Denyru, Samuel, the intention of these 2 points is to reduce micro or boring stuff.
The alternative is to make the Blacksmith Level 1 converts limited amount of sword, armor, gloves etc per turn. That means gamer need to check WHEN his order is fulfilled, which factory will then needed to be upgraded, so it can convert more equipment faster. To me, the decision is too simple that I won’t think this is strategic at all. That means gamer will need to monitor ‘factory efficiency’ for all his factories (which is in high numbers after mid-game). I am not sure if this is fun. However, I am not strongly against it either.
An alternative of unlimited warehouse storage is properly means gamer has to manage warehouse capacity. For example, I’ve an iron mine that has warehouse capacity of 10000. Its production will be halted if its local warehouse is full. I’ve a few choices (only I realize that many turns later why its production is stuck). I can manually caravan some away, enlarge the warehouse, or order some equipment that requires Iron. I fail to see if this adds strategy/fun here, so I am still against ‘limiting’ warehouse capacity.
Useful discussion, anyone?
Below is a modification to your idea that I believe makes it nicer
Incidently the U.I. could inform you of when the order is fufilled and if a warehouse is full, justa thought
1. Everything is a resource (two types NR and MR)
2. Manufactured Resources (MR) is automatically produced at Factories and stockpiled in cities that can use the MR and then in warehouses within the city that created them.
3. When there are no orders for a particular NR, the NR mine's output will be sent to all the cities that can use the NR and then when they are full, accumulate in the mine's local warehouse.
4. A Factory (e.g. Blacksmith) converts limited amount of NR to MR, or MR to MR each day, according to its ability.
5. Warehouses store limited amounts of each MR or NR according to their capacity.
6. When there is a new order for a unit, the appropriate NR or MR warehoused in the city that has the order is consumed immediately. If there is not enough of any one NR or MR, the game automatically sets up a chain of MR/NR caravans, using the quickest/safest route (player decides) to deliver the required resources. This gets priority over the idle state distribution of resources (see 2 and 3), with whatever resources left over from the request being distributed using 2 and 3.
7. When all MR required for the upgrade/production arrives at order location, a new unit/MR is produced.
8. When the gamer orders an ‘upgrade’ to existing units, the game calculates the extra NR/MR needed. The difference is paid via the process described above. If these units happen to be away from town, the extra NR/MR will be brought to them before the upgrade is considered done.
9. Caravan travels faster than most units; road provide speed bonus.
10. The player can turn on, off or give priority to different factories to alter distribution
11. The player can locally or globally turn on, off or give priority to the resources being produced by each kind of factory. This gives players the ability to declare equipment obsolete and/or unneccessary.
Treatment of Obsolete Equipment after an upgrade
In case the Soldier’s ‘Sword+2’ are upgraded to ‘Sword+5’, the game will automatically caravan the old sword+2 back to the last town he visited. OR the gamer can sell the old sword for gold on spot.
^This is a topic for another post
Empire wide industrial Specialization (a desirable feature for Pull driven economy)
1. NR mines can be upgraded to level 10. Each upgrade increases the amount of NR it produces each turn.
2. All factories connected directly to a NR mine can be upgraded up to level 10. Each upgrade increases the amount of NR it can handle in a turn
2. All Unit Producing Building (UPB, e.g. Barrack) can be upgraded up to level 10, Each upgrade reduces the time taken to train a unit to a given level of competency (with new levels of competency/veterancy available at levels 2,5,7,9 and 10). There also should maybe be a max percentage of citizens that can be fighting at any one time. if this should be global or local I'm not entirely sure.
3. Higher level building requires progressively higher building cost
4. Some sort of bonus for have additional factories of the same type involving Economies of scale.
5. Empires can build new factories in a town at the highest available level that its population can support.
Goals:
Town can specialize in certain industries to improve efficiency ala (Rule 4).
Empire mastered certain type of factory/UPB means it has the knows-how to be effective in building similar factory in another city (Rule 5)
This does away with B in my opinion
There is also the option to have factories auto upgrade/cost less/take less time to upgrade the more they are used. kinda like the level buying of sins capships.
edited after denru' comments changed point 2, 4 and 5 from what they were in the OP.