Weight of corpses and ore is both elemental. Caravan is elemental.

From my previous post:

I wish the engine will be flexible enough that any creature is a resource (for easy a modding future); that includes bear, horse, giant eagle, etc.  I am trying to suggest a flexible way to make our super soldier here.  This is my attempt for Frogboy or devs to see the feature I want.   My attempt to “have ultimate control over what kind of army you want to have”

Every creature & equipment has a weight property in the Custom unit design screen (aka Beastiary).  Units can Equip , Transport and/or Carry up to certain weight.  An elephant carries more goblins than human archers.  For the sake of simplicity, the rider always dies first. 

Property: Transport X pounds (Horse, ship, giant beetle etc)
The unit enhances its rider’s movement only, no contribution to HP or other ability.  If all riders die, the transporting unit escapes/become available for capture.  The Transport ability is usually assigned to units that have little appetite to fight unguided or little intelligence.  

The Camel Archer unit is made from combining 2 units at the Beastiary:
Camel has the ability of Transport 150 pounds, and Dessert walking.
Human Archer has the ability of Archery etc. weights 120 pounds
Human Archer has the ability to equip 40 pounds.  Because the Camel can only transport 150, the camel archer cannot wear as much equipment e.g. armor.
(Optional build) Goblin Archer is only 70 pounds, so the camel can transport 2 goblin archers.

Property: Carries X pounds (e.g. Dragons, Giant Eagle, Bear etc.)
Same as Transport ability, except both the unit & its rider fight using their own abilities at the same turn.  The death of the mount/rider does not stop the remaining one from fighting.  When the rider dies, the mount does NOT die at the end of combat.

Property: Provide Rider ability Y
Any mount can have this ability.  The ability Y can be anything, but common example will be charge, magic immunity etc.

Function of Unit producing building (UPB) is to convert the town population to specific occupation(s); e.g. Barrack converts a Fighter, Mage tower converts Wizards etc.  Each racial occupation should have their unique quality defined.  For example, a Fallen Mage can only equip 20 pounds, cannot wear metallic armor, have certain spell casting ability, can or cannot mount.  Then an Elfin Mage will have somewhat different ability. 

Property: Equip X pounds
For a game that emphasis equipping, some unit should be able to equip heavier equipment, some cannot.

Everything else, like mounts, armor, weapon, headgear is a bonus (or optional) of stat or ability to the Creature Resource.

I don't have a good enough (mathematical) imagination to have a specific opinion on plans like this, but I can definitely say *this* is the kind of physics I want to see done as well as possible in the game. I'd gladly give up some of the eye-candy physics (i.e. dev time) in exchange.

I'm worried about having caravans draw from population/beasts of burden in stock, especially if that will then affect their speed, how much they can hold, etc. It seems like it will add a tremendous amount of micromanagement to keep things going efficiently (like having just enough horses everywhere caravans will need them, but not too many that they'll be wasted). Another thing is that caravans start in one place and end in another, and if there is a trade imbalance going one way people/beasts of burden will accumulate in places where you probably don't want them.

Long story short... I don't really see how this adds much fun or strategy, but I don't see any way this idea can be done without adding a lot of annoying work.

Giving every resource/object/whatever a weight property (and maybe even a size category), on the other hand, I like. It's ultimate achievement would pretty much just be a way of varying how much of the different resources can be transported by a caravan without just setting arbitrary limits for every one (which would thus be almost impossible to remember for all the different resources). But by assigning reasonable weights, it makes it much more intuitive. Size could be another factor (could just be considered "small", "medium", "large" and "massive"). Swords and the like would be small, armor medium, horses/bears large, and maybe some special things could be considered massive and would require a whole caravan for itself.

That's the "*this*" that I meant. The caravan talk has been so fast and furious around here lately that it's all a blur to me...

I don't know about the caravans using animal resources either, that would be hellish on an automated system.  You'd have a massive advantage in mount supplies by sticking to just a few key cities and centralizing as much as possible.  A large, decentralized empire would increase exponentially in caravan numbers as it grew.

I definitely like the universal weight system though.  Although camels can carry a hell of a lot more weight than that.

Maybe SD need to hire a biologist to see how much weight a dragon can caravan then!  Haha I want dragon caravan who can also attack someone tries to rob it!

I am very glad that so far everyone like to have weight being accounted for in EWOM!  If SD want to go elemental, how can they miss accounting for basic physics like weight?  OTOH, if you guys can think of why this is not desirable (other than too much time taken to design so), let me know!

