With both warehouses & a market place of some sort, all 3 options would be viable.  I vote no on A, as I've played with A for years in Civ4, and it's a gamebreaker far too often.

An important part of the game that must be discussed in order to better choose A, B, or C is "Counters".  If there are going to be counters in the game (and I truely hope there will be, as opposed to vanila units that you just want the highest damage and armor on all units), then option B is almost a must.  A player must always be able to "build" a counter (even if much slower) rather than the game saying "NO, your up a creek".

it should be  a mix of A and C

ofc if you miss resourses there should be something you CANT build otherwise you could just skip most of resourses and play for zerg which is no fun and brainless, that something can be a single shield or weapon maybe but *something* need to be missing (added by some resourse)

also its important than having N resourses is a higher bonus than having just 1 and in this case the speed could be handy, having 10 iron would make a iron sword warrior faster to produce or such

I like C, but the problem of managing units of the same name but variable equipment and stats would be problematic, and dealing with the notices and changes could be pretty annoying.

My vote is for a variant of B for most resources (and A for ultra "rare" resources should there be a distinction, depending on how the resource system pans out).


Reason: Today, and in ancient times, you could pretty much get anything you wanted to for the right price.  Wether through smuggling, bribing, or raiding, it has always been possible to procure a handful of something you need.  However, unless one was insanely wealthy, obtaining enough of such items or resources would be prohibitive.  If, however, that item or resource was readily available in your native territory, it should not cost you much at all to make use of it.

It would make sense, then, to price unit equipment in terms of COINS rather then TIME.  The results would be:

1) If you really, really want to build the mithril armored warrior you just researched then you should be able to.  However, doing so would nearly bankrupt you from all the expense.  This should be made very obvious to the player, perhaps by showing a cost breakdown of the designed unit or highlighting the most expensive pieces of equipment.

2) Units that make use of resources you have in abundance would be very, very cheap.  Sure, that mithril warrior is way tougher then your mounted archers, but because your lands are full of horses you can recruit legions of mounted archers for less then one mithril warrior.

3) Trade should be designed so that you share a significant portion of the resource bonus of a nation you trade with.  This should enable small or resource-deprived nations to still produce effective units.

Such a system encourages a player to play toward his strengths (iron abundant nations producing armored warriors, horse abundant nations producing mounted warriors), keeping games fresh and interesting.  Since cost will scale with availability, loosing an already-rare resource would not be such a huge shock as the price would be pretty high anyway.

Ideally wages (or maintenance) should be related to this as well, perhaps as a fraction of the current cost of that unit.  It was very hard for Japan and Germany to keep their modern armies running after they lost easy access to oil.  Loosing a resource should encourage the player to either recapture it, make peace and trade for it, or disband their now-expensive units before they go bankrupt.

Again, the whole idea of representing equipment in terms of costs rather than time is because it makes more intuitive sense to me, and hopefully to the player as well.  In the end, adjusting unit cost (in time or money, whichever works best) would be a great way to make each game a new and unique experience.

If i am not mistaken, Civ did allow you to trade resources with your allies. You didn't have to actually control a particular resource. You could just set up a trade with allies for resources that they controlled and it would be as if you actually controlled the resource yourself. Worked just fine for Civ.

In my opinion:

If you create a unit for which you miss resources, the unit should be produced in the same time, but needs to cost more (just initial cost, not upkeep).

The reasoning is that resources can be bought on the market and delivered to the smithy (or whatever). If you dont have a market (or a special market upgrade that makes it possible), you simply wont be able to acquire the needed resources and wont be able to produce the unit.

To keep it simple i would just add a factor to each equipment cost that gets used if the resource is not available and mirrors the rarity (like copper x1.1, iron x1.3, steel 1.4, mithriel x2 etc.).

Edit: Or like fimiki said

Currently, I understand that troops will NOT be, currently are not; able to gain XP.  A portion of xp earned by troops is given to the sovereign instead.

Ok, working this idea from multiple angles, and including the existing text in the game, here are my ideas.

If items will have a cost, be stockable, and discrete, then the need for unit design will be reduced.  If they become an abstract assigned to a city, then unit design requirements are reduced.

1.  Start with Training Kits dependant on resources and research.  Notice the Scout Kit and the Bandit Kit available.  These should be a basic unit with all required kit and skills.  Expand this idea out to City Guard (researched under defense), Mounted troops (Requires access to Mounts and research), Armored Knights (requires basic heavy armor), Archers, etc....  Since troops are taken from a village or city production, you can probably also create Resource Production kits to generate the Twighlight Beekeepers (it requires a special kind of person to harvest honey from bees that live off of magical steroids.)

