I miss pillaging. How can you have an evil empire without pillaging? Or a holy crusade without the cleansing fire, for that matter?

One of the many things I like about Elemental is the hunt for resource sites, and the revelation/rediscovery of sites tied to the research tree. BUT like many on this thread I think the idea shouldn't be applied to food.

Here's my two cents. Add it to the pile.

If the heart of our story is the regeneration of the land by the will of the soverign, then surely every scrap of land around a city that isn't being used for mining/libraries/hovels/clay pits etc should be packed with busy peasants, working to plant happy seedlings and the like?

I'd like to see 'empty' land converted over time into food-producing arable farmland within the controlled areas of a city. Use that for the food source rather than the current food factory tiles. Over a set number of turns the land changes character, maybe in a number of stages - for kingdom I'd go from grassland to a simple farm to a specialist farm (beehive?), producing steadily more food over time.

Here's the kicker: if a hostile army marches across your terrain they'll hoover up your hard-built food resources and set your farm back to barren crap ground in no time flat. The bigger the army, the faster the pillage (or the wider the area affected). The upshot is that there is a logistics component added to warfare, and that's a cheap way to add strategic richness.

For this to work best we'd need to add another old favourite - unhappy citizens. Hungry, riotous citizens. Splinter faction! Civil war!

Oh, wait - only a Channeler can rebuild the world and make it grow food again, so the new splinter nation will starve! Sucks to be you, peasant. Serves you right. Hold on... is that my best and most Essenced-up hero leading the rebels? Crap, crap, crap...

i'm going to focus on this point because it's the only point on which i think we have any disagreement. generally i think we're working towards the same thing.

if you've already made the eminently sensible and elegant decision to link food consumption to the actual population, then there is very little argument for any building consuming food (other than things that would actually consume food, like stables, or a temple where food is sacrificed)

materials are used to make things not run things, so they should not be used for maintenance. similarly you pay for your troops directly so there's no need to pay to run your barracks as you'd be paying for the same thing twice.

that just leaves gold. for most things i dislike the idea of giving with one hand and taking with the other. especially for economic buildings. most players have a natural desire to build everything they can, whether correctly or not, and i think it's best to generally allow this. generally development should always be a good thing. a fun game is a choice between different positives rather than positives and hidden negatives.

the only thing you've really then go left that justify maintenance costs are your research buildings. this is the one thing that really does need maintenance. if you think back to gal civ 2, in elemental you have no research production slider; your research is always running at full capacity and you should have to pay for this production. also the ocassional unique wonder.

It's called Gingerbread construction.  As a technigue it's been around a long time.

I really have to say, this is a logical concern. But then again I feel like something is missed out on by not having multiple houses in a block of hut or house. I'd personally love to see several huts, houses, etc per square but I know that the current system isn't set up for anything at all like that. I think a row of homes that would tend to have a lane along it would add aesthetically to an already charming graphic system. I'm sorry, but when I build a palace or a huge marketplace and it's only four time the size of what appear to be single residences it takes something away from feeling like you're doing something on a grand scale.

I would go and play a city building game if that's what I was after, it's not. I just think that if you had the ability to zone areas for housing and could see different looking houses spring up in those blocks it would be somewhat appealing. I'd have a reason to look back in on cities I might otherwise have very little interest in looking at beyond the cloth map. A few different slightly smaller houses, some sort of tile based system where a unit of four houses would have a road running down the center of the square, and try to attach to any other nearby houses (am I the only one that constructs housing districts?) could really add something that feels bland and generic to me about the city construction. The same house with the same peasants in front of it just doesn't really do it for me.

yes, i was a little concerned by the housing issue too. the fact is that if you don't have the base housing of a city improving as it levels, you'd need a ton of houses (and so far anything better than a hut has been elusive for me, as a kingdoms player). what's more than this, the ai seems to build far more of them than it needs, which must be crippling it's food supply. another reason why food consumption should be linked to population not housing.

i think the easiest way to do it (once you've switched to population based consumption) is to ditch base housing entirely and make the max pop cap (bot not growth) dependent entirely on housing you've built. then remove the need to build tonnes of them, or delete old ones, by auto-upgrading your houses to huts as you research the appropriate techs. preferably with some visual update.

