in 1 turn, then you are 2x as likely to lose a source of iron than if you had only built 10 units that turn. If you have units in the field, but not the required resource to run them (i.e. tanks but no oil), then those units will suffer degraded performance and, eventually, possible hp loss, until they 'die out'!
