About another BIG problem

[Mike Brines]

Originally I intended barbarians to be a tactic for a short game--they got some advantages early and easy but civilized players got better ones later. I figured by this point in the game most players would have 3-4 cities and be growing. There might be a barbarian or two. I wanted to keep that way viable so I threw in some ways for them to get some wealth without having to build cities. But my intent was that cities were the better, long run means to winning. Cities cost more but they made you more wealth. But I screwed up.

Because I made it possible through harvesting, gold panning, sheep herding and such-like barbarians to get a lot of resources very cheaply. So easily that it's not really much of a benefit to have cities. Cities are expensive, the first one is 300, the second 900, the third 1500 and so on. This is due to the multiplying effect of selling all those resources. 

With 3 cities you get 3 resources each turn and even if all 3 are the same you can trade 2 for 2 others and end up with a set of 3 = $900. If cities only cost 300 you could then build 3 more cities. Then you'd have six, get 6 resources next turn and a set of six sells for $3600 which buys you 12 cities. From 3 cities to 18 in two turns. Next turn you'd basically have a city every place you could build one. So cities have to cost more the more you have just to keep them reasonable.

Unfortunately, with barbarians it's just 300 people per harvesting location to get a resource. It's just like my example above where cities only cost $300 each. Once you have three locations to harvest (900) you pretty much spread uncontrollably in just a couple turns--you'll have 3600 more people next turn and then 4500 more--and it's actually WORSE because while the cities have to be protected and can get captured, the 300 people you use to harvest a location to get a resource ARE their own protection and can't be captured. If barbarians can get resources by harvesting there's really no point to having cities. No civilization is possible. Civilization is supposed to be an inevitable development; but the way the game is set up it's actually a bad idea. This is not realistic and the opposite of what I intended. 

I think barbarians should be able to have an income outside of cities. But I think it ought to be like hunting and fishing=you get 1 wealth for every 3 people you have harvesting. You don't get resources and thus aren't subject to their massive multipliers. I think it'd be OK for resources to be handed out for choices like taking hides instead of horses or dogs and such like. Those are limited circumstances that aren't going to break the game. But for the most part resources ought to just come from cities. This fixes the problem. Barbarians can have an income from people herding or harvesting stuff. But to make serious money you'd need a city. Civilizations are always richer than barbarians and this is how. But cities still cost a lot to build and they still need to be protected. So while barbarians will want to be looting cities, there's not a lot of profit to be made attacking barbarians--which is pretty realistic. They have a lot of people but probably not much money until they take over some cities. 

Comments?

[jpatte...@gmail.com]

Probably yes for a new game but this sort of change would require a restart

Sent from my iPhone

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[Charles Hurst]

It's funny, I thought it was supposed to be possible to play the game multiple different ways, allowing players interesting choices involving trade offs.  I thought the simplification was to allow the GM more time to creatively interact with the players to keep the game balanced and interesting.

It would be nice if I could gather/harvest more than one resource due to the way of nature.  I thought I could, which is why I selected it.  As you've only let me discover one of the resources you've since limited the way of nature to gathering, I find your whole argument against barbarians with little merit.  All the "extra" resource sources such as wool can be found and exploited by players of other ways.  What we're left with is the way of nature being really good for one lucky player and very poor for several others (as I now assume my and others' odds of ever finding another resource off the list are officially zero going forward).

By the way, my orders are wrong as well.  Just consider my people to have gathered black lotus along the river instead of spices from my campsite, and everything else stays the same.  This was because I emailed to ask if I could gather the resource types I'd found since I'd only found one of those on the rules list, and I thought your answer was yes.  Upon rereading it, you may have just been saying yes you added the original six resource types, not yes I can harvest the four other types besides black lotus that weren't on the list in the rules.

I warned you two turns ago that exponential economic growth has a strong potential to break the game.  Even with cities being expensive, there is a point about ten turns into building cities were you escalate to being able to build two cities every turn.  Fall behind 2-3 turns and you effectively become a speed bump hoping you're no where near an aggressive player who's still riding the wave front of economic expansion.

