I wonder about acceptable number of resources for a heavier turn based strategy. I have trouble determining where to draw the line...

I don't mean a "fixed" number like "no more than X resources", but all things that should be taken into consideration and all thoughts on this topic. What should we be worried about when we design a game with more resources? Does the way we represent the resources to the player matter? Are there tricks to make more resources be more degistable to a casual player? How to determine if we went too far with the amount of resources? Examples of games with the "proper" amount of resources (I'm thinking here about medium or heavier strategies, so no StarCraft with 2 resources, more like in direction of Settlers). And all your personal thoughts that could be related.

Something to consider when designing the number of resources is the developer(s) that will create things with resource costs. There was a game (Space Empires IV?) that had three basic resources, but everything cost equal amounts of two of those resources. There was little point in having two separate 'costs' that were identical in behavior. They didn't make the purchasable items different from one another, and merely suggested that maybe if the assets had been designed "better" then the extra resource would have been useful.

This is a design flaw of creating too many variable resources: The creator of things that will consume those resources becomes burdened with the job of differentiating between costs, a job which can easily be relegated to the world of deal-with-it-later/never.

So the process of creating assets from resources should contribute to designing the number of resources.

Depends on the game. Adding extra resources to starcraft may only make it more complicated, and not necessarily add more depth.
In stronghold, the large amount of resources fits very well.
There should be a purpose for the resources you implement. Adding another resource just for the sake of it may not be the best idea.
In a grand scale strategy game, some resources may only be aquired in certain locations, and getting all could be very hard.
This would enourage trade, aswell as giving great advantage in controlling such a resource spot.
In this scenario, plenty resources would be required (dependent on number of competing factions).

Wikipedia (on stronghold):

The game differs from many other similar games as the player is required to process and refine raw resources through a number of facilities before they can be used for a certain purpose. To create an army, a player must not only have free peasants, but must process the resources required for their weapons through appropriate workshops, rather than simply spend the resources required at a barracks. For example, some resources, like wood, require only a peasant to chop down a tree and turn the logs into lumber. The lumber can subsequently be used for buildings, or can be taken to a military workshop to be refined into a bow.[/quote]

I was thinking about a game where you change resources into other resources. Like coal+iron=steel, clay=bricks. And I wonder where to stop... Like, should I make just one abstract "food" or go the full route of wheat=flour=bread and the same full route for meat & vegetables?

Another questions would be, should there be "stupid" resources that are basicly for mood not for tactical choices (like clay being converted only to bricks and having no other uses, which means that technicly we could just make one building that makes bricks without any resource - I assume raw resources being infinite so no depletion of clay pit ever)?

I would only do wheat -> flour -> bread if multiple things can be created from wheat (or flour). Wheat to a mill/baker = food, meat to a butcher = food - sounds better unless the type of food is important. Forge, turns iron ore to iron (or steel), requires coal is a reasonable idea too. You may use coal for other things then too (smelting different ores).

It depends on the gameplay focus. A rts game like SCII is combat focused whereas a game like Settler is more like a resource management game. Managing resources itself is a game or atleast a sub/meta-game.

When you regard the resource managing from a time view, that is how much time has the player to manage his resources, you can roughly estimate the number of manageable resources. Some examples:

SCII: this is a fast paced, combat intensive RTS. The player doesn't have enough time to manage his resources, more resources would complicate the decision making too much.

Settler: this a slow paced, low combat strategy game. The player has enough time to make strategical decision.

Eve Online: a space shooter with different game layers. The player is involved in fast paced space battles, on the other hand he has enough time while traveling through space or whiled docking to a space station. This time could be used to play a resource meta-game.

To clarify assumptions: We are talking in this topic about turn based strategy where economy/resources are at least as much important/fun/time consuming that combat. Maybe not to the extend of Settlers, but definitely nothing like StartCraft. So economy/resources are not just an addition to a combat, these are supposed to be fun on their own (maybe even no combat at all, althrough this would be extreme... or maybe a balanced mix of economy and combat like Stronghold) and a major focus of the game.

So, we are talking here about turn based strategies where economy/resources play major or at least important role and are not just a tool to only serve the combat.



