Rambling about buildings, workers and resources

[Chris]

Topic about buildings and population you put into buildings in order to make resources. Not necessarily connected to BBGs.


Production models in games:

* Buildings produce resources, population is used to pay taxes only (simplest model).

* Buildings produce resources, but the amount of buildings that can operate is limited by populations (the population is auto destributed, no player's choice, but he can give some priorities). Very rare, the only game that used it is probably Utopia: Creation of a nation by Gremlin.

* Buildings determine max production but do not produce anything. The population is distibuted into buildings (but no more than max) and they produce resources (Red Dragon MMO, and probably many more).

* Population produce (usually limited by something like land tiles where they are deployed) and buildings provide percentage bonus to production (Civilization).

* Population produce, buildings provide max number of workers (Colonization). This is very similar to the 3rd model, but the distinction is that workers can have a specialization which affect the efficiency and they can be moved separately (population is not a number, everyone is a distinctive unit). Buildings can be upgraded to provide better efficiency for workers working in them.

* Multiuse buildings in Deadlock is an interesting thing. You move popluation into buildings, but when they are inside building (limit of population in a building) you need to allocate them to a specific task (like: research lab can produce research points or produce electronic components for your army).

* Anno 1XXX series use a very weird (but nice) system where buildings produce on its own and the population is needed to pay taxes and unlocking buildings. On one hand population is completely useless in a production cycle, but on the other you will be spending most of your efforts on caring for them (there are several classes the poplulation can upgrade to) so you have the crucial buildings unlocked.

* Another odd system is in Imperialism where you have one capital and only it produces. The country or colonies provide only raw materials. You have all buildings constructed and you only upgrade them and decide where your workers will be allocated to. It is impossible to understand without playing it (I don't recall any other game that used something similar). It works better in practice than it sounds.

* A complete madness is in Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun, there are plenty of provinces that have population and factories and one resource. You can train/upgrade population to work in factories or to collect local resource or to provide some global function to your empire (soldiers). The odd thing is you can always train the population and redistrubute inside factories, but under a lot of government types you won't be able to build factories or upgrade them! This is done by "capitalists" population automaticly. It is a total crazy system if you ask me, but well, the game is quite famous so it must work.

[jannesiera]

We had Imperialism but I never really "got it". I just lost in the first couple turns... So as a result only tried it a few times. I'm not sure if I'd understand the game now if I played it again.

[Chris]

We had Imperialism but I never really "got it". I just lost in the first couple turns... So as a result only tried it a few times. I'm not sure if I'd understand the game now if I played it again.

I have been playing it for years and still unable to beat it at easy setting You made me feel better.

I wonder how mix of Anno and Imperialism would work. The caring and upgrading of population in Anno was very cute and appealing, but they feel (and were) disconnected with production. In Imperialism, there are 3 classes (untrained, trained, experts) that produce "labor" (1,2 or 4), the thing is there is one time cost when upgrading so it is always best to have only experts in a long run (low food consumption). If we made the labor system depending on the citizen class + ongoing luxury goods consumption by higher classes it could work better...

Settlers 7 seems to have an interesting system (but I have not played it), seems like there are buildings and their efficiency depends on food. Like no food=x1, basic food=x2, luxury food=x3.

I also like the Deadlock multiusage buildings. It is quite appealing to me as a player when I build a building for one purpose and I get another usage extra. I think it might work best if the primary usage is the most importand and the secondary usage not so important. Like: you build command center which is vital to troops commanding, but also it has a small radar includes, so you get +1 to detection. But you could just buiild a real standalone radar that gives +10. So, while the small bonus is not unbalanced and can not replace the real radar, it is a nice early option. Or a booster to your detection capabilities later.

The Colonization citizen model was utterly cool to me (each person individual, no such thing as colonizer, 0 cost for building a city). But I'm afraid it would not work so well in other themes (and in MMOs in general).

What are you favourite models/mixes?

[Chris]

I was thinking recently about buildings and population relation. What you think about something like this:


Buildings produce things, population provide bonus to buildings (so like inversed Civilization model).

Buildings start at 0% efficiency. Each worker (per building) adds 10% to efficiency up to 10 workers, next 10 workers add 5% per worker, next workers add 1% each. For example if you have 10 workers per building it works at 100%, with 20 workers at 150% and with 70 workers at 200% efficiency.

Population is dividen into occupation groups, not assigned to specific building but to a whole group:
- farmers
- miners (coal mine and iron mine)
- workers (all factories, manufactures, power plants)
New born population is assigned to farmers, or there would be an option to where you want new population assign to.

You can not assign population to specific building, so when you build a new coal mine the iron mine output falls, since miners are spread thinner.

Population is divided not only by occupation but also by skill level (unskilled, skilled, expert). When you free population from an occupation (to assign them somewhere else) first unskilled are freed, experts goes last. Each turn (or tick or other iteration method) 10% of unskilled become skilled and 5% of skilled become experts.