I do admit that the caravan idea needs refinement.  When I said “automatically creates caravan without any gamers’ involvement” in the OP, I have no idea to resolve the micro issue.  However, I do know I want the following:
1.    The faster your beast of burden is, the faster your caravans are
2.    The number of these beasts are eventually accounted for, subtracted from their ‘mine’
3.    When my caravan gets robbed, I lost these beasts too.  So the robber can reuse them, maybe for their caravan or maybe as cavalry, or maybe even turn them a settler(i.e. breed), etc.  I’ll also need to replenish them, if I can’t I’ll then use inferior beasts.
4.    Because most Natural Resources (NR) like ore, gold, etc are heavier than the processed goods like sword, we need more beasts around NR sites.
5.    If your empire is resourceful enough to use Pegasus to caravan, go ahead.

I have a rough idea to reduce micro, for discussion (or brainstorming)

1.    The game automatically determine what beast is used for caravan base on what is locally available& the beast’s speed/weight carrying ability/scarcity; but gamer can override.
2.    The game estimates all factory or NR mines’ production in coming 10 turns, whenever a new mine is captured/built. 
3.    The game automatically send enough camels from the ‘camel mine’ to the factory or NR mine for its next 10 turns’ production. 
4.    Whenever the camels are sent away to caravan its wares, goto setup #2.
5.    Under worst case scenario where the camels do not arrive on time, human/fallen/your race will used to caravan stuff temporarily.

Any better idea?  Where is the weakness?

I'd abstract the beasts of burden mechanic, it's just too hosing to resource balance to have it.  Any sort of rare mount would end up perpetually consumed by caravans and take forever to get access to.

I agree with psychoak - this concept of different animals in caravans to change their speed, ability to defend themselves, etc and be able to swap animals in and out as caravan animals/mounts - it's too much hassle without adding anything that I can see. If you have a location that you are shipping a lot of stuff to, but not away from, you are gonna end up with a mess of horses, camels or whatever in that town.

I agree with psychoak and Denryu, too. It's too much hassle, with too many aspects that can't be automated well, for too little gain. Much better to abstract this away. It may be worthwhile to base caravan speed on the fastest non-mythical mount available to your kingdom, though; but even that may be going too far. There's nothing to micromanage there, but it might place too much importance on having fast mounts.

I really don't think you'd need a biologist.   I mean, pulling a cart is a lot easier than actually lifting something.   And I can imagine a dragon can lift quite a bit.   

But why would I want to even use a dragon?   I would just use an army of serfs to pull all my caravan carts.   I bet 100 serfs can pull just as much as a dragon.   And we wouldn't have to change a thing.

I can't stop myself from reiterating my very great affection for the idea that dragons in Elemental will be like 'forces of nature.' Except that somehow we can communicate with at least some of them. They should remain every bit the equal of channelers right to the end of the game, as far as I'm concerned. And at least one of them really needs to be able to get pissed off and wrap his or her unbelievable serpent-style body around the walls of a city as big as Istanbul (Not Constantiople Any More).

Halfway more seriously, I love the idea of a TBS game consulting with a serious biologist--three or five would be better than one on account of they tend to have outrageously narrow specializations and are professionally obliged to figure out how to disagree with each other.

Basically seriously, I'm also inclined to agree with psychoak's take on abstracting the box-hauling meat on feet.

Yeah, the beast of burden mechanic is something we don't need. And a biologist on staff wouldn't hurt: I know that there are biologists who work specifically as consultants for movies, and they would probably be willing to do games as well.

they are used in movies for a number of reasons.   And certainly there could be one used in a game, especially when it comes to creating a 'living world' as elemental might be striving to achieve.

my point was you didn't need one to guess how much a dragon could carry.  And for horse weight limits, you can do some minor research to figure that one out.

If I hired a bioligist, I'd want him correcting things like "Long neck dinosaurs cannot lift their heads above their shoulders.  Get that jarrasic park style brachiosaurus out of here, they can't physically do that."  and  "technically a beast of this size would have to consume this much food to be able to have the energy for flight.   There is no way he could be worth just 5 units of food resource, when your army of knights uses up 2"    But then I'd likely stone him to death and throw him out a window when me totally brakes some game mechanics or forces a months worth of animation and modeling to be redone.  

(brachiosaurus, or any other sauropods, can't raise their heads above their shoulders btw, in case you didn't know.   this neck setup that we've grown up to expect is physically impossible for the way their neck is constructed.  So shake your fist at 100 years of dinosaur experts that said they ate from the tops of trees.  I've actually been waiting for a modern game or film to come out that has such a beast done totally wrong so I can start a debate about it somewhere.)

If you tried to make a beast of burden out of a dragon, first he would eat whatever resource you were trying to make him haul, yes even ore, then he would eat the channeler silly enough to think of such a thing.