2.  Select the minimum training level for a completed unit.  Basically, researching advanced training is already put into the game and should affect the quality of the the troops developed with the cost of time.  Figure about 10 turns per extra level of training.  Give bonuses for better trained troops based on the kits they have trained up.

3.  Assign the Extras that will be assigned to a particular model, such as Flaming Swords, Repeating Crossbows or Twilight Honey.  Note that certain gear should only be equipable to certain kits, Steel armored scouts generally aren't stealthy.  By assigning Gear to a particular level of training you can ensure your "angelic knights" will always be an elite trained force. 

4.  If higher training is researched, existing troops will automatically start training to the new level over a long period of time, say 50-100 turns per rank.  New troops can be trained during creation to a higher rank for 10% of the time.  I never want novice knights and will only "knight" them when they can be veterans or Elites.  Additionally, when a troop "levels up", give me a list of templates I can assign them to. 

In practice, I start my game and create a guard unit.  I go to unit creation, select a guard kit, select any options I want a novice quard to have, probably none unless we can start factions with specific techs or gear.  The guard unit will stay a green troop until I research Basic training.  Let's say I give my basic guards Staves.  I don't want to waste precious metal resources on untested troops.  When Basic training is researched, the Guard units across the kingdom will start SLOWLY training up to Basic level.  When they advance, I get a notice that Joe the Guard in my capital city is now Basic, I can check the qualified templates I have saved and/or create a new one for this game and assign it to Joe.  Joe will then get a Pike and some armor.  If Joe survives until elite, I'll promote him to Imperial Guard and give him some magic bling.

At the end of the game, I want more people in my Imperial Guard.  I'll queue up some in my training list but, regardless of resources, I'll need time.  Figure 10 turns extra for higher trained troops per level and you'll choose between fodder and highly trained forces that'll hurt to lose.

A further alternative is to pull a MoM and require facilities in cities for providing Magic Weapons, Higher Tech Troops, or Better Trained Troops.

I agree, I think we should be getting some x units of mithril a day as long as we own the resource and this should be stored in our stockpiles.  When we build our dread knight he would require 20 mithril or whatever and it's drawn from our stockpiles.  It's not as simple but I like it better.  It also prevents you from building 10 dread knights in your 10 towns at the same time just because you have a mine.  It should take time to build up the resources to build an army like that.  Just not sure how things like potions and your honey pack would work though.  They could use a similar system but you look like you want many of these and it would be unwieldy to have 20 resources to keep track of.  Perhaps these could use the system you were looking at while metals and building materials would acculate as I suggested.  You would just need access to them to build your dread knight and if you lose access you build them without the special items (with warnings).

For what it's worth, I feel Option C, if handled correctly, will also probably be the classiest solution.

Still, the combat system seems to be vastly undercomplex so far; it almost seems like a form of CivIV, instead of a decent and variable combat template like Dominions 3. Here, you seem to have little room for implementing spells to change the values of statistics which should underly combat mechanics, such as a unit's dexterity, strength, etc. Armor just seems to add HP, instead of mitigating or subtracting damage dealt, while there seems to be no roll for hits or misses at all.

FWIW, I think you should...

1. ...need resources to build things
2. ...get a bonus to build rate and a reduced gold cost if you have multiple resources
3. ...have multiple ways of getting resources ("harvesting", trade, spoils of war, raiding caravans)
4. ...have the ability to store resources

For #4 to work, though, it has to be automated.  Few people want a logistical micromanagement game.  If resources are stored and move around one's empire intelligently, though, it should be fine.  For example, the time to complete for building units should take local resources into account, and account for undisrupted travel time if resources need to be brought in.

If you don't got the resource, you can't build the unit, but you should be able to set an option that you get notified.

Option C looks like the best option to me as well.  Option A is also doable, although may become tedious.  Option B just doesn't make sense, and would ruin the immersion as the logical connection is broken in the game.

EDIT:  I have never been able to figure out how to actually gain control over any resources I have found in the game.  Is this implemented yet?

I suppose one thing we should consider is that extra equipment will add to build times, and it seems the current favored economic model is that if you have access to the proper resource, you have an increased build time for the unit model.

This seems to mean to me that without a certain resource, you will be suffering un-naturally long build times, while also suffering from lack of equipment. Would there be some way to naturally reduce the build time of a unit based on the alternative equipment its load out is switched to? This would not include the % bonus for the OTHER resource however, I should think, as they are trained to use the equipment originally intended ....

augh! it sounds so complicated! :/ ... im starting to wonder if we should have bonuses to build times based upon resource availability. It sounds like a good idea .. while it also seems to favor building alternate unit-builds to switch to when a particular resource is taken over.

Either way, I am in favor of Unit Customization above all else ... and secondly you shouldn't be able to build more iron weapons unless you have a source of iron ore (or iron ore stockpiled)