I strongly dislike the global resource system. Not only does it make 0 sense, it allows the player to instantly create massive cities within one turn (provided enough resources are available).

An elegant, simple solution is this:

• Roads allow cities to share resources.
• The player doesn't need to setup trade routes or caravans, they just need to construct roads.
• Two cities that share a road connection will share surplus resources based on demand automatically (behind the scenes). IE: City A needs 3 food for hut construction, City B has 3 food to spare, 3 food will be sent to City A from City B.
• Until a city has a access to a road connection to another city, it will need to be self sufficient.
• Cities under siege do not get access to shared resources.
• Roads that are occupied by enemies do not allow for resources to be shared.



I wonder how Las Vegas would exist in a local resource system. Talk about a poorly placed city.

No matter what system we use, there will be people who disagree.  

Re roads: the point of a game is to have fun. This isn't Sim fantasy civilization builder. It is a strategy game. Roads will be in Elemental but we want to stay away from the situation where players are feeling like they're a construction czar or something. 

Moreover, requiring the player to construct roads in order to tap into a global resource pool doesn't make the game more fun. It just adds an additional step that gets in the way of the general strategy (not to mention I could imagine the game becoming about destroying roads which is definitely not fun).

I can only imagine the fate of Sins of a Solar Empire if each planet system had to be "self sufficient" and players had to juggle the resources on a per planet basis to build things.

I don't find local resources (or local resources unless player jumps through hoops X, Y, Z) to be realistic or fun.

My personal opinion is that some people are thinking about scale when looking at the cloth map.

On the cloth map this:

might seem to be far away.

But in the actual graphics engine it looks like this:

And when you look at things like that, the idea that city A and city B can't share food or metal or what have you unless they build a road or something seems absurd.

Anyway, I've said my part on this.  

I think the plan is that cities don't need roads to be connected to the global resource pool, they just vastly increase the efficiency of caravans. This makes sense anyways, people don't need roads to transport goods, roads just decrease the time it takes. Therefore, I think cities not connected to other cities have an increased time to get materials, and as such buildings and training take longer than a city with a road. A city producing resources locally should have less production time than a city importing them from elsewhere.

Really? Did I somehow miss the part where build times are completely eliminated and you can throw up 40 tiles worth of city and population in one turn?

You can queue up construction for every occupied tile as soon as you place the initial city building. Yes you have to wait for the buildings to construct but the process is far far quicker than with the initial city.

And the starting city isn't 40 tiles. It is something like 10.

As opposed to the traditional method of simply quick building all your improvements 1 per turn because you have a massive treasury.

Your city would still have to grow (i.e. get people to your city).  In the traditional TBS with local resources, players simply queue up several improvements that they can quick build with money without worrying where the resources came from.

I noticed that Elemental doesn't have a "instant-build with gold" option. That is a lot more realistic  than someone who can simply pay money and conjure some huge building or some mega unit?

Why is it OK for gold and research to be global and instantaneous but not iron or wood? I'm digging the new system because its consistent.

This man speaks truth.  Consistency is key.  I don't see the problem as most people are already aware they are leaving all the proper tools for our disposal to mod it anyway we so choose.  Hell, it's still BETA.  Relax, let the Dev's do it their way, while accomadating all those of us that may disagree on some things.  At least they are telling us that they still will give us options to change things to our liking!

I played Fallen Empire wayyyy back, and I'm pretty sure that had Global resources, and the game was a TBS, and tons of fun .  Never cared much for the way Civ handles city building, and the spending gold option is truly assenine to any that want to truly look at it as semi-realistic.

@Frogboy

what about an idea that rose up : organic roads.

They are created by the trade between cities. If two cities are close enough a roads starts to appear. First it's just a trail that shows where will be the roads, then as turns passes the roads become more and more visible. The only thing a player could do to change the way roads are built would be to add some kind of "postal relay" or something like that where the traders would prefer to go because that relay would provide some protection and food for saddle horses. So you could "influence" where roads are built, but not decide excatly where they pass.

Moreover roads would be built between towns of different nations, unless there at total war. The hundred-years war didn't prevent Great Britain and France to trade.

The last thing would be to flag some places as "dangerous", so roads would avoid that nasty forest filled with robbers. But .. if a caravan is destroyed somewhere, the game could automatically put that flag.