Charles

[ME Brines]

Why does this require a re-start? It does change things. But if people could switch to another Way I don't see the need to start over. Also, being a barbarian would still have good advantages. You can still get a lot of income for little investment. 300 people gets you 100 wealth. Cities still cost more than that for more than one. They just make a lot more wealth. For a player with a short game strategy barbarian is still the way to go. It's even a viable strategy to build up as a barbarian until you have a lot of income, then begin building cities with that as a base. All this does is make having cities a viable strategy.

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[ME Brines]

On 10/29/2018 5:59 AM, Charles Hurst wrote:

It's funny, I thought it was supposed to be possible to play the game multiple different ways, allowing players interesting choices involving trade offs.  I thought the simplification was to allow the GM more time to creatively interact with the players to keep the game balanced and interesting.

It is. Unfortunately as I pointed out, the Way of Nature is the only viable Way and building cities is actually a bad move gamewise. That's why I'm suggesting changes.

It would be nice if I could gather/harvest more than one resource due to the way of nature.  I thought I could, which is why I selected it.  As you've only let me discover one of the resources you've since limited the way of nature to gathering, I find your whole argument against barbarians with little merit.  All the "extra" resource sources such as wool can be found and exploited by players of other ways.  What we're left with is the way of nature being really good for one lucky player and very poor for several others (as I now assume my and others' odds of ever finding another resource off the list are officially zero going forward).

Another reason to give out wealth instead of resources. That makes it more compatible with hunting and fishing, which you can do but don't because you're fixated on finding those resources. I kept wondering why you were so hot to explore and expand--what you thought you would find you already didn't have. This makes sense. I probably could have helped more if I'd have know what you were up to. Maybe, since you didn't find what you needed, you should have switched to a Way that was workable with what you had...oh, that's right, only Nature is workable since building cities is a waste of time. So you have a valid complaint. And the solution is not to give you resources but to move away from giving barbarians resources. Then players actually have a choice rather than there only being one superior Way and everything else is crap. 

By the way, my orders are wrong as well.  Just consider my people to have gathered black lotus along the river instead of spices from my campsite, and everything else stays the same.  This was because I emailed to ask if I could gather the resource types I'd found since I'd only found one of those on the rules list, and I thought your answer was yes.  Upon rereading it, you may have just been saying yes you added the original six resource types, not yes I can harvest the four other types besides black lotus that weren't on the list in the rules.

I warned you two turns ago that exponential economic growth has a strong potential to break the game.  Even with cities being expensive, there is a point about ten turns into building cities were you escalate to being able to build two cities every turn.

And eventually you use up all the spots you could have a city. But long before that point, the player needs to recruit troops to defend his cities, more as his perimeter expands. He gets into conflict with neighbors. The question then is how much guns vs butter? I don't think you see what the point of the game is--to knock the other players out. If that's the end game the number of cities is only a means, not the end. A barbarian can achieve this by taking other people's cities. Why would you continue to build cities if the need is for armies? If someone attacks you, you'll have to switch to recruitment and build less or no cities. The object of the game is not to build cities.

Fall behind 2-3 turns and you effectively become a speed bump hoping you're no where near an aggressive player who's still riding the wave front of economic expansion.

You seem to assume the point of the game is to have the most cities, therefore if you can't keep up you lose. But a player with many cities can be brought down because he didn't recruit enough protectors, or through a combination of individually poorer players. A player doesn't need to build any cities to win. He just has to take other people's cities. The Way of Nature says you can't build cities, not that you can't own them. Or you could loot them when you capture them and keep attacking. But these all assume that making cities is a viable strategy. As it stands making cities is dumb. It's much cheaper just to harvest resources using 300 people. You're more limited in which resources you can use--which makes it very dependent on luck finding them rather than making choices. This is not the game I was trying to make. And again, the fix is to remove resources from barbarians and give wealth instead.

Charles

--

Maybe what we need to do is declare the players who chose Nature to be the winners (since they figured out how to beat the game) and start a new game with all the fixes in place?

