Is there any real effect on ressources?

[Bolgfred]

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?

[Neutron]

Hi Bolgfred

Some interesting ideas, but it's not something lots of players have complained about, so at the moment there are no plans to change things.

Realistically, the necessary raw materials were traded, so you could produce bronze even if you didn't have copper or tin available locally.

Also some luxury goods already have an effect on noble happiness.

[Bolgfred]

Okay, thanks for your information.
Then I will wait until somebody else cares :-)

[pras]

This thing with resources bothers me as well.

I find it annoying because in the game it:
- Doesn't promote exploration.                                       - what is the point of going around the map at the beginning?
- Doesn't promote smart expansion and land grab.          - let me settle somewhere that gives me clear advantage... or... let me conquer that city because it has certain advantage that I want/need
- Doesn't give you clear advantage over someone.          -  I put an effort of scouting a deposit and settling near it for a reason... to roll over that steppe scum in my shiny armor.. which they cannot have since all they know is grass

Let's think about it.
Wars were fought over something as silly as cinnamon, let alone something as strategically important as certain raw materials.
Realistically, sure, anything can be traded. However, down the line, someone had to mine it from a deposit that cannot be pulled out of nothing. Copper is not like... bitcoin 

Let's say that my empire doesn't have copper. I need to know someone who mines it. Or someone who knows someone that does (or even worse... someone that knows someone that has a friend... I mean you get it right?). The latter should mean that me obtaining copper will be even more expensive IF they are willing to trade it in the first place. I have limited knowledge of Chinese history but I bet there were wars between factions because one faction didn't want to sell copper to another.
Point is, I just described at least 4 game-play mechanics, that are missing in the game.

IMO.
Resources on the map should be important. They should influence how you settle, who you go in war with and will your army fight with stones and leather armour or will it be more technologically advanced.
Clearly this is a CIV inspired game... just look at how they solve this thing out. Probably you hate me for saying the last part but... it is what it is.

[Neutron]

Resources and exploration are important, just not to the extent that lack of a particular resource prevents you building certain things.

In historical terms, the only resource I can think of, the lack of which caused problems, was horses. I did spend considerable time trying to devise a way to incorporate that into the game, but ultimately never found a solution I liked.

From a game play perspective, if particular resources are going to be required for anything vital to progress in the game, they have to be made common enough that almost all players will have access to them, and in that case why bother having the dependency at all.

[Godofwax]

В настоящее время я изучаю эту проблему. Спасибо за эту замечательную историю.

[netdomon]

nice

[GameJutsu]

One thing that might be nice is if a tooltip or such could give you an estimate of the current trade value of a produced item.
Or at least if it actually told you what the trade item was being produced as.  I still can't figure out what a Quay gives you...it costs 40 Taels to upkeep and says it produces something to trade, but my city with a Wharf doesn't seem to be producing anything water-related.

It would be nice to be able to see a quick line, like...
"Produces Salt - Trade Value: 12"

Or something like that.  At least have the description say what it produces would sate me.  I know how difficult tooltips with active arithmetic to it can be to program into things.

[Betagan]

Thanks for the info