Everything would be behind the scene, and just logical things would appear : automatically creating roads, avoiding dangerous places, trying to connect safe places.

@The progress:

It's far quicker for the player = less micromanagment.

And there's some buildings that speed the construction, so a newly build city won't get access to that. And don't forget that it will always need some population to get to new levels. And that ultimatly the level of a city will be a multiplier (or I hope it still like intended like that. Any news on this ? Because at the moment it isn't working at all like that. A market won't provide 2 gold in a level 2 city) So newly built city won't come from nowhere in 3 turns.

I really like the Global resources so far, and when the new road system is in and the seiges cutting off resources system is in im hoping it will be even better.

The good thing about the global resources is there's lots of options to add little simple systems here and there to make it more 'realistic'

There's plenty of beta to go yet.

It's also not a "city", it's an outpost. It's certainly not massive, it's tiny.

So when you said "you can instantly build a massive city", what you really meant was "you can queue up a few buildings at an outpost"? Queueing up construction is different from any other modern TBS how exactly?

Let's keep the hyperbole to a minimum, shall we?

looks like my post from before failed to submit 3rd now, global will be fine if a city is able to get access to ressours like in civ 4 they had roads and ports to be able to connect other citys to be able to use it,wouldn't make sesnse if you had another city far inland on another conteint that is able to use resources that had no logical way of getting there, magic would be a lame way to fix that but it would make sesne to build roads smartly or repair, would also be good if you were required to move ressouces that are not currecny when you where giving it to a freindly.

How would you get it to your ally if they are inland on another conteient and the enemy controls the entire coast, it would allow other nations to cut an enemy supply lines, which happens in most modern wars. it may seem not fun but it would allow you to think what trade lanes you need to keep safe as well as plan to enfore before you go to war with some one, islands of other nations are easier to take then the conteniet that they are based on, islands could sevrve as a key point to build up forces or a point to fortify in war if your enemy is coming from the sea.

you need a system that is fair and works as well as logical.

in real life that would take to long better to block it with troops or somthing you must be thinking of rail roads the only way to destroy a road is to destroy the bridge but that will only work with ones that go over a river.

I want the pencil to draw the roads. If they give a strategic advantage (like faster unit movement) I would like to control their setup and design since that's part of the strategy for me.

For things like resource and trade sure let them be automatic, there's no choices being made, nothing strategic.

You can instantly build a massive level 1 city. There happy now? I'm not trying to argue that queuing up building construction is somehow different than other TBS games; I'm simply saying that instead of having to wait for food and building materials to accumulate in the new city you can instantly begin construction on anything you want.

Let's keep the arrogant smugness to a minimum, shall we?

Which implies build in one turn lots of thing on a new founded city isn't really the same than

And how is it different from the Civ series with the quick buy feature when you have enough gold?

I don't know, I thought we were talking about Elemental. I didn't realize we were trying to emulate other games.

How global ressources make 0 sense while global currency make sense? After all, as soon as you found gold in a goody hut at one side of the map, you can use it for building an improvement in a city on the other side. Same for income generated by improvement.

So.. what you're saying is that currency shouldn't be global either? Maybe banks (or credit card companies) are needed in the game .

Actually no, you can't instantly build a massive level 1 city, either. You can queue up .. about 8 buildings, but they're not built, and won't be for many turns - and even once you've built enough housing to advance to level 2, you still have to wait for population to accumulate at the normal rate. I don't mean to insult your intelligence, but your posts make it sound like you can't tell the difference between a completed building and one that's been queued to be built 20 turns later. All you have the turn you found a new city is a 1 population city that's starting to build a single building, and a list of things it plans to build in the future.

With your first city you: 1.) build a few buildings, 2.) wait for resources, 3.) build more, 4.) wait for population, 5.) advance to level 2. With a future city supported by resources from other cities, the only difference is you can skip step 2.. so it takes you 30 turns to hit level 2 instead of 35, I guess I don't see the big deal. Why shouldn't an outpost of a productive empire grow slightly faster because it's supported by gold/food/other resources shipped in from your capital? The other options are moving resources around manually, i.e. caravans (same exact effect in the end, it just increases micromanagement, what's the point?) - or making resources strictly local, no possibility for a metropolis to be supported by a nearby farming village, which is absurd and not the way real cities work at all. I vastly prefer global resources to either strictly local or local with the option to move resources (micromanagement hell), but if there's a better way to make local resources work out I'd honestly love to hear it.

