Production chains

[eobet]

Well, all this talk about alternative city building games have gotten me nostalgic about Stronhold Crusader and Settlers 2 again.

What I liked most about those games were actually the complex production chains.

For example, Stronhold had a farm, where a farmer sowed crops, harvested it and brought it to a central storage. Then, kids would come and fetch the crops and grind them through a mill, and return flour instead. After that, a baker would come and fetch the flour and bake bread from it, which he would put in the granary.

Not only was this production chain very long, but it was accompanied by incredibly detailed graphics! The kids would dash to the central storage and fetch crops, and then nearly collapse by the weight of the sack of flour when they brought it back (I also have to mention the limp bow maker... oh how you cursed his slowness).

Also, in Settlers 2, this above mentioned production chain also existed (very similar, in fact), but it continued as food needed to be brought to miners, who then mined coal and ore which was brought to a smelter, which then brought the iron to a tool maker, and that enabled you to build more houses.

Now, I never got the feeling of this in Pharaoh, as there seemed to be only two states of any product: raw material and finished product.

However, reading an article posted in another thread, I saw:

"...most agree that the Great Pyramid was built by approximately 4,000 primary labourers (quarry workers, hauliers and masons). They would have been supported by 16-20,000 secondary workers (ramp builders, tool-makers, mortar mixers and those providing back-up services such as supplying food, clothing and fuel)."

The question now is, will we see extended production chains in Children of the Nile, or will it still be only either raw material, and finished product? Also, I believe all finished products were used by citizens in their houses? I can't remember exactly, but were there products which had the sole purpose of supporting other industries?

[EmperorJay]

It's a little hard to tell because we don't know all types of industry yet, but my guess is that the production chain will not always be very long.

In case of the potter (I just love them it seems), the female does the work while her husband and their child go out to get the clay. So, not so much of a production chain here. However, in the case of bricks, the chain might be quite long: Bricks need straw and clay and bricks are needed for the better types of housing and perhaps for tombs too, so the chain will be like this.

Farm (Straw) > Brick maker > Brick layer's guild (I assume that there will be some sort of that) > Monument/housing

But we know actually very little about it, so interesting question.

I just thought of your example from Settlres and I highly doubt that we'll see a baker, btw, if grain is the currency, people will grind it themselves into flour if they need bread I think.

[Keith]

The two stages of production in Pharaoh and the other games were fine by me. I don't want to spend large amounts of time organizing the tiny bits. I want to spend my time building cities not pots.
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[Hanarky]

Now I like long production chains. That's the reason why I love Anno 1503. Optimal for me would be a mix of short and long production chains. The two aspects that draw me to CB games were building big cities with monuments as well as producing and trading a lot of different goods.

[Jayhawk]

I agree with Hanarky that a (realistic) mix of short and long(er) production chains would be most fun. The longer ones would probably be needed for the more advanced items, and add an extra touch of realism to the game.
Will I supply my people with simple clay bead jewelry? Or do I set up the whole chain to get them gold, faience, glass and gem made jewelry?

[Hanarky]

I agree with Hanarky that a (realistic) mix of short and long(er) production chains would be most fun. The longer ones would probably be needed for the more advanced items, and add an extra touch of realism to the game.
Will I supply my people with simple clay bead jewelry? Or do I set up the whole chain to get them gold, faience, glass and gem made jewelry?

You could link that together: having gold to make simple gold rings for the simple people as endproduct, then trade half of them and take the other half of gold rings to another facturer to make more complex luxury in adding gems and stuff. What would that be a fun, least for me :D

Hanarky

[Battle Boar]

In railroad tycoon2 the chain is even longer... very long, like chemicals -> fertilizer -> grain -> (cattle -> food) / (wool -> good) -> town (or seaport, e.g. something irrelevant-> lumber -> city. )

Some other products need 2 raw materials, e.g. mine->aluminium +produce -> 2 foods. Or iron+coal -> steel +(rubber -> tires) -> autos. etc.