[[MOB] OneEyedBadger]

I do not understand what you mean by 'barbarians being tactic for a short game'. Are you saying you are intentionally creating a Way with the idea it is sub-optimal and underpowered in the long-term? O.o

Is this why you are so triggered by the Way of Nature working as efficiently as it does? Like, in your mind it was supposed to be a 'poor choice' and it is somehow now a perfectly reasonable decision, at least for early - mid game? o.O

Very funny if that is what happened! :D

[Charles Hurst]

On Mon, Oct 29, 2018 at 7:02 PM ME Brines <s...@cox.net> wrote:

On 10/29/2018 5:59 AM, Charles Hurst wrote:

It's funny, I thought it was supposed to be possible to play the game multiple different ways, allowing players interesting choices involving trade offs.  I thought the simplification was to allow the GM more time to creatively interact with the players to keep the game balanced and interesting.

It is. Unfortunately as I pointed out, the Way of Nature is the only viable Way and building cities is actually a bad move gamewise. That's why I'm suggesting changes.

And I'm pointing out the Way of Nature isn't as killer as you are claiming.  And whether it is is totally under your control.

It would be nice if I could gather/harvest more than one resource due to the way of nature.  I thought I could, which is why I selected it.  As you've only let me discover one of the resources you've since limited the way of nature to gathering, I find your whole argument against barbarians with little merit.  All the "extra" resource sources such as wool can be found and exploited by players of other ways.  What we're left with is the way of nature being really good for one lucky player and very poor for several others (as I now assume my and others' odds of ever finding another resource off the list are officially zero going forward).

Another reason to give out wealth instead of resources. That makes it more compatible with hunting and fishing, which you can do but don't because you're fixated on finding those resources. I kept wondering why you were so hot to explore and expand--what you thought you would find you already didn't have. This makes sense. I probably could have helped more if I'd have know what you were up to. Maybe, since you didn't find what you needed, you should have switched to a Way that was workable with what you had...oh, that's right, only Nature is workable since building cities is a waste of time. So you have a valid complaint. And the solution is not to give you resources but to move away from giving barbarians resources. Then players actually have a choice rather than there only being one superior Way and everything else is crap.

It wasn't until this turn I realized we were really limited to those 6 resources and it as a crap choice of a way.  The expansion was the only way to try and recover from early game mistakes by trying to gain more random explores that net resources or wealth, and too compensate for the fact that hunting depletes regions with food making them useless except for cities.  You're fixating that nature's broken when it's not, or really the argument could be made it's a very poor choice.  And of course this all comes down as I'm trying to compensate and change my strategy to try and get back on track.  You want me to trade 900 wealth for 200 wealth a turn.  Wow, how not fun.

Hunting is either a one shot or very low income and still with a small chance of disappearing.  I will be starting fishing once I've maxed out the resources I can effectively gather and turn into more than 100 wealth by sets.  If you check my orders, I built a ship so one of my scouts can explore the Western Sea.  Hopefully there isn't a 900T kracken lurking there making it impossible to fish.

I warned you two turns ago that exponential economic growth has a strong potential to break the game.  Even with cities being expensive, there is a point about ten turns into building cities were you escalate to being able to build two cities every turn.

And eventually you use up all the spots you could have a city. But long before that point, the player needs to recruit troops to defend his cities, more as his perimeter expands. He gets into conflict with neighbors. The question then is how much guns vs butter? I don't think you see what the point of the game is--to knock the other players out. If that's the end game the number of cities is only a means, not the end. A barbarian can achieve this by taking other people's cities. Why would you continue to build cities if the need is for armies? If someone attacks you, you'll have to switch to recruitment and build less or no cities. The object of the game is not to build cities.

I believe the extra income from resource sets above what is needed to buy the next city will leave city builders with lots of troops and not really slow down their city building, but I'd need to redo the math again to double check that.

I get very confused about game goals because a lot of your "the game I want to make" revolves around smaller scale highly customized with lots of GM interaction with players.  I had not realized this was intended as a finite turn one-winner scenario.

For me to take cities would require others to build cities...  You have what, 8 players, and 3 of them have taken nature, 1 is doing really well based on luck of resources, and 2 are struggling.  One has taken Warrior, which is city builder with some okay T3/T4 units.  4 haven't chosen.  So based on the math, there isn't an issue.  Perhaps you and the lucky nature player should have a private discussion.  Or, you know, you could do that customized GM interaction and give him a challenge commiserate with his level of lucky success.