I don't think the buildings are "making gold".

It's the people working in the buildings that provide services that generate gold.

Obviously, a merchant hut isn't going to just poop out gold. But there's a merchant in that hut selling stuff which can be taxed and that makes gold for the kingdom. The population and taxes is a good point because it's something that should be tied to population but isn't. In that regard I see your point.

The food thing is a better example because it falls apart on a lot of levels.

-Why is food handled differently than all other resources? Why isn't it a per turn income with a per turn upkeep/consumption and then the "profits" get stored up? If you want to say it can't be preserved, throw that on. Food change per turn = Production - consumption - spoilage. Granaries can then eliminate/reduce spoilage.

-The point about food being tied to people is a better example of abstraction issues. A empty hut does still cost food, but it's empty because no one has moved in it yet. Also, how much population does "1 food" feed? 25? So if I have 10/10 citizens, then I should be losing just 10/25 food.

-How are farms and other food nodes producing food constantly but it never stockpiles? I am at +3 out of +4 food, what's happening to all that other food? I'm still at +3 every turn, but I'm really making 3 more food than my population is eating. Why can't I barter with that food? Trade it for other resources, or use it as diplomatic clout? (Ally with me and I'll help you feed your people with your -10 food selves)

-Why don't soldiers eat food? Even if you say "the upkeep = salary with which they buy food" - where's that food coming from? I'm at +3 out of +4 from the hut, and then I train 10 soldiers. I'm still at +3 out of +4. Where is the food they are buying coming from?

-I can actually see why markets could cost food. It's like a grocery store. The food the markets sell has to come from somewhere. That's actually an example of abstraction I can see making sense. I just wonder why it doesn't apply to armies. Although, if there was a "food market" that produced more gold than the "regular" market, that would be better. Heck, have markets for all the resources that cost resource upkeep but generate either gold or other resources in return.

the issue is not whether it's a reasonable abstraction that the buildings people live in consume food, or the buildings they work in make the money, but whether it's necesarry, fun, or adds to the game. it doesn't. until population growth is modelled in a realistic, intuitive way and it makes you more money to keep people in big developed cities than to move them out, spam cities and grab resources, then the settlement mechanics will always produce bizarre, unfun results. and worst of all, plenty of other games that are considered much less "hardcore" then elemental, do it exactly this way.

i don't think there's anything necesarrily wrong with food being a supply rather than a gross value, but it needs to be presented better. moving it away from the top of the screen and removing it from building costs will make the division a lot clearer. if it is divided amongst the population then the player will never have to worry about it directly anyway.

Of course military buildings need gold maintenance ... (if we are going with non-game examples, then to pay the wages of your Combat Teachers, Drill Instructors, Field Trainers)

It's perfectly sensible for % increasing gold buildings to also have a gold maintenance cost ... its less efficient to sponsor a "state-owned" marketplace in a small city.

Lets consider a training complex (for military) ... its going through practice/apprentice weapons and dummies every day. That could be a minor materials upkeep. Doesn't have to be, as you could just add to the gold maintenance their budget for "buying" such things.

so for training complex ... either 1 gold, 1 materials upkeep, or 2 gold upkeep (as an abstract and basic example).

A market could cost 1 gold for maintenance ... and increase Gold production by as much as 50 %

A bank could then also cost 2 gold maintenance, and increase Gold by 50%

.. in both cases, the gold is increased *before* the maintenance, so a city would need to make 4 gold or more for a market to become necessary.

A city would need to make  at least 6 gold more for a Bank to become necessary.

however, assuming these bonuses don't add but multiply ... your gold is increased by 125% if you have both ... so assuming you were making only 4 gold, with both you would be making 9 gold ... and paying 3 in maintenance so its 6 gold .