Questions:
- What you tknk about this system overall? Would it be interesting to players and not too confusing?
- How reassigning population should work? I imagine a page with displayed table with occupations and number of unskilled/skilled/experts, next to it an edit field and 2 buttons Add and Free. At first I thought about making all occupation going to and from farmer pool (farmers would have no Add/Free buttons), if you want to add new workers, unskilled farmers decrease, if you free workers unskilled farmers increase. Another route would be to make some "unassigned" occupation (only unskilled or no skill level indicated) and all goes from/to it. Which one is better?
- What to do with lumberjacks? Add them to workers? Merge with miners as resource gatherers (lame name...)? Or make a separate occupation class?
- How exactly occupation skill should work? The easiest would be that skilled count as 2 unskilled and expert as 4 unskilled. But then you would be able to run your country with radiculous small number of highly skilled population. Not the best idea... How to make it that you need some more or less static total number of workers but you also care about their skill level?

Also some random concepts, I'm not sure how these should work...:
- Clerks occupation, clerks work best if they are equal to 5% of miners +workers (farmers do not need clerks), clerks somehow increase efficiency of miners+workers
- Education level (country education level/literacy level, not occupation skill) affecting somehow population efficiency

[Winawer]

Seems kind of interesting if it doesn't require too much constant micromanagement.

Maybe the education level could increase the skill level increase percentage?

[Chris]

How about a simplier system. There are 3 types of workers divided by education level (unskilled, skilled, expert). There are no professions, only universal education levels. Schools and universities "produce" skilled from unskilled and expert from skilled each turn. Buildings require certain volume of certain education level workers (maybe even multiple levels like factory requiring 4 unskilled and 1 skilled and maybe even non fixed like factory need 3 unskilled and 2 skilled after invention of automatization due to machines being more complex to operate).

But how to implement it? How/when to check if there is sufficient workers? What to do when there isn't enough, how to make a penalty?

[Topazan]

I've never played Colonization, but production by population seems like a good model to build off of for what you're trying to do.  I like the idea of having buildings raise caps.

Let's assume that like you said, a skilled worker counts as two unskilled, etc.  Using factories as an example:
-Each factory you build let's you allocate 6 unskilled workers to factory production.
-Once you have the right tech, you can build one Machinery Maintenance Shop for every three factories.  These each allow you to allocate 4 skilled workers to factory production, but only if you have at least 4 unskilled workers per skilled worker.
-Once you have the right tech, you can build one Engineering Laboratory for every three Maintenance Shops.  These allow you to allocate 3 expert workers to factory production, but only if you have at least 3 skilled workers per expert worker.

Maybe higher skill workers can be assigned to work lower skill jobs, if necessary.

EDIT:  Actually, to simplify it further, forget what I said about needing the lower buildings to build the higher buildings.  Needing lower skilled workers to support higher skilled workers should have the same effect.

[CygnusX]

If the theme of this game was to build your city and to put the population to work, then you can probably implement this along with many other elaborate ideas (such as health care availability for workers, crime, etc... similar to sim city). 

However, I would hesitate to put anything this complex into a war game as it would become a sub game that I would not personally want to keep track of.  The most I'd want to do is fiddle with the education of the people.  Ie, if there are too many white-collar workers, farms and industry suffer as they struggle to fill jobs.  But if there are too many blue collar workers, then technological advancements suffer. 

[Chris]

Right now I need a system with buildings producing stuff and workers being an addition. A system where the majority of effect come from buildings not workers.

[Topazan]

Then how about having population be a consumable material you need to build buildings?  Or fuel you need to operate them?

[Chris]

Then how about having population be a consumable material you need to build buildings?  Or fuel you need to operate them?

They did it partially in Settlers 7, hard to tell I have mixed feelings... I would probably go for something a bit more realistic, but still this concept is worth pursuing further.

[Topazan]

Alright, up to you of course.  It's not necessarily less realistic though, it's just a different way of abstracting.  In this system, the population points represent the combined energy and ability of the population rather than simple numbers.

I will admit it might be less intuitive for players.

[CygnusX]

So, what you're looking for is a system in which 50 mills produce 100 wood, but if you add population, it can produce 150 wood? 

If this is the case, it seems you could have base buildings that would automatically find bare bones workers.  But, you can enhance output by educating population into white-collar workers that can be assigned to a building (or auto-distributed) to increase efficiency. 

[Chris]

Not exactly... I have a building that produce 100 wood and that's it. Now I need some purpose for population because players expect population so it should be used, but I myself don't need it for anything

As for all "workers to buildings assignment" there is one big problem with this. There are 3 variables describing workers (unskilled, skilled, expert) and 10 variables describing quantity of each of 10 building types. And that's it. There are no variables for "how many workers are assinged to a specific building" So, how the computer decide what to do when there is shortage of workers (and I hate all "prioritise buildings to shut down" solutions ?

[pixlepix]

Theres also the one in ceasary

[Chris]

How about buildings upkeep or wages? Each building require X workers and pay Y wages. When there is not enough workers the "missing workers" are paid x3 (others work overtime). Dealt globally, no reduction of production just global costs, very simple to code...

There could be 3 levels of citizens (unskilled, skilled, expert), you set wages for each group separately (what it will affect?). Unskilled are born, skilled are trained in schools, experts in universities. When you lack a person from a certain group you pay x3 its wages (maybe lower group can substitute like unskilled can replace skilled for x2 of skilled wage).