pmaxwell

[quote who="pigeonpigeon" reply="2" id="2225768"]In other words, I actually think that this might be one situation where, at the large scale, the computer would be better than the player. The player only really becomes important when something goes wrong, or something comes up that the computer isn't in a position to recognize (like a long-term player strategy). And in those cases, it's likely that the player only cares about a very small subset of the economy. That said, of course au

There's also an intuitiveness-of-UI issue with camp #3 in that, once you've been presented with a new resource, you can't just direct where it's meant to go from the point it's produced. This feels clumsy. So, I guess I have issues with most of the camps. Camp #1: easy at first, intuitive with new resources, unintuitive with building new manufacturing centres, quickly nightmarish when disrupted. Camp #2: perhaps too simple (though I suspect that increased clarity of wh

[quote who="Tiefling" reply="11" id="2225260"]In what way would option #3 be better than option #1 for the problem described?[/quote] Revising your supply routes will generally be faster with camp #3, as you're likely to have fewer major manufacturing centres than resource-producing cities. I agree, though, it's hardly a great solution either - once you have a complicated arrangement of supply lines, any significant disruption to them risks making your next turn a dull chore.

[quote who="pigeonpigeon" reply="9" id="2224972"] You just contradicted yourself. You're assuming Stardock intended for Camp #1 to have zero (or negligible) automation. To quote the OP, regarding Camp #1: "Part of the fun of the game would be running a proper empire (or letting AI governors take care of it)." I said it before and I'll say it again: other than the strange auto-upgrade idea, the only difference between Camps #1 and #3 is that automation was implied but vague in the former, and

Camp #1 is awful. The problem does not arise when you're building your elaborate net of interconnected transportations and caravans, but instead when some ugly interloper takes up residence at a point which cuts your supply chains.Once you have a detour for the caravans worked out, it may make more sense to send them somewhere other than the city they were initially supplying, and then the cities that were being supplied from the original caravan routes may need supplied from other pl