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Allocation of scarce resources


jeep

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Here's the scenario.

Your empire has been expanding for about 60 turns. You have 4-5 islands with 2 cities each. Then along comes the enemy and they wipe out your navy and take all your sea resources. Within a few turns you are out of oil and food. Production goes to zero, so you can't finish any more ships to take back the resources. It is basically game over for you, even though you still have 5 islands....

Why this is a problem.

Oil and food are primarily sea resources. While there are some on land, it is not enough to cover basic city consumption without any units. If you lose those sea resources, you can easily have no way to get them back.

What we need.

I vote for the ability to allocate resources to cities (for oil & food). When you click on the resource, it already shows how much oil or food each city is using. The new feature would allow you to click the city (in that dialog) to withhold resource from that city.

Why this solves the problem

This gives you the ability to spend limited resources on a single city so that you can retain some production there to get out of the deadlock condition. It is realistic because this is what countries would do in this situation anyway. Finally, it doesn't add complication because players don't have to do this. If they do not manually withhold from cities it plays just like it does now.

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Here's the scenario.

Your empire has been expanding for about 60 turns. You have 4-5 islands with 2 cities each. Then along comes the enemy and they wipe out your navy and take all your sea resources. Within a few turns you are out of oil and food. Production goes to zero, so you can't finish any more ships to take back the resources. It is basically game over for you, even though you still have 5 islands....

Here's really what the problem is. The AI came along, wiped out your navy and took all your sea resources. How? Because it knew where your navy and all your resources were. This is why I don't like the all seeing AI and why fixing this should be imo a priority.

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Here's the scenario.

Your empire has been expanding for about 60 turns. You have 4-5 islands with 2 cities each.

Perhaps one way to reduce the impact of losing sea resource areas early in the game is by

not capturing so many cities so quickly?

If there are only four to five cities in the country, wouldn't that be sufficient to allow rebuilding

a navy, without depleting the stockpiled resources to nothing?

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I still think that a unit can be build that increases a resource number up to a max of 9 (what ever)?

The only draw back it takes time to do this but it would help.

You should also be able to attack resources and rediuce them to 1? Nukes and bombers and missles?

Limit to only having 1 or 2 land units and 1 or 2 sea units?

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I like the idea of bombing resources to reduce their income (or just reverting them to neutral to simulate the loss of infrastructure/facilities?) but I'm not sure the game, as it stands, really needs any engineering type units to upgrade resources, as we already have city-based facilities that already accomplish this.

But then, given the speed, range, and relatively short build times of even mid-tech aircraft, this might make aircraft in general a little too powerful and versatile.

Like someone above said, perhaps the answer can be found in not "city-spamming" quite so much. Grab the key ones and all the resources you can safely hold, and leave a few for later, when your economy is strong enough to subsidize those other towns.

I'm playing a larger game right now, and I've run into a few walls where I've realized my economy wont be able support my rate of territorial and military expansion. If I were to continue building in every city and researching at the rate I was, as well as capturing new cities, I would have been left crippled.

So I compromised. I decided that I didn't need a garrison in every city, and that I didn't have to blitz through every tech in the tree. I disbanded more than half my ground forces. I stopped using massed assaults and started focusing instead on doing the most damage at the least cost. I focused more heavily on scouting and using paratroopers to capture weakly protected towns and resources.

And so far it's working perfectly. My economy is stable, my research is back on track, and I'm able to integrate newly taken towns without having to rely on trades.

Brute force can work, but you have to have the economy to back it up. If you don't, fight cheaper, and don't conquer every town you see just because you can.

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What I am addressing is a specific deadlock situation.

Land resources generally can not cover your cities oil/food needs, even if you don't have many (in many games). If you lose your navy and sea resources, you really are stuck right now. Now I agree it is a bad idea to lose the naval conflict, but because of this limitation right now that is the only fight that really matters. Just take out the enemies navy and steal all his sea resource => he will be helpless in generally less than 10 turns.

Now losing all those resources really should cause a big impact, but not something that is unrecoverable. I like the idea of being able to allocate your limited oil & food because it makes more sense than adding the ability to abandon cities. But I am sure you need one or the other in the game.

The argument about not expanding beyond your resources is valid, but you are missing the point that PRIOR to losing all/most of your sea resources your economy WAS balanced. It goes out of balance because of the enemy invasion, and it can NEVER come back because you can't build a single ship to go take those resources. You just slowly die off....

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Did everybody miss the point I made?

The cause of the problem has nothing to do with resources. It has nothing to do with the economy.

The cause of the problem is an all seeing AI that knows where your fleet is and can mobilize a task force to destroy it.

You can limit cities. You can accumulate resources. But if the AI knows exactly what you're doing and where you are from the beginning of the game, you're going to continue having this problem unless the AIs sometimes fight each other. What you all are discussing is putting a bandaid on a broken arm when it's the broken arm that needs to be fixed.

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I understand the problem. The solution is to scrap enough units to get your economy back in balance. You may lose still but at least you can fight. If you're short on food your population will eventually die off until the food issue is fixed. Also some units consume quite a bit of food, you could scrap them. The best way to defend against these problems is to build large reserves of resources early in the game so you have a chance to counter-attack

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I agree the general idea is to do everything in your power to rebalance the economy. These are the tools you have:

Food: disband units, wait for starvation to take place

Oil: Don't move units, wait for starvation to take place

Iron: Not an issue, this is a land resource. Also easy to control all consumption (unit production)

For Food/oil, the first one you will definitely use. My concern is when that doesn't work, the second one can take a very long time (during which you are helpless). Of course we can't just make starvation faster because that causes other problems with temporary shortages (dead population is permanent).

When you have a shortage on a resource, it effects all your production equally. If your cities normally need 50 food and 50 oil each turn, but you only have 10 of each, then your production will take at least 5X longer everywhere. It will take FOREVER to build a simple destroyer. It is better logically and for gameplay if you can focus that 10 food/oil on a couple cities so they can produce normally while the rest don't produce at all. Production "limping along" everywhere just isn't effective.

The fallback plan would be to allow you to abandon cities. You could achieve the same effect this way, it just doesn't make as much logical sense.

Hey all, I do appreciate all the feedback. That is why I post stuff here :)

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Anyway, until you run into this situation it might be hard to see. Try it out in your next H on H game to see how effective it can be. Don't ever take the enemy's cities, just all his sea resource. He will soon be crippled unless you can't beat his navy.

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What I do against the AI is build destroyers and keep building them and send them out to look for food and oil. I especially take the AI's food and oil and keep taking them and move my ship onto the next treasure. When the AI takes back the food or oil I just send a destroyer out to take it back and keep doing it.

My tacktics have been geared against the AI the all seeing AI. Not the way I want to play.

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