Civilization brings new ideas, technological progress and cultural development. To make the most of these growth opportunities you need a solid foundation to build upon, the more robust and efficient your economic infrastructure, the more potential for progress.
Most ancient economies produced their own food, timber and ore and as their societies developed and grew, so did their requirements increased. New houses to improve urban infrastructure, a growing population, these and many other demands lead to obvious pressures on resources. The introduction of improvements to all aspects of resource management are key for growth of the state.
One goal of the game is to imitate this evolution of society and state growth, making increasing needs lead to heavier demands on resources. Another is to force the player into making critical strategic decisions about their economic infrastructure to meet these requirements. These decisions will influence the player’s plans and the general situation in their state for many game years.
The extraction of mineral resources and the harvesting of timber are expensive processes, added to this are difficulties in transportation. Moving large quantities of wood or heavy stone slabs over land is difficult and slow, probably the most important improvement that can be made to your economic infrastructure is the building of critical link roads.
Further improvements can be made to your economic infrastructure with the addition of specialized facilities for the processing of resources in cities and blacksmiths, in essence the provision of skilled labor, artisans and special equipment. Take for example Gold, to maximize production the gold mine should be linked by roads to a blacksmith with a Gold Refinery improvement and also a city with the Goldsmith improvement.
Priorities, time, costs and locations must be considered strategically with any economic infrastructure improvements. What is your current need - gold, wood? What resource may become a bottleneck down the line - food, stone? If you invest in these improvements can you protect them from your enemies?
While roads can be used for the transportation of any resources, the specialized facilities for processing are unique for each resource, being built and paid for individually. A single city or blacksmith fully enhanced for every resource type is possible, but it would be costly and could constitute a serious single point of failure. Strategically it may be better to distribute your resource production and economic infrastructure throughout your State.
Now, let’s hear from Pavel, our game designer, who will explain the economic enhancements from the designer's point of view.
We sometimes hear from players that there is not enough "building" in the game. Our general approach could be summed up as "idle cities produce maximum resources". It is not only more realistic and historical than never ending construction works, but also more fun. This way you keep tedious micromanagement to a minimum while you enjoy the more "variable" aspects of the game. But don't get me wrong, I do enjoy building and developing infrastructure but it has to provide a bit of a "challenge" in terms of strategic thinking and planning. There is no fun in just building every possible facility in every city you have. Just a lot of brainless clicking without satisfaction. So, what enhancements can you expect? There are altogether four resources produced in mines or quarries. In Imperiums: Greek Wars, you need to connect each of these mines with roads to a city and blacksmith to maximize the resource production. This basic mechanic stays the same but some enhancements have been added:Although this is not a big modification, it has a significant impact on a number of things:
- Cities and blacksmiths get four new improvements. For simplicity let's talk about cities. If you want to increase the production of a nearby mine, for gold you need to build a Goldsmith, for stone a Stonemason, for coal a Coalyard and for iron a Smelter.
- Production of mines increase when a city and/or blacksmith is nearby but maximum production can only be achieved by building these new improvements.
- As improvements are added to a city/blacksmith the improvement costs increase, each new improvement is more expensive than the last.
- The production of a particular mine is tied to a single city. Multiple cities cannot gain from the same improvement (e.g. Goldsmith) for the same mine.
Apart from mines, there are two other major resources, food and wood. These are enhanced by two new improvements for cities, the Granary and the Lumber Mill. The Granary decreases the amount of food wasted every turn, it stores food when there is excess production and it releases reserves automatically when there is a shortage. It is a sort of "safety pillow" against famine. Lumber Mills increase the amount of wood harvested within a city range.
- The production increase will be more granular. In Imperiums: Greek Wars, the production of a mine suddenly doubles when you build a blacksmith nearby, now production will incrementally increase with each new improvement.
- The fact that every additional improvement built in a particular city/blacksmith will cost more than the previous one will naturally force players to plan ahead. Where and how they build their economic infrastructure becomes more of a challenge.
- Ideally, there should be only one such improvement per city (the cheapest possible option). This fits very nicely with history, whereby different cities specialized in mining and processing the resources in their vicinity. Thus, dependant on resources you may create a stone producing center in one city while another will specialize in gold production.
- Blacksmiths on the other hand are placed on the map using different logic. Because they consume resources, the player's goal is to have as few blacksmiths as possible and placing them to cover as many mines as possible makes sense. With the new improvements, the player will have to pay additional costs to maximize production to create a multi resource industrial center. This extra investment in blacksmiths makes them more important strategic assets, losing such a key economic nexus (with all those expensive facilities) will be a major setback.
- This mechanic will allow us to create interesting map/scenario setups where even a small country can be economically very strong if its cities and blacksmiths are extended with these improvements from the start. It would give it a great advantage over other countries that will need to build them. A great example of such "playing-tall" is the ancient city of Constantinople.
It might look like we have taken certain steps towards a Civ way of facility building, but that would be the wrong impression. We continue with the approach we have been pushing from the beginning, building should be something you have to think about and plan. You will not just start building these new improvements in every city/blacksmith, instead the approach reinforces the need for strategic thinking, and that is why we all are here, right?:)