I have concerns about the economic system:

1) Will I be able to invest resources into gaining resources?  For example, maybe in mining town M, I want to produce 'trained miners with metal picks' for the economy?

2) What about social organizations, such as guilds, to aid specific training?  Can I pre-train the populace with 'unused' training potential?  What about training statesmen, mages, workers, acrobats/entertainers, and researchers (or teachers, for that matter)?

3) How does trade between different players work?  Is this like GC "I've specialized in trade so even though you know adamantine is rare you'll trade it to me for chocolate almonds"? 

4)  THAT raises the whole point of luxury goods.  If there are no coins, how does the barter system work for those?  Do they raise loyalty in friends and spread my culture to my enemies?  Or do I exchange them for goods whether the other player wants to or not (economic violence!)?

5)  Is there a 'mana' resource produced by the economy?  To what extent can spells bolster the economy?

6)  Can 'beasts' and monsters aid the economy?  A few giants to do the heavy lifting would be nice.  What about 'fantasy caravans'?  A land swarm isn't going to stop goods from being carried by gryphon.  (Although admittedly griffons can't carry too much - without magical assistance...)

7)  Can multiple players play the same side/faction?  It seems like some people will want to manage economies, others work on spells, others play warlord, and perhaps another navigate politics and culture (and espionage, one hopes?).  If they can do this at the same time rather than hotseat it, I know it improves the game's replay value for me.

8)  Do different factions have different economic bonuses?  If so, then what happens if I capture slaves?  What about a whole city?  What if I absorb them due to culture, do (other culture) members migrate to my other cities?  For that matter, what about refugees and emmigration?

9)  The ability to say 'I need X of Y near (city)' and have the AI figure it out is immeasurable.  For example, I need 7 samurai (swordsmen) in Riku to replace those that died fighting bandits.  Maybe Riku doesn't have the swords.  Maybe C doesn't have the ore to make the swords, but DOES have a barracks to reduce training.  BUT maybe the answer is to ship ore from M (mining city) to Mishou, and the swords to C, and march the trained samurai to Riku, which is faster than actually producing them at Riku.

9A) An alert box like 'If you do this, production of [Monument] in [C] will be delayed [X] turns:  Do it, Next Best Time, Forget This Task' would be VERY useful.  Especially if it lists number of conflicts.  Maybe a list box with time and conflicts.  (I gather a city can actually do more than one thing at once, which is also highly useful.)

10)  What if an ALLY has resources that you need to produce your units?  How do I keep my economy from being plundered by that of my more militant neighbor?  (I saw this in Age of Empires and Empire Earth - "Give me all your resources now, and I will lead us to victory")

11)  Are there resources that are useless or near-useless in the early game that come into their own later in the game?  Do some resources (like Marble and Stone of CIV fame) become 'dud' resources?  After I discover Iron, can I move experienced miners from M to I to take advantage of the new resource?

12)  Is there a point at which I use up too much of my civilians time, leading to lower Loyalty?  Can I auto-set my economy to avoid these mishaps?  Can I lower my production to increase fertility and loyalty rates?

Sorry if some of these fall outside the Economy intent of this thread, I'm just concerned that while making something new, you haven't forgotten to address how it interacts with other parts of the game system.

This got me thinking about many things I would like to know more about.

How many different kinds of resources wil be in the game? Are even basic types or resources going to be moddable or player designed?

Will you be able to trade excess of specific resources with other players, or will trade be more generic per gal civ? If tradeable how will players buy/sell resources from each other? The possibilities of being able to use embargoes as a diplomatic tool are fascinating, but I have a hard time imagining how this will work without it becoming cumbersome and micro-management. But WOW if there is a way to implement that type of real economy into the game - incredible!

Will there be "tech trading" options per Gal Civ? Ooooh, I can see how excess resources could be traded right within a negotiation window just like Gal Civ - jsut have the excess resources available under their own section, is this how it will be?

The more I hear the more excited I am to get my hands on it! Beta! Beta! Beta!