Like I said, "...instead of having to wait for food and building materials to accumulate in the new city you can instantly begin construction on anything you want." I guess I'm the only person who sees a large difference between the two. This wasn't even my main argument anyway but it seems to be what everyone is focusing on.

Using the Las Vegas example: the city didn't just sprout out of the ground. Supplies were transported on a regular bases (and still are) to promote it's growth. This was presumably initially done over roads. People didn't just walk back and forth between to the nearest town to get what supplies they needed.

With that said Brad posted an image somewhere displaying the distance between two cities using the in-game 3D engine. The travel distance between the two cities (despite being built practically right next to each other) looked far more reasonable than what the cloth map view lead me to believe. So the global resource model isn't entirely unbelievable in that situation. But what if we establish a city on an entirely different land mass than where our previous cities exist?

I suppose I'm just one of the few people that like an in-depth economic system that can be targeted during a time of war.

the way germany doomed themselves was by attacking the ussr that was giving them most of the ressouces to build weapons and tanks as well oil and food, if we cannot stop an emeny from getting an economic lead then whats the point of even playing?

in starcraft you need the right balance between economy and your army as well as countering your oppents units and slowering their economy.

What Germany should have done is just use their money to quick build a bunch of tanks and new factories each turn.

Seriously, every game with local only resources ends up fudging it with quick buy game mechanics because deep down, the system doesn't make any sense.

Elemental's system makes a lot more sense and is a lot more fun.

This is going to be off topic, but I can't resist.

In the years before 1920, artesian wells in the Las Vegas valley shot water over 6 feet in the air.  Early settlers had no problems with growing enough food for themselves and their livestock.  In the early years mining was an important industry (and actually still is active, although not as important as in years past), as well as services to travelers to southern California. (In a rational world, mining would be a more important industry than it currently is, since just to the south west of Las Vegas is the only source of rare earth elements in the U.S.; the mine was shut down in 2002, and since then all the rare earth elements have been imported from China).

In the 1930s the construction of Boulder Dam led to a big increase in population, but could have led to a great increase in the water supply, if not for the unfortunate (for Nevada) history of the negotiations for the water rights to the Colorado River. 

In 1922 seven states met to negotiate the rights to distribution of the water of the Colorado, but the representatives from Nevada were all from the Reno area, leaving Las Vegas unrepresented.  The story goes that the California representatives plied the Nevadans with whiskey until they were too drunk to participate, leaving Nevada with a pitiful share (4%) of the Colorado water.

The subsequent history of the growth of the gaming industry is perhaps better known.  I do not dispute that it left Las Vegas overwhelming dependent on the entertainment and hotel industries, with the ups and (currently severe) downs experienced by all tourist destinations (Hawaii is currently experiencing a similar decline in visitors), but is that qualitatively different from other one industry towns like, for example, Detroit?

In fact, I would argue that with the absence of an income tax, and a state government far more business friendly than its neighbors, Las Vegas is far better positioned to recover than a city like Detroit.

Getting back to Frogboy's point, while I think I've established that Las Vegas could have been a successful, self-sustaining small city absent outside support, there's no doubt that the real world "global resource" system, where food and other goods can be imported, was the only reason the city was able to grow as large as it has.

Note: technically, Las Vegas is not actually all that big.  The whole southern and southeastern part of the valley is the city of Henderson, where I live, and the "Strip" and a good part of the central and western part of the valley are in Clark County, but not in the city limits of Las Vegas.  Again, the growth of the Strip and the relative decline of the downtown Fremont Street businesses has a lot to do with the lower taxes and looser regulatory regime of the county versus the city.

Actually what you just described would be considered 'Local' as the Local resource system is not self sustaining cities as it seems everyone has them confused it refers to the fact that resources are transported along the network and take time and money to go and trade exists etc. it is actually based more on the model you just gave Los Vegas actually has to import food water etc. but it then generates revenue as a large commercial area.

So in reality you support the 'local' model or the 'Trade' model and not the unrealistic 'BOOM' its there model that we currently run on but that's okay i'll let this subject drop.