The basic mechanic is: you have X acres of land (just a number, no map, no nothing) you construct buildings (each building needs 1 acre of land) to produce/process things. All buildings of the same type are grouped together and represented as one variable.

In short you have: 100 acres of land which is used on: 5 coal mines, 2 iron mines, 10 farms and 83 acres are unoccupied.


I have trouble with mining resources. You can build a coal mine and it produces +5 coal per turn, or an iron mine which produce +5 iron per turn. It is very dry. You can just build any mine you need without regard of anything. No ore deposits, no other limits.

Again, the assumption is there is no map of any kind and all mine type are grouped as one variable (can't differentiate between iron mines, all iron mines are identical, so I can't allocate ore X deposits to a mine Y, there are no distances between buildings, etc).



The best I could think of was "prospecting level". Like, you perform prospecting action/investment to unlock deposits. You can build a mine only if you have less mines than unused deposits.

There isn't a question here per se, but here is a recommendation nevertheless.
Everytime your acres increase (and I'm not sure how you go and achieve this) your 'resource pool' should increase. The output value of each of your mines should act accordingly.

If you conquer 1000 acres, you are bound to finding 'more efficient' area, and since your game is macro, you don't need to actual mention you need people working on iron where the iron is, you can just assume it will go better.

So, every resource could start with a modifier of 1 (100%) and increase as you have no land, or decrease when you lose land.
You could add a bit of randomness to the increase and decrease, and voila, you will not always get the same income off each resource.

Red Dragon did this, and it wasn't half bad.

You had a set amount of acres -- you could build mines. Thing is, the amount of resource gained was not a line function. The gain to number of mines was an inverted expotential curve -- so, it was more economic to have 40 mines on 100 acres than have 80 on 100, as the output increase of output would not be feasable -- the land can only yield that much resource, you say. There is no hidden logic behind that, just a function that makes the player build other stuff, or rather make building just one type of building non-economic.

Hmmm, I was rather attached to the full numbers idea (like: an iron mine produce 5 iron), but I guess I could live with the efficiency being fixed point value I wonder how to write it on the interface, "coal mine produces up to 5 coal depending on the number of coal mines"? Or maybe write no numbers at all "coal mine produces coal"?

BTW, it's nice that someone here has heard about Red Dragon.


So, the mine efficiency depends on the land to mines ratio. Therefore, there would be a, sort of, prefered ratio each player wants for each mine type depending on ore rarity (like 1 coal mine per 30 acres, 1 iron mine per 50 acres, 1 copper mine per 100 acres, 1 tin mine per 120 acres).

Now, should there be some choice/option for a player to get more ore deposits of a specific kind? Or maybe that's not needed and the system you both described will suffice?
Possible options:
- each player select a "continent" upon game start, this affects the ore mining efficency (althrough, that's just one time choice...)
- trade (well, not exactly related to mining but will let get the desired resource so the end effect is similar from player's point of view)
- there are prospecting level (per ore type), each level decreases the number of acres per mine recommended (I have mixed feelings about that one).

Hmmm, I was rather attached to the full numbers idea (like: an iron mine produce 5 iron), but I guess I could live with the efficiency being fixed point value I wonder how to write it on the interface, "coal mine produces up to 5 tons of coal depending on the number of coal mines"? Or maybe write no numbers at all "coal mine produces coal"?

BTW, it's nice that someone here has heard about Red Dragon.

Now you can have fractions without anyone batting an eye.

People rarelly judge a mechanic, unless it is obviously unfair or broken. You don't need to display all the math done -- people will reverse engineer it anyway on some community sites. The key you are looking for here is ballance -- something that will allow the payers to focus on something more than just mining the hell out of their kingdom.

* PropheticEdge's suggestion about tons -- that is appealing, but why bother with fractions. When something goes into the hundreds of thousands, have it display it as XXXk, or XXXm for millions. In a browser based enviroment, where everything is text/static images, it is best to have large numbers -- it feels comforting, at least for me. Extracting 0.37 tons of coal compared to gaining 3760 "arbitrary coal pieces"... I like the latter

* Prospecting level -- yes, that could solve some of the problems. It would also give a sense of achievement/progression. Just don't go too wild with the number of upgrades available -- the game will break if you have people constantly churning resources into prospecting level increase, thus eliminating the need for more land, or more mines.

* Prototype it -- everything will be awkward until you put it into coding and play it. It doesn't even have to be coded -- just gather a few friends and play a card/pen n' paper representation of the game. Have the PC do the math for the resources for you. That way you will get fast feedback and a feeling of the game mechanics.