Rhishisikk... most of those are good questions, but a laundry list of questions is very unlikely to be answered since the reply would take  30+ minutes.  I recommend 2 or 3 questions at most within a post.

Well it is 4X strategy, so I can't imagine micromanaging being much of a problem (since its not like there is a time restraint)

Right, but I mean the tollerance for micro is much higher in a turn based game, at least it should be. Its not like RTS micro anyway.  I think they would almost have to try to make it bad.

You don't want to just press 'end turn' for hundreds of turns on end do you?  and if you do, I'm sure that there will be a governer feature that would let that happen.

To a compulsory microer and completionist like myself, too many sliders and too much microing is a death sentance. It doesn't matter that it's my own fault, I get bored out of my skull after a while!

GalCiv2 was a bit too heavy on that side, I'd like to see some moderation. I want them to take that extra step back and ask themselves "do we need this?" and "does this really add something?".

It's a bit like the issue with the combat in the game. I loathe the idea of there being (Esp. real-time) tactical combat. One could argue that "you don't have too, theres always auto-resolve, quit wining faggot" - but that's not the point. The point is that no matter what, auto-resolve is unlikely to EVER be as efficient as actually going in and play the battle yourself.

I can see my priests charging in when they run out of spells already. Or my archers trying to flank a bear. Or any out of a hundred possible things that will have me hitting the screen screaming murder.

In my dreams I'm waiting for a game where (micro)management will scale to the current size of your empires/army.

A tribal chief managing 1 city certainly doesn't have the same problems as the king of an 'half-world' empire.

I think this could be achieve using a sort of 'civics' system (refering to the civics in civilization) where the parameters you can act on are decided by your current civic ; newer civics unlocking new area of management and leaving some old ones to an 'automated' system.

I have not played GC2 enough, but I always had that sensation that as my empire grows, I dont want to loose time anymore to optimize each city/planet (it's fun when you got a couple of them though). Yet when I come to the higher AI levels or MP I cant just 'play partially', I want to optimize everything I can, everywhere... it drives me crazy and often I get discouraged at that point

I agree, I expect about the same as Civ 4 when it comes to micro in this game.  Civ 4 has so much micro it makes my eyes bleed, but then it doesn't because its not a TBS strategy game.  And even then Civ 4 had a few automated things that are about as good as you can get.  Like the automated explore or workers, what really else could you do ?  Sure, it angered me when workers cut down all my trees, but you could turn that off, and the rest of it was pretty reasonable.  Build roads, build pastures, build farms, I  shouldn't have to micro all that (I do anyway, but the automated works well enough).  My explorers would explore everything, but they didn't do anything stupid like go half way around the world for what is obviously a 1x1 space of unexplored when they could go through the continent sized ithmus that obviously has stuff on it (Sins has done things like that, where there is 1 planet that is on the other side of my known galaxy, and they go for that one when they should be going for cluster of planets near them to explore.  Its been fixed though I think)

In terms of the sliders, again I think it shouldn't be a problem as long as you arn't FORCED to use them by having pre-defined pre-sets and stuff like that.   

As far as micro goes, the part I find the worst is when I am focusing on a military attack/invasion, and yet I still have to deal with just as many economic problems requiring microing as I would without a military invasion going on. In GalCiv2, I like the largest sized maps (epic wars ftw). It isn't to bad in peacetime, since I am merely upgrading planets and managing research, but in times of war I have to deal with planet upgrades, manage research, mess around with ship production, gather the newly created ships into fleets, move the fleets off to attack, and often times play around with the budget since my military spending causes my money to drop like a rock.

IMO it would be best if a player has to do relatively the same number of things per turn. Empty turns are boring, huge turns filled with 500 things to do are overwhelming. Hopefully Elemental will have some really nice governors, since due to its 64 bit capability (and therefore its ability to use up to 18000 petabytes or so of RAM) we will be able to make maps of sizes previously unheard of and civilizations on those maps which will require a huge amount of management.

This is my ideal configuration of economy I'll like to have in this game.  Hope Frogboy will look at it!!