Both of us contend in different ways that the way of nature is broken.  Here's a suggestion, instead of a list of types of resources, way of nature players can only gather/harvest the first X non-mineral resources they find exploring.  This caps the resource types and how big a set they can create internally.  They can still generate however many regions of each of those resources they find, so they have the ability to trade with others which will help them get to mid-game and curb the natural math inclination to waffle stomp all neighbors.  Short run it becomes richer to a point more quickly, and then over time it will fade by ever greater amounts unless it can change its way or find some other way to pick up cities.

Fall behind 2-3 turns and you effectively become a speed bump hoping you're no where near an aggressive player who's still riding the wave front of economic expansion.

You seem to assume the point of the game is to have the most cities, therefore if you can't keep up you lose. But a player with many cities can be brought down because he didn't recruit enough protectors, or through a combination of individually poorer players. A player doesn't need to build any cities to win. He just has to take other people's cities. The Way of Nature says you can't build cities, not that you can't own them. Or you could loot them when you capture them and keep attacking. But these all assume that making cities is a viable strategy. As it stands making cities is dumb. It's much cheaper just to harvest resources using 300 people. You're more limited in which resources you can use--which makes it very dependent on luck finding them rather than making choices. This is not the game I was trying to make. And again, the fix is to remove resources from barbarians and give wealth instead.

I can gather up to I think 2 of one resource type (black lotus) for 300 toughness each.  All your "fix" does is nerf a poor choice even worse because instead of a resource I can combine/trade into exponentially greater wealth I get only 100 wealth.  I'm sorry you made the mistake of giving another player more than 1-2 of the list of 6 resources, but that's not the rules being broken, that's a failure of the GM set up and turn processing.  Fix the real problem, not a rules set that is doing pretty much what you intended.  If nature way players are exploring, you have the ability to give them a few more resources off the list to compensate and keep them viable as city builders getting going.

Charles

[James Patterson]

I still don't understand the belief that the way of nature win so overwhelmingly in the long term - i only have them strong in mid game. They will run out of resources quickly and have to fight to keep expanding  at which point they need to have 3 times the toughness of troops than cities - they will also have a load of T1 troops to allow multiple harvesting which make you lose battles. Every turn that goes by the city position wins at that point as they never run out of resources. Nature is only a long term sure winner if they can farm a sector forever or multiple nature players hit the same city player.

--

[David Micheal Coddy]

What is funny about this is that I saw writing in the wall last turn also, Mr. Charles, sir. O.O

Added 1200 boats and lots of fishermen as I thought to myself I had hit my resource limit xD

Especially as Red Herring didn't trade with me second time. 8_(

Trouble is not so much that Nature totally OP mid game as the other Ways are underpowered because I think GM is relying on *units* to balance things out, and I do not think this is the case.

But whatever. I still think if GM reboots he needs to fix bugger issues with several Ways being near clones like Warrior and Rui, being obvious.

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[Daniel B. Karpouzian]

 Why not play it out? If it is so broken,  they will win soon enough. 

[David Micheal Coddy]

Nature lovers already won because they are au naturale. GM said so. xD

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[ME Brines]

On 10/30/2018 12:33 AM, [MOB] OneEyedBadger wrote:

I do not understand what you mean by 'barbarians being tactic for a short game'. Are you saying you are intentionally creating a Way with the idea it is sub-optimal and underpowered in the long-term? O.o

Yes. The player taking that route figures he can get a early boost, then jump ahead and knock out the rest of the players before they build up.

Is this why you are so triggered by the Way of Nature working as efficiently as it does? Like, in your mind it was supposed to be a 'poor choice' and it is somehow now a perfectly reasonable decision, at least for early - mid game? o.O

No, I am triggered by it making any other Way pointless. I've demonstrated the math in a couple of other posts. If you can gather resources using 300 people while cities cost vastly more, there's no point to cities. Because Nature has so many ways to gather resources there's no point to being anything else, or building cities. If you want a game about being nature boys gathering resources and bashing each other for no reason (since you can't capture the other side's resource base) then leave the game like it is. Given the set up, Nature is not only "a perfectly reasonable decision" it's the only reasonable decision. It's not a choice. Players are fools to choose anything else.

