Personally I would like to see as many diff. resource types, as possible. Diversity = fun in my book.

I think if you don't have the resource, you should severely be limited in building the unit of choice that requires that resource.   Sure you can scavenge a bit of it, but if you had a deposit of that resource it would be in abundance.

I like alot of different types of resources.  It makes trading and such much more pleasant.  I'm also on the bandwagon that cities farther from the resource do not benefit from it as much as a city right next to it.  Maybe there are some techs that allow for more efficient trading within your empire that reduce these restrictions on far away cities.

So essentially I'm essentially agreeing with what you have written.  

Diversity is definitely the way to go with resources. More resources will encourage trading and warmongering to get the resources you don't have (as long as said resources are actually useful). I loved Civilization 4 but one of the things that really bothered me about the game was that:

1. Trading resources was near useless for the majority of the resources that existed in the game. Since for most of them they were really only useful if a city was working the tile they were on.

2. Having more than 1 of a resource did nothing other than providing extra production to the city that worked that tile (if no city was working that tile then that resources was utterly useless, you could trade it but see # 1).

3. It was far too easy to get all the useful resources.

Natural resources should be the catalyst for wars, diplomatic alliances, and trade deals. Having a large diversity of useful resources will help acheive those goals.

Also I like the idea of having optional resources in unit plans so you can still build them without that resource but then as soon as you get it all future units of that type will automatically be stronger because of it without any boring micro-management on your part.

In my personal opinion, the resources should be similar to the way they were in Civ 4.  With some obvious differences, of course.

1.  Many of the resources should be required for the units/eqipment/buildings they offer.  One needs iron to produce steel equipment and such.

2.  Some resources should be optional.  They just make things easier.  If you dont have access to stone, building some buildings could take MUCH longer.  Maybe 25% longer.

3.  Sevral resources should be just pure bonus related.  High-Quality Timber to make building 10% quicker or something.

Some of the resources could be used in lieu of another, but they have to be related.  There could be 20 Iron Ore locations on a map, but maybe only 4 High Quality Iron or what not.

4.  All resources should be tradable and worth something to the AI.  That way the person with an exess of Iron and to Timber has a good reason for maintaining good relations to GET those resources.  Or a good reason for conquest.  Contested resources make good for conflict and add meaning to wars.

So I think a combo of both required and optional resources would be best and they should all be tradable.  In a nutshell. ^^.

I think there should be a monetary cost for using resources you don't have direct access to, which should be related to how many other civs have the resource and good trading relations to you. For example, if one civ embargoes you but many others have it to trade, the cost will only increase a little. If there's no other civs willing to trade with you, the cost should be nearly prohibitive. The monetary cost should be in addition to the extra time.

Brad, sounds good.  Even if you do go with fewer resources please make sure (if feasible) that the moddability envelope will allow more resource diversity.

On the issue of "no resource = 0.1/city production" vs "no resource = "0.0 production", I have to give the worst answer possible from the programmer's perspective: it'd be great to have some resources the first way, and some resources the second way.  For example, "iron ore" and "wood" should be available in some quantities to anyone, but if you want "adamantine" you simply _must_ have an adamantine deposit in your control somewhere.  You may be able to avoid implementing two different systems to accomodate this by making the "X" in "every city produces X of this resource once it is revealed by tech" defined by an element under the ResourceType node for that resource type in the CoreResources.xml or whatever.  Then admantine could just have "0" for that value and we'd be good to go.

Anyway, thanks for the update

I like that idea. It will let you construct thing you researched for.

Why not adding a "availability" value to each resources ? adamantin would get a 0 (you don't have a mine? you've none) and wood a 0.5 (or even higher if there's woods newt to your city). The availability could depend on the resources next to your cities (you get higer chance of finding faery dust if you're next to shard)

Moreover you don't need 31432451345 resources to create as much effects. think about Morrowind and the way you could create potions. Each resources had some effects attached to it. If you melt two resources with the same effect you get that effect. There were negative effects in morrowind and it was really interesting to find "good" resources that didn't have bad effects.

I would love such a system in elemental.

Or something else : you have 4 resources, sheets of fire, earth, wind, water. If you put 4 sheets of earth and 1 sheet of life you get a twilight honey. Adding 4 sheets of water, 2 sheets of wind and one of fire, you get an oil you can apply to a sword that will let it cut through hard armors. With only 4 resources you can create a lot of effects.

There need to be lots of resources to avoid empires that would get all of them (thus creating no need to trade).

The more the merrier. You only get problems like really slow unit production due to missing resources if you allow the .1 scavenging thing to happen. Pros and cons. I'd say throw it in and we'll playtest it. I would probably prefer no resource = no unit of that type but I see pros and cons each way.

I like resource scarcity having an effect on play. This was badly implemented in CIV3 because critical unit types depended on them (with no alternatives initially) and the player had only one recourse - seizing the resource square by force.

Don't forget, commerce raiding should yield whatever resources are being shipped in the caravan - another reason for players to pursue small conflicts rather than city-taking, more variety of play, all pluses. It also gives resource starved players a means to lay hands on the goods without a massive war to take a well-defended resource square.

