HorseshoeHermit
20% accurate as usual, Morty
Millennia tried this mechanic of having resource variety into production chains, and it flopped. However, one of the things that your concept reminds me of is the resource system in Caveman2Cosmos, which is somehow fun even though you could expect it to be tedious and/or daunting. You harness resources on the land, but then you build city structures that convert/consume the resource into a specific refined resource, and you enjoy the benefits of this processed resource. I feel like there's a secret sauce here to making the resource idea work. First you have access to Elephants (Elephant herds as a tile feature), then you hunt them so you have their bodies, then you turn them into Ivory (luxury), Carcasses (Raw food), or Trained Elephants (military asset). And yet, if it feels like pushing accounting tables around, it's dull or annoying.
I think what makes this game element enjoyable is clarity of progress, and the snappiness of the refinement pipeline. You want to get Trained Elephants? Click Elephant Training (project/structure) in the build queue. Or, go to the tech that allows it, then click that thing. Bam, Trained Elephants now available. Fits snugly and intuitively into the basic mechanisms you're already playing the game with. Millennia feels like I'm playing one of those Settlement/Colony games except on tiles instead of the continuous countryside. Like I said, it seems the pass/fail is a secret sauce.
I think what makes this game element enjoyable is clarity of progress, and the snappiness of the refinement pipeline. You want to get Trained Elephants? Click Elephant Training (project/structure) in the build queue. Or, go to the tech that allows it, then click that thing. Bam, Trained Elephants now available. Fits snugly and intuitively into the basic mechanisms you're already playing the game with. Millennia feels like I'm playing one of those Settlement/Colony games except on tiles instead of the continuous countryside. Like I said, it seems the pass/fail is a secret sauce.