Very funny if that is what happened! :D

On Monday, October 29, 2018 at 2:11:56 AM UTC-7, Mike Brines wrote:

Originally I intended barbarians to be a tactic for a short game--they got some advantages early and easy but civilized players got better ones later. I figured by this point in the game most players would have 3-4 cities and be growing. There might be a barbarian or two. I wanted to keep that way viable so I threw in some ways for them to get some wealth without having to build cities. But my intent was that cities were the better, long run means to winning. Cities cost more but they made you more wealth. But I screwed up.

Because I made it possible through harvesting, gold panning, sheep herding and such-like barbarians to get a lot of resources very cheaply. So easily that it's not really much of a benefit to have cities. Cities are expensive, the first one is 300, the second 900, the third 1500 and so on. This is due to the multiplying effect of selling all those resources. 

With 3 cities you get 3 resources each turn and even if all 3 are the same you can trade 2 for 2 others and end up with a set of 3 = $900. If cities only cost 300 you could then build 3 more cities. Then you'd have six, get 6 resources next turn and a set of six sells for $3600 which buys you 12 cities. From 3 cities to 18 in two turns. Next turn you'd basically have a city every place you could build one. So cities have to cost more the more you have just to keep them reasonable.

Unfortunately, with barbarians it's just 300 people per harvesting location to get a resource. It's just like my example above where cities only cost $300 each. Once you have three locations to harvest (900) you pretty much spread uncontrollably in just a couple turns--you'll have 3600 more people next turn and then 4500 more--and it's actually WORSE because while the cities have to be protected and can get captured, the 300 people you use to harvest a location to get a resource ARE their own protection and can't be captured. If barbarians can get resources by harvesting there's really no point to having cities. No civilization is possible. Civilization is supposed to be an inevitable development; but the way the game is set up it's actually a bad idea. This is not realistic and the opposite of what I intended. 

I think barbarians should be able to have an income outside of cities. But I think it ought to be like hunting and fishing=you get 1 wealth for every 3 people you have harvesting. You don't get resources and thus aren't subject to their massive multipliers. I think it'd be OK for resources to be handed out for choices like taking hides instead of horses or dogs and such like. Those are limited circumstances that aren't going to break the game. But for the most part resources ought to just come from cities. This fixes the problem. Barbarians can have an income from people herding or harvesting stuff. But to make serious money you'd need a city. Civilizations are always richer than barbarians and this is how. But cities still cost a lot to build and they still need to be protected. So while barbarians will want to be looting cities, there's not a lot of profit to be made attacking barbarians--which is pretty realistic. They have a lot of people but probably not much money until they take over some cities. 

Comments?

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[ME Brines]

On 10/30/2018 6:25 AM, Charles Hurst wrote:

Both of us contend in different ways that the way of nature is broken.  Here's a suggestion, instead of a list of types of resources, way of nature players can only gather/harvest the first X non-mineral resources they find exploring.  This caps the resource types and how big a set they can create internally.  They can still generate however many regions of each of those resources they find, so they have the ability to trade with others which will help them get to mid-game and curb the natural math inclination to waffle stomp all neighbors.  Short run it becomes richer to a point more quickly, and then over time it will fade by ever greater amounts unless it can change its way or find some other way to pick up cities.

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The nature resources were ones that didn't require a lot of processing and "unnatural" things. If they're into Nature they wouldn't be building farms. To get Grain you need farms, right? All the metals plus coal have to be mined except for the placer gold. Mines seemed like the kind of thing Natural wouldn't like. Your "solution" might work, but it's very gamey. It has no flavor. You revere nature but you have all these mines because you ran into iron first and then coal. That makes no sense. Even less when you consider they don't have metalworking but all they do is make iron.

The problem isn't what you see.