But that game is about railroad transport and every trip is paid.

In city building, the wanted result is the final output, so I think 2 or 3 steps are interesting and enough (if we don't count storehouses and bricklayers). Too complex the system will takes years of game time, everything is delayed and the game loses speed. Settlers' grain+water -> flour -> bread, and grain -> meat farm -> butcher are fine.

[tobing]

I would like a good mixture of short and long prod chains, too. Maybe short chains for the essential products, and longer chains for luxury products (which also makes for more profit when sold)?

[EmperorJay]

I actually wouldn't mind the short chains being extended a little where possible. There's not much that can be changed at the pottery chain, but I wouldn't mind if meat had to go to a butcher first (for example).

[eobet]

I actually wouldn't mind the short chains being extended a little where possible. There's not much that can be changed at the pottery chain, but I wouldn't mind if meat had to go to a butcher first (for example).

Don't forget my second question! Longer production chains, just for the sake of having them, feels a bit pointless. What would be required in order to make things interesting with these chains, is industries depending on more than one raw material or half-fabricate.

That is, the butcher, for example, would require meat from farms, and perhaps imported salt (if Egyptians used that), and a knife from a tool maker. Thus, he needs three things, not only one. Also, the tool maker doesn't make only one tool, he supplies more than one industry.

So, the idea is that it's not just a single chain, but actually more like a production tree.

I mean, in Pharaoh as far as I can remember, there's only one use for each product (and 90% is the time it is a household requiring it), which seem terribly silly to me.

[Miut]

Trouble there is you get too detailed and lose the point of the overall game. I'm not one for too many finicky details. Short production chains suit me.

For instance, did you realize it took 40 different guilds to make a length of velvet cloth in the Renaissance Italian times? A production chain of 40! Just one of the items needed was fine gold wire to cut the threads to produce the velvet pile.. I couldn't and wouldsn't want to cope with that kind of production. I'd never end up with anything done because of having to constantly tweak all the processes for making one item.

Nope, I'm definitely of the KISS school - Keep It Simple, Stupid - less to go wrong, ;)

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[eobet]

So I guess you voted no in the micro management thread? Luckily, the majority is currently against you. ;)

Seriously, when I think about it, I see how this could be percieved as adding complexity (BAH! I meant "adding more strategy" of course :p ), but if implemented carefully, it could be one of these things which those who like micro management could dig into.

[Keith]

They have to be careful how complicated that they make the game if they want it to appeal to a wider audience. This is what happened with the release of Zeus.

Besides, with the characters of this game doing things autonomously on their own we may not have any say so in what industries are setup and what goes where.

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[Keith]

If you’re talking about “tech tree” stuff, well, improving and enhancing your technological assets is not a part of this game, nor was it important in ancient Egypt. In fact, the ancient Egyptians shunned technological innovation, and their technology remained remarkably static over a few millennia. The chariot was really the only technological improvement introduced in Egypt during most of what we think of as “ancient” times.

A similar dynamic to "technology" that operates in CotN, though, is the introduction of better and better raw materials into the various sectors of private and government industry. For example, a perfumer can pick wild flowers to make a simple, local perfume, and that’s ok. But if you can set up trade relationships so myrrh is flowing into the city, that's even better. Sometimes getting these fine raw materials involves mass labor operations, or military expeditions. With more expensive items in the city to buy, noblemen grow their estates, thus yielding more to you in taxes. In this way you're expanding and deepening your economy, not military technology as in an RTS. I guess that pretty much rules out long production chains.
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[Caesar Alan]

While Chris' comment would seem to rule out long production chains, it certainly doesn't rule out complex ones.

Let us take the example of our humble perfumier: in the basic city, he has access only to wild flowers, and makes perfume from those. In the more advanced city, where myrrh is also available, I'm guessing he uses both to produce better perfume. The end result is a 'quality' system, very similar to that used for food in Emperor, but here applied to a non-food item.