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When you find a Iron resources, you build "Mining Camp 1" to harvest Iron at the rate of 10 Iron per Month.  The "Mining Camp 1" can stockpile up to 100 iron resources only; when 100 iron is reached, production is ceased temporarily until the iron is either 1) distributed to nearest Hamlet or 2) caravanned

Pls keep in mind that the RMG or map maker will decide how much Iron this tile has.  If it only has a total of 200, production ceases on the 20 month.

Hamlet, in some way is very similar to "Mining Camp 1".  Hamlet produces 1 human per month; it has max human population of 100.  Hamlet also acts as stockpile of all kind of material, be it Iron, Wood, Food, Life energy, Death Energy, or whatever.  For sake of simplicity, the max of everything here is 100 units.  It will receive the resources  distribution in 10-tile radius automatically since Turn 1, without player's involvement.  Map maker can stockpile any kind of material to the hamlet, up to 100 unit limit.  If 100 units are stored, the nearby mines will stop producing.

The end result is that this Halmet A has Iron production of 10 Iron per month received from the “mining camp 1” and various resources nearby.

The map maker/player can distribute all kind of production from Hamlet A to Village B, if they want.  For Village B, it has a stockpile limit of 1000 units of everything, including human & material resources.  Say Village B already has Iron mine producing 50 Iron per month, map maker/player can ask Halmet A to distribute a total of 10 Iron & 1 human per month to Village B.  Then in this Village B, you can produce 2 paladin per month, which costs 30 Iron, 1 human, 10 wood, 40 gold coins & 10 labor unit.  When a player want to train/buy 10 paladins, the game will automatically calculates that this Village B can only produce 2 Paladins per month max.  But this is already more productive then Hamlet A, which has a rate of 1/3 Paladin per month max (if we consider Iron only)

When multiple units are being produced (e.g. sharing the wood resources), player adjust sliders to determine exactly how many Paladins or Trebuchets are produced per month.

In case of emergency, a player can always micro-manage & caravan all the stockpiled Iron from the Hamlet A and/or "Mining Camp 1".  Caravan can also be used for diplomacy or being robbed etc.

To define 'nearby' mentioned above, I'll say it is a continuous chain  of resources.  Say if Hamlet A is now occupied by your opponent, Village B will no longer receive its Iron but the mining camp 1 will still keep stockpiling to 100 Iron unit (until your opponent take it, or you caravan it away)  Its Paladin production rate will drop right away. 

The neat thing is all newly produced Paladin can also be vectored to another village.  Any unit produced in that month will travel to its vectored town on the map at month end;  grouped separately depending on their movement speed.

To sumarize, all material/units are vectored as designated by mapmaker, or micromanaged by the player.  I've not mentioned attrition yet, but it should be there.

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The stuff above is intimately related to the player-designed units.  I'll not like to micromanage how many horse, sword, wand, shield etc there is in which village.   I hope what I described will find an audience.

For example, the game comes with a Dark Knight unit; it costs 20 Iron, 1 undead, 20 wood, 50 gold coins and 0 labor; and requires the Horse Riding Technology.  It will have ATT 20, DEF 15, Damage 15, HP 200 and various fighting skills.

However, I want to make a customized a Dark Paladin unit that can cast all Death Magic level 1 spell.  I go to the customize screen & use the Dark Knight as template.  It will say "Death Magic level 1 spell" costs extra 15 Death Energy, -10% HP, -10% ATT and extra 20% gold; requires Death Magic 1 Technology. 

Once I playtest a while I want to change how the Dark Paladin work, I can say add the "Spell Range +1" ability, it'll then cost 100% more (Death) Energy and minus additional 20% ATT.  Or I'll like to put in extra armor, so its DEF increases by 20%, but then it'll requires the "Armory 2" technology.

The developer will need to find a way mathematically & organically calculate how an Undead, a horse will costs that much, and has certain ability.   And how the AI will use a customized unit is maybe quite difficult!

This reminds me of Stronghold where you have to get grain, build a mall, bakery etc. Could be turned into an sim game..