I'll start with an apology; we've beat this horse to death so much, we're actually pushing the bones up through the other side of the earth at this point.
Next, the ideas here aren't all mine, there's healthy doses of Climber, Kenata, psycloak, John_H, and a bunch of others who's names I currently can't remember, and I apologize to them as well.
My intent here is to summarize what would be a good economy, at least from my perspective, which has been colored with a lot of others. I should say up front what my intents are: ease of use, having caravans be a strategic target, NO movement or stockpiling of refined goods (sorry to those who supported this, but it's a principle bone of contention).
1) Production resources (ore, crystals, mounts) are tracked PER CITY, not a global pool. Infrastructure resources (materials, food, mana, gold, shards) are global.
2) Production resources are only produced from special resources, and those special resources go to the nearest city immediately upon starting the mine/corral. They are stocked in that city.
3) Caravans (NOT supply trains, which is a separate entity) are units; they are produced in a city. They can be directed to any other city on the map to establish trade routes with other cities. These cannot be attacked, and provide an infrastructure resource bonus (food, materials, mana, gold, perhaps even shards) to the global pool as a straight bonus of the linked city as long as the two linking cities are not at war (which means an opponent can force you to trade goods with them, even if it is not to your government's advantage. Damn market economies.) If a shooting war breaks out, the trade route is disbanded immediately, and the caravan is lost.
4) Supply trains are not units; they are instead pathways. They are drawn or rubberbanded on the overland map between cities, and are established as soon as they are drawn. A city can support one supply train route entering it per level of the city. Supply train drawing becomes available immediately upon research of the supply train tech in diplomacy (currently nonexistent). Supply trains move a specific production resource (ore, crystals, mounts) between two cities. It will do so at a given rate based upon city distance. The supply train pathway can be attacked anywhere along its length, and can be disrupted under normal combat. Units can be assigned to garrison a supply train route (just like a city), and will answer any attack on a supply train anywhere along its length. Supply trains, when established, will move a set number of production goods from city to city, and then disband. An example: City A is next to an ore mine, and is getting 1 ore/season into it's coffers. I want ore in City B. I have the prerequisite tech, so I click on build in city A, select supply train, draw a path from city A to city B. A popup menu comes up and asks what resource and how many. I select ore, and 100 units. There's only 5 units in city A currently, and this supply line will work until 100 units of ore have been moved from A to B. It will then collapse on its own.
5) The complexity of advanced production happens solely in city B. An example follows, but understand that this depth and complexity is adjustable to taste with more or fewer levels. In City B, I have a smelter (ore to iron), a forge (iron to ingots), and an armorer (ingots to armor). I can now build metal armors in City B. How many I can build is set by the amount of ore I have in the city (which is controlled by the flow of the supply train). How fast they can be build (assuming enough ore is available) is set by the number of smelters, forges, and armorers. There is a rate limiting step in here; each refiner can work at one unit/season, if I only have 1 smelter in the city, it doesn't matter that I have 4 armorers, I still only get one armor per season produced. Swords from from armsmasters instead, but sit atop the same production pyramid (ie, they both take ingots). Magical arms and armor require crystals, which need to come from some other source. Making magically armed mounted warriors requires at least a level 3 city (since I can only have 1 supply train per level entering the city, and I need 3 supply trains to supply ore, crystals, and mounts). Since I can only have 5 supply chains entering a city maximum, my rate of producing units that require all three production resources can never be increased above a certain supply rate (ie, I can have 2 ore supply trains feeding the L5 city, and 2 crystal supply chains, but then only have space for 1 mount supply chain feeding the city, which becomes the rate limiting feedstock).
Winni