You're obsessed with the idea Nature is flawed because it can't rape the system to the full extent if you get unlucky and don't have access to the right resources. My position is it's not supposed to be able to do make huge sums of wealth that way in the first place. The way to fix Nature isn't to destroy what's left of the game, but to restore city building to being a reasonable strategy. I've shown the math. If you don't need cities to get resources the whole game devolves into not building cities and harvesting resources and who's best at that? Nature. The current way is both unrealistic, it makes all the other Ways obsolete, and totally distorts the game.

Your suggestion is just a way to "fix" things so Nature players are guaranteed to be able to rape the system. That's not my intent. It's the opposite of my intent.

[ME Brines]

On 10/30/2018 6:41 AM, James Patterson wrote:

I still don't understand the belief that the way of nature win so overwhelmingly in the long term - i only have them strong in mid game. They will run out of resources quickly and have to fight to keep expanding  at which point they need to have 3 times the toughness of troops than cities - they will also have a load of T1 troops to allow multiple harvesting which make you lose battles. Every turn that goes by the city position wins at that point as they never run out of resources. Nature is only a long term sure winner if they can farm a sector forever or multiple nature players hit the same city player.

--
If you want six resources a turn you round up 1800 people and you're in business. 1800 people costs a minimum of $1800 wealth. To get six resources a turn from cities costs you 300+900+1200+2100+2700+3300=10,500. Why spend over 10,000 when you can do the same thing harvesting for 1800?

If I am Rui I look at the math and don't bother to build cities. If I'm really smart, I don't pick Rui, I choose Nature because it gives me the most resources I can harvest. This is the same thing every reasonable player who examines the options will do. It's the only reasonable choice. To flip your earlier comment on its head--So basically Rui, Warrior, Machine are just copies of each other? Why not merge those three ways into a single way and not worry about it. Or better yet, since nobody in their right mind would ever choose anything but Nature, why have anything else? Hell, since cities are stupid to build (they cost way more than harvesting, require protection and can get captured) why have rules for them in the game? Nobody but a fool would build them. Anybody who built more than a couple would eventually be overrun by barbarians who got their resources from harvesting and spent all the extra cash on warriors. To build six cities to get six resources a barbarian could spend the same amount of wealth and have 35 resources. $122,500 versus $3600

OK, maybe you can't make 35 different resources, but you trade and get the ones you don't have. Or you make smaller sets of just the five you can. Every set = $2500 With 35 resources you could have 7 sets of five = $17500. Meanwhile the guy who spent the same amount building cities gets $3600 for his six resources. No matter how you do the math if you get to pay 300 per resource and cities cost more, there's no point to building cities.

If you get a flat $1 per 3 people harvesting it does not compare to the massive wealth from cities but it is cheaper to get, doesn't have to be protected, and can't be captured. It gives a choice. Do you want a better return on investment? Build cities. But they need protection and can be captured. You want something cheap (especially early in the game when everybody is poor) then do hunting and herding. Yes, cities are WAY better but they also cost WAY more. They also have some downsides. This is what makes it a choice. But if harvesting is cheaper, and just as profitable with no downsides, what's the point of anything else?

[ME Brines]

On 10/30/2018 6:47 AM, David Micheal Coddy wrote:

I still think if GM reboots he needs to fix bugger issues with several Ways being near clones like Warrior and Rui, being obvious.

--
They're close but not the same. Warrior gets T3 right away. Rui has to work and develop to get T4 and T5s.

[ME Brines]

On 10/30/2018 6:48 AM, Daniel B. Karpouzian wrote:
> Why not play it out? If it is so broken, they will win soon enough.

Because I'm trying to test the game. Continuing on when you know it's
broken is a waste of time. We either need to fix the fixes and continue,
or fix the fixes and start over.

I originally intended to make the fixes and just keep playing from here
but one of the players said if the game was going to change, he'd just
as soon start over. So that's what we're discussing. That and what
exactly needs to get fixed.

[David Micheal Coddy]

All this is only true if you have access to six different resources Nature can harvest though....

I only discover one so far and other Nature guys also sound like they only discover one.

Fine, change my Way to the Magic guy and I will play that one.

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[Daniel B. Karpouzian]

From my understanding, you could have harvested any of them anywhere (pretty much) 

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[ME Brines]

My point is IF people get those resources they're unstoppable. And anybody can find them if they just wander around enough.