My dilemma are "stupid" resources. For example, as a player, I get unreasonable thrill about digging out clay and then changing it into bricks. But, technicly, it could be done via only one building and much less hassle, there is no "tactical/strategic" difference if claypit and brickmaker buildings are speaprated or not (I assume a model where distance between buildings is irrelavant, so these work as a "number of buildings of each type"; and where clay has only one use, to make bricks).
Should we avoid this kind of resources or not? (my player's soul tells me to have 2 buildings, my designer's soul tells me to have only 1 and I'm torn apart )

Another thing is representation of resources, I suspect this might play an important role. Check this http://worldoflords.com/misc/test/ir-t2/industrialrevolution.php?m=res and compare what you see oon the page with what you see in the tooltip after you move your mouse over "resources" link. I get an impression that, even through the list in the tooltip is shorter (not all resources included), it still look more unclear that the longer but organised resources page. Do you get the same impression? Any thoughts on resources reprentation importance/tricks/etc?

As for food, check this: http://worldoflords.com/misc/test/ir-t3/industrialrevolution.php?m=res I get an impression the food there is overboard... Not sure if it is only because of cluttered display or because there is just too many variables.

My dilemma are "stupid" resources. For example, as a player, I get unreasonable thrill about digging out clay and then changing it into bricks. But, technicly, it could be done via only one building and much less hassle, there is no "tactical/strategic" difference if claypit and brickmaker buildings are speaprated or not

The problem here is that the only "resource" is bricks. Assembling bricks from another resource is just tedious makework, if it's the only thing that can be made from clay. If on the other hand, clay can be made into several different things, and the player is choosing to turn clay into one of those things, with the opportunity cost of a loss of the ability to turn it into something else, then you have a move in a game. Making a decision as to what to do with the clay.

As long as there's something else to spend it on, it is a resource that can be played with.

My dilemma are "stupid" resources. For example, as a player, I get unreasonable thrill about digging out clay and then changing it into bricks. But, technicly, it could be done via only one building and much less hassle, there is no "tactical/strategic" difference if claypit and brickmaker buildings are speaprated or not (I assume a model where distance between buildings is irrelavant, so these work as a "number of buildings of each type"; and where clay has only one use, to make bricks).
Should we avoid this kind of resources or not? (my player's soul tells me to have 2 buildings, my designer's soul tells me to have only 1 and I'm torn apart )

Try something like this:
1. Collect all resources and transformations (=buildings) , try to be complete and ignore the amount of data.
2. Draw a graph with resources as nodes and transformations as edges.
3. Now analyse all pure resources-transformation chains without any branches. This chains do not deliver any decision making to the player and could be combined to a single resource !

This helps to get some visual overview of your economy. Not every transformation chain is a bad thing, but too many are not of any additional value to the player. Although you should consider meta-resources like cash,time and space, where cash could be seen as amount/value of needed resources.

Example:
Buildings could be build from wood or bricks. When you make a house from wood, you need to do this:
forest==cut down==>wood==build==>house
Highvalue building need bricks, so you need to increase the "costs" of bricks to make it more valuable. You have three options:

1. Option: increase time
This could be done by increasing the production pipeline:
excavation_pit ==dig==>clay==form==>raw_brick==burn==>brick==build==>house

2. Option: increase cash(=amount of resources)
excavation_pit ==dig==>clay + charcoal==burn==>brick==>build==>house

3. Option: increase space
You reduce the productivity of single excavation pits to increase the necessarity of building more excavation pits to get a single brickswork running.

As you can see, with the first option I added an other dummy resource, whereas in option 2 I added an additional resource which could be important for other production lines (metalworking),eventually the last option just don't add any other resource at all.

After getting an overview of your economy (graph) you can add and remove resources (option 1-3) while keeping the value of important resources.

There are strategic reasons to have non-decision chains in production, and that is stockpiles of earlier 'sub resources'.

So, say you have oil wells that produce crude, which are then converted to fuel at a refinery, which is then converted to energy at a power plant. Some would argue that you could just produce energy from the oil well and be done with it. But that would then ignore the issue of strategic stockpiles. If I start early in the game and invest in harvesting lots of oil to move to a safe location, then later game my wells aren't as important. I don't get crippled by a strike on the wells that forces me to drop everything I'm doing to go rebuild them, I still have oil that my refineries can use and I have set up a buffer so I'm not relying on Just-in-Time supplies.

It also means that if someone strikes at my refineries or power plants, then the whole chain doesn't break down, and I still get something out of it, even if it is just adding to a buffer.

Doing this also means that you need to consider the defence of production chains, and either have them spread out from a single source, or make higher levels in the chain be easier to produce. If you don't, then people will only ever target the end producer in a chain, and you lose much of the strategic value. That is, if I have a single oil well, I should be able to work two or more refineries from it, and two or more power plants from a refinery. Or, it should be that I can have lots of oil wells that are expected to be weakly defended that feed into more localised and far better protected oil refineries and power plants.