What about theft or smuggling as possibilities too, rather than open warfare or attacking caravans? Also, how about privateer forces - you commission and control them but they act like bandits in your non-enemy's territory. So I can raid people's commerce without going to war on them. Risk of a big diplomacy hit and reputation hit if the 'bandit' leaders are caught, tortured and talk...

The norm is that your civilization develops techonologies for resources they don't have and that once developed, you can see those resources to exploit them. It's an abstraction, obviously, as it just means that the civilization gets access to some cuantity of that resource to investigate it and only once the investigation is complete, the resource per se is considered something that can be exploited by the civilization.

Honestly, I'd prefer that you can see the resources from the beginning and only can research things of resources that are close to you (appart from trading). If you don't have access to iron and no one to trade for it, you tell me how you develop Iron Dirk. Maybe Stone Dirk. Or Obsidian Dirk. Even a Bone Dirk? But Iron Dirk? But I understand that for balance issues is a no go. (unless you can only see the ores when your area of influence takes them? Unless you research/trade the proper tech, then you discover all of the researched/traded type on the map) But I'd still prefer something like that if that was ever possible.

On topic:

Number of resources? As long as it's playable with a "few basic" ones, then you can add as many extras as you consider it balanced, fun and good. If I can win just using some "common" resources, extras should be okay as they would mean just extra options. Be them extra materials for weapons/armours, or food sources or...

About building something that requires a resource that you don't have... Why? If you don't have access to iron, you find a way to obtain it (war with someone who controls some, trade it, steal it...) or be ready to fall behind in the armamentistic race. Want to build a stone temple to FrogGod and only access to wood? Well, pray that FrogGod likes a wooden temple. So you haven't met any other civilization yet and have never seen a horse (or cows, or any other animal of such style... maybe with luck you found some wolves) in your whole life and pretend to build some stables? Like... no, you can't?

I really like this idea. I want to avoid the Civ4 system for strategic resources: you just researched unit X but you need resource Y to build it, if there happens to be no Y in your kingdom, you're completely screwed. Your system makes more sense - even if there are, for example, no mithril deposits in Gondor, there are still -some- mithril weapons floating around that originated in a Dwarven mine somewhere. Therefore any city should be able to scrounge up a little of any resource (gained by trade/plunder/etc), but obviously having that resource naturally occuring in your kingdom should provide a huge bonus.

As far as number of resources, the more the better, I think. Instead of - for example - having a resource that could increase unit health by 10%, I'd rather see four different resources that stacked and provided a 5% bonus each. Therefore no single resource is essential, if you don't have it game over - but there's still a significant bonus to gaining as many resources as possible through trade/conquest (up to 20% unit health theoretically, although having access to all four of these resources should be extremely rare). Same principle as the luxury/health resources in Civ4, which I feel they did an excellent job with - any given resource can be replaced by half a dozen different ones that have the same effect, so lacking any single health/luxury resource won't cripple you, but since the effects stack you're still rewarded for gathering as many different resources as possible.

[Of course, this could be a pain from a programming perspective, I don't think your current unit design model allows for stacking 4 similar effects. The example applies to other things that do stack well however, such as prestige or research. I'd much rather see four different resources with a 5% research bonus each than one with a 10% bonus.]

This can be turned around: "Because I have metal to give to my researchers, I can research metal weapons."  How do you know your idea for making metal weapons will work if you don't have the metal to try it out, eh?  An idea that looks good on paper may be unworkable in actuality; think of some of da Vinci's drawings.  If you want adamantine longswords for your knights, you need to have a source of adamantium so you can do the proper reasearch.  Research has a resource cost.

I like what keithLamothe and vieuxchat have said; the more basic resources should be widely available one way or another, and special resources should only be directly available from an appropriate source - mithril only comes from mithril deposits and ironwood only from ironwood tees in ironwood groves.  Indirectly, as Kuloth said, resources can be made available from trading, commerce raiding, smuggling, etc.

My gut says lots and various resources are better, but my brain says proper execution will make any number feel right.

I.e. every city produces say 0.1 metal per turn no matter what. If you control a metal resource then that amount goes to 1. If you control 2 then it goes up to 2. And the city that actually has the resource gets another bonus.

 

I am also in favor of this idea. What I like about it is it doesn't totally cut off the option of powerful units for smaller/disadvantaged players - if we were to go with the "no resource, no unit" model then I can see it as all too possible that smaller kingdoms would simply be overrun, which if this were Civ would make some sense - but it's not Civ, it's a fantasy kingdom! And at least in *my* fantasy worlds, smaller kingdoms could legitimately have some chance to defend themselves if they put a lot of effort into a small-number, high-quality force.

I also like the diverse resource model, since I think that especially for a fantasy-themed game such as this one, variety is the spice of gameplay - it should be all about giving players as many different tools to go in different directions as possible, and thus maximize strategy as well as play with the theme.

Would it make some sense if you had to have a certain resource before a technology was unlocked on the tech tree? Like say you discovered a resource called "Ironwood," a magical tree tile found in the forest, which would then unlock an "Ironwood Weapons" tech branch for weapons made out of the stuff, which might provide an equivalent or weaker bonus than iron but be a boon to those civilizations that could not find an actual iron deposit for the normal build bonus. Just an idea I figure I'll throw out there

Wow, you beat me to this idea by 10 minutes. Damn my slow typing time! Weird synchronicity, anyways.