Dear China,
Yesterday I walked through my city and decided to build a foundry. One day later my chineseses just built it as I did wish.
Today, my city has a great foundry, which is really the greatest foundry. We produce great thing out of copper and tin. We don't have any of these metals, but still we are producing.
These things are... well theyre great, whatevery these things are. We dunno but our neighbours are buying them. Great things they are, and very bronzeish.
Tomorrow I will invent gun powder, but now I go to bed.
See you, Mr Diary.
Sincerly yours,
Hing Shong Po-Ba To
Crafters Buildings
As Hing Shong, already noticed, There are some things that makes me taken aback. One of these is the foundry. Why can a foundry actually work without having any copper or tin? And on the other hand, what are they producing? It seems the only effect is money, what kind of makes sense as we are only selling unusuable crap.
Same thing for the Jade or silk manufacturer. They produce things out of nothing, and they produce only things. These things need some beneficial side effects, that takes real impact. Maybe silk ware increases royal happiness, and jade peasant happiness? By this, a silk heavy empire can play a more peasant dominant game, than one with more jade or ceramics?
Additionally, the independance from ressources. It just feels so unrealistic when you only decide by upkeep cost, not by ressources, what Industry you build.
Ressource Trading/Transport
AS a solution I could thing something like, every round a mine produces its ressource, say 10/20/30 units, up to a max of 150. As soon as the limit is reached, the raw material gets sold, making it a low value trading good. When there is a manufacturer for it, he will use up to 15 units and turns it into the better trade goods with side-effects. If the manufacturer is in another city, ressources will delivered with high priority. If nobody needs, ressources will be shared on all cities. Trade routes can deliver an ressource amount of 5/10/20 depending on tradepost-level.
Ressources
Ressources are kind of boring. I don't care a lot about what mineral I have in my cities as they have no unique effect on my company empire, i mean empire. Yes they tweak some numbers and such, or add some happiness on royal or stuff, but thats all so generic, just some number tweaking, that I don't really care if that one is an elephant, a deer or a copper mine. Ressources should have an exciting effect, something unique that makes me making something different because this thing exist. Something like wildlife helping archery recruits, or a special hunter unit, or a hunters lodge which causes crossing enemies smal casualities. For Fish, it could be that the moral/food effect of bad harvests will be reduced, as fish makes the city more independent... all such stuff, I think there are many thing that can be done.
I tried to find any plans or reference in the forums, but couldn't find some. Is there any intrest in such changes? Or are there any plans around this?