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Resource balancing revisited


jeep

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Brit,

A couple of Qs on resources

What is the conversion factor for production => money? (set cities to produce money)

Is it correct that unit repairs require only IRON, and a 50% damaged unit would take 50% of the iron cost to repair?

When you are short of oil, how does the game decide on which units cannot move or which cities have production halted?

When short of food, is the only effect city population reduction (any effect to units)?

Iron shortage just stalls production/repairs, correct?

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Funny, I was just working on some resource re-balancing stuff.

What is the conversion factor for production => money? (set cities to produce money)

It's 2 production = 1 Money.

Is it correct that unit repairs require only IRON, and a 50% damaged unit would take 50% of the iron cost to repair?

Yes.

When you are short of oil, how does the game decide on which units cannot move or which cities have production halted?

The game applies oil shortages to cities first, then land/sea units next, and finally air units. (I didn't want aircraft to run out of fuel and crash because there's a small shortage of oil, so air units are the last unit to actually experience oil-shortage effects.)

When short of food, is the only effect city population reduction (any effect to units)?

It depends on the severity of the shortage. Cities with no food at all will experience a 5% decline in population. If your cities consume 30 food, but you only have 15 food, then they'll be reduced by 2.5% population. Food shortages don't affect units.

Iron shortage just stalls production/repairs, correct?

Yes.

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Thanks,

So here is a summary of how it works now:

Oil

Used for cities (.2 * pop)

Used for movement of most units (not inf, nuke navy)

Shortage: First cities don't produce, then units don't move

Boosted by: Oil refinery, Nuke power

Conversion: 1 Oil = 1 Gold

Food

Used for cities (.2 * pop)

Used by most units

Shortage: City population decreases

Boosted by: Fert factory, tech

Conversion: 1 Food = 1 Gold

Iron

Used to build units & buildings (iron cost)

Upgrades (iron cost delta only)

Repairs (% of iron cost)

Shortage: Stall production

Boosted by: None

Conversion: 1 Iron = 1 Gold

Production yeah, it's like a resource

Used to build new units & buildings

Boosted by: Factories, etc

Conversion: 2 Production = 1 Gold

Gold

Used for upgrades (production cost delta or 5)

Used for research

Boosted by: None

Conversion: 3 Gold = 1 Oil/food/iron

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So here are some thoughts:

1. If you have an overabundance of any resource, you can convert this to gold.

2. If you are low on any resource (except production), you can use gold to buy it (at 3/1 rate)

However, if you are not low on resources, what good does a surplus do?

Gold => research

A great thing, but after +20 or so doesn't do much. This is fine.

But that's it, so I think we need

Gold => production

This gives you a second way to put those resources to work. Could be applied as a global trade (affects all cities equally), or pumped into a single city. I suggest it follows a non-linear curve like research.

The production boost would be calculated each turn, so you get more benefit spending less gold each turn than all at once.

The max production boost (each turn) would be like 40%. Something like 100+ gold = 40%

50 gold = 30%

25 gold = 20%

13 gold = 10%

6 gold = 6%

As for realism, well extra capital does produce results!

Besides, this is relatively small. Throwing 13 gold at a 10pop city gives you 1 production. Not very efficient, but can help...

Now lets look at shortages:

Oil

This one seems logical. If you are low, your factories stop first. Way low and you can't move most of your army. But inf can still move, so you can still capture land oil to get out of a bind. If you have no ships & no land oil & no money, you are out of luck. Pretty rare though...

=> Would be nice to have a selection to turn OFF production in cities to save oil reserves (just select no unit / no money). City only uses oil when PRODUCING

Iron

No iron, can't build stuff that needs it. Good the way it is. Maybe should add a ore refinery to give the option to boost it.

Food

This is the big one. Run low on food and really bad things happen (5% attrition to pop on all cities each turn). Right now, setting a 10 pop city to money production would give you 5 gold = 1.66 food. The city eats 2 food itself. Now if you have a factory, you would be even. Maybe we should tweak city food consumption to 0.15*pop, that way they can be made a little better than self sufficient when needed.

=> of course this requires that cities don't use OIL when producing money either, otherwise you are still in the hole (I figure if you are running out of food, you probably sold all your oil to buy food already).

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On second thought, it would probably be best to solve the food problem just by giving cities the option to "produce food" directly. Give it a 3 production = 1 food.

10 pop city would produce NET 1.33 food (3.33 - 2) while consuming 2 oil. Slightly better than neutral.

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