However, as far as *fast turn around* on your investments ... you would rather like a city to be making say 10 gold, so that you would be making 22 gold, or a 19 gold profit, or a (9 gold) bonus. As opposed to 6 gold profit, or a (2 gold) bonus.

and of course, added to the % increases on city size, it'd only get better. (alternatively you could have markets use materials maintenance [leathers, furs, tools], and banks to use a gold maintenance)

Probably the construction of such gold-increasing buildings to be tied more to usage of materials. (cost more materials than gold, if costing gold at all)

And as to "Hidden" costs ... these costs wouldn't be Hidden, I'd say everywhere (in the tool-tips, in the building icon, in the Hiergammemnon) that a Market would "cost 1 gold per turn globally, and boost local gold by 50%" ... by tying the gold maintenance to the global treasury as opposed to local profits, you avoid the possible mistake of calling the penalty before the bonus.

But yea, the building itself would say (-1 gold, +50% gold) ... so its not a hidden penalty.

I am not too wild about a maintaince cost for economic buildings unless it is flavored as exchanging gold for another resource (e.g. some sort of alchemist that turns gold into crystals). It might be good for econ. buildings to be able to toggle between self-financing (reduced output, but does not cost gold as it sells some of the product to cover costs) and max-output (more production, but needs to be subsidized to function).

if you're going to be realistic, then yes, everything needs gold maintenance. but i personally don't believe it adds to the fun to force people to get out their calculators to work out if building a market is going to be of net benefit in each individual circumstance. it should be enough for them to look at the list of buildings and think "this (i know) WILL improve my economy, but this (i know, intuitively) will improve my food production." ie, making a strategic choice between two different positives, rather than deciding if something is a positive or not: ie, working out whether or not a market will make or lose money (which is not fun to me, and really not particularly acessible for new players).

and by the way, if you extend this logic to include one resource vs. another buildings, it's a big part of my argument against the current system.

Yea ... I suppose buildings that produce gold don't (have) to have a gold maintenance ...

But rly it depends on a Taxable population.

IF taxable population = true ... then you have  a question of WHAT DO I DO WITH ALL THIS MONEY??

Do you have a lot of soldiers? Or have a lot of good buildings??

// and I guess this is assuming, if we have no maintenance for gold producing buildings, that all ur tax money is being bonused by the +Gold buildings you have access to.

Perhaps food is too easy to come by.  Fertile land is wonderful, but without water?  Is dust.  Oasis function like fertile land in EWoM.  perhaps a new resource, water needs to be created.  Water, however, cannot be 'stored.'  A study sup[ply may be had by controlling an oasis.  Bou it doesn't accumulate.  And water is rare and precious.  All (living) beings need water evert turn or they die off.  Need food, too?  Of course.  use some of your very limited water to irrigate the fertile patch = and get some food.  Or provide water to the herd of .. and get mounts or/and food.  Every unit of population and every mount needs food and water every turn.  or it dies that turn.

Without food and water, the houses already built will remain empty - or if overbuilt, will become empty.  (who knows 'what' may move in when you are not looking?)  So don't overbuild buildings.

If a miner is working a mine - he/she uses food and water every turn.  Want to use that new patch of fertile land you found?  Or the wild rice clump?   You will have to allocate some of your precious water to 'make' food.

The only source of water, so far, are oasis.  Each SOV begins the game with the ability to "find" one hidden spring (where the first settlement is built.  Would this address the spam issue?

VERY interesting discussion and some great ideas.

Subscribing.

As to food: the current game-as-is also really doesn't match the "cataclysmic" theme at all in anything other than the storyline. What we have in this game are either "food rich" (food resources with +N food) or "food average" (open ground, hills, swamp, or woods "non-food" resource areas which give +0 food).

Perhaps in keeping with the catataclysmic theme a large amount of "food poor" terrain types should be added (like half of the current open ground squares, which is a significant number). These would be either desert or something like fallout (supposedly a magical war destroyed the land in the EWOM theme, thus "magical fallout" areas seem reasonable to me), and the effect of "food poor" would be -1 food. i.e., on top of everything else you need to supply an extra food if you wish to build a city on that square. If you really want to build a city near that nice crystal site, it might cost you a food every turn in maintenance on top of everything else if it's a food poor area. Perhaps there could be some spell similar to raise land that upgrades a food-poor to food-average square, but it shouldn't be too cheap in cost otherwise players would just use it all the time to get around the extra food cost of a food poor site, perhaps the spell should require a permanent esssence loss (say of 1) in additon to whatever mana cost.