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[David Micheal Coddy]

Yeah and if a comet hits the planet we all gonna die and I will miss the next Superbowl.....

[Charles Hurst]

On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 5:29 PM ME Brines <s...@cox.net> wrote:

No, I am triggered by it making any other Way pointless. I've demonstrated the math in a couple of other posts.

No you haven't.  You make an assumption that nature players can easily gain access to the 6 resource types they can harvest.  You have yet to demonstrate that is a reasonable assumption.  My contention is the reality of the game demonstrates you are wrong.  The game you set up with the rules you created demonstrates you are wrong.

[Charles Hurst]

On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 5:42 PM ME Brines <s...@cox.net> wrote:

On 10/30/2018 6:25 AM, Charles Hurst wrote:

Both of us contend in different ways that the way of nature is broken.  Here's a suggestion, instead of a list of types of resources, way of nature players can only gather/harvest the first X non-mineral resources they find exploring.  This caps the resource types and how big a set they can create internally.  They can still generate however many regions of each of those resources they find, so they have the ability to trade with others which will help them get to mid-game and curb the natural math inclination to waffle stomp all neighbors.  Short run it becomes richer to a point more quickly, and then over time it will fade by ever greater amounts unless it can change its way or find some other way to pick up cities.

The nature resources were ones that didn't require a lot of processing and "unnatural" things. If they're into Nature they wouldn't be building farms. To get Grain you need farms, right? All the metals plus coal have to be mined except for the placer gold. Mines seemed like the kind of thing Natural wouldn't like. Your "solution" might work, but it's very gamey. It has no flavor. You revere nature but you have all these mines because you ran into iron first and then coal. That makes no sense. Even less when you consider they don't have metalworking but all they do is make iron.

Now you're just arguing without even reading my post.  "Non-mineral resources" means iron and coal are out.  I've already explained that in our real world many people harvest resources they have no ability to actually process into anything else.

 

You're obsessed with the idea Nature is flawed because it can't rape the system to the full extent if you get unlucky and don't have access to the right resources. My position is it's not supposed to be able to do make huge sums of wealth that way in the first place. The way to fix Nature isn't to destroy what's left of the game, but to restore city building to being a reasonable strategy. I've shown the math. If you don't need cities to get resources the whole game devolves into not building cities and harvesting resources and who's best at that? Nature. The current way is both unrealistic, it makes all the other Ways obsolete, and totally distorts the game.

Again, tell me how a nature player is going to gain access to those 6 resources.  It has nothing to do with luck.  It has 100% to do with GM decisions.  YOU HAVEN'T SHOWN THE MATH.  A mathematical argument starts with a set of assumptions.  I've pointed out that one of those is wrong.  You have to redo your entire argument based on the corrected assumption.

 

Your suggestion is just a way to "fix" things so Nature players are guaranteed to be able to rape the system. That's not my intent. It's the opposite of my intent.

No, my suggestion is to formalize it so you the GM don't have to do any real thinking in processing the game, just blindly executing the rules and any dice rolls (I assume what's in a region is a matter of rolls on a table).  Or, you know, you could actually GM the game because control of the situation is 100% in your hands with zero input possible by the player.

[jpatte...@gmail.com]

I can get 6 resources - I just thought they were non renewable

Sent from my iPhone

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[Charles Hurst]

On Wed, Oct 31, 2018 at 8:33 AM <jpatte...@gmail.com> wrote:

I can get 6 resources - I just thought they were non renewable

You control regions with each of the 6 resources (black lotus, dye, papyrus, pearls, resin and timber) that the way of nature can harvest?

[jpatte...@gmail.com]

I’ve got black lotus and pearls, then I also have access to wool, Ivory, hides and slaves

Sent from my iPhone

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[Charles Hurst]

I stand corrected, two nature players have access to 1 resource, and one nature player (lucky bastard :) has access to 2 resources (the one who'd rather restart the game :).

I tell you what, Mike, after you process the turn tonight, I'll trade you 300 toughness of troops for 1 city and switching from way of nature to another way for free with my next set of orders.  Because, you know, way of nature is so uber and I can't stand to be so cool.

Charles