I can see a similar system being applied to other non-food items (jewelery is an obvious one, but the same could apply to items like cosmetics, even linen). I'd expect the quality system to be limited to the more luxurious items required by our wealthier populace, but it may of course be extended down to the more day-to-day objects like pottery.

There's also going to be much more competition for resources than we've seen in any citybuilding game thus far: clay is a raw material for both pottery and bricks; reeds are used for papyrus, sometimes bricks (in the absence of straw) and presumably also mats and baskets.

So, while we may have a 'deep' production chain, it's certainly going to be a nicely interwoven one.

Sounds OK to me :D

[Jayhawk]

I agree there, Alan. It looks like you will definitely have the option to include more resources to get more complicated/valuable end products.

Similarly with cloth, the weaver could use flax to make undied cloth (to make simple stuff), but he might also use different materials and get his hands on dies to produce more valuable cloth. Similarly the carpenter could make furniture from local trees, but make more valuable stuff importing ebony and ivory/gems for inlays.

Maybe some of these base ingredients can also be made locally, like dies could be created from local materials (either by the weaver or a die maker) making it take longer to produce the actual item, but making the item worth more.

[EmperorJay]

I agree with most too, but I don't think that the quality system will be limited to luxury items. Wealthy people need pottery too, but since they are wealthy they would want the pottery to have a nice colour perhaps. In that case, the pottery shop needs paint as well.

[Tony Leier]

While Chris' comment would seem to rule out long production chains, it certainly doesn't rule out complex ones.

That's a good way to put it. For instance, you can make simple jewelry out of faience (quartz glass), which the jewelry can harvest and do himself. To make gold jewelry requires gold obviously, and getting that gold is where the production chain is interesting- you need people to mine the gold, people to oversee the mining of the gold, and then you need a scribe to manage the goods exchange where the jeweler can buy the gold.

Come to think of it, try thinking about it in terms of managing people and what the people need (food and services) rather than thinking of it in terms of managing resource flow around a city, which is basically what you did in prior games. Rest assured that you still have various levels of complexity in the systems, it's just associated differently.

[EmperorJay]

As always, thanks, but I have one question though.

...To make gold jewelry requires gold obviously, and getting that gold is where the production chain is interesting- you need people to mine the gold, people to oversee the mining of the gold, and then you need a scribe to manage the goods exchange where the jeweler can buy the gold...
Since grain is the currency, is that also used at the goods exchange? Like a sack of grain for 2 kilos (the Egyptian equivalent that is) of gold?

[vovan]

Ooh, thanks for the info, Tony. I like that a lot. :)

I first wanted to comment on the general comparison with Settlers 2 though.

I really enjoyed the long production chains there, and I could literally sit there for hours watching goods flowing through the city and metamorphosing from a simple raw material into something enitrely different. Like the fisherman getting the fish, which would then be used to feed the miners, who would mine ore for the smelter, etc.

However, I think that in Settlers 2, the reason you could have such long production chains is that you could control and sustain them fairly simply. Pretty much the only factor in the production of low-level goods was the speed with which the person responsible for them was moving on the screen, so once you had established a stable production line, it required little to no attention to sustain.

The citybuilders have traditionally been different, I think. Here, there is always a certain randomness factor, like dependence on trade, which tends to disturb your production. Hence, even with short production lines, most of the same formula: raw --> final - were not so easy to maintain. Maybe in Pharaoh your flood fails. Or in Emperor a god becomes angry. Or maybe the critical trade route closes due to sandstorms. There are just so many things that can go wrong, that maintaining a longer, even four-five-step, production line would become a nightmare in a hurry.

Now, regarding what Tony said. I certainly like the fact that a given industry-person can produce "different levels" of his product. Of course, everything is always clear in retrospect, and now I think we should have seen that coming. Take the fact that industrial workers live where they work; remember it was said that "house evolution" is still going to take place, albeit not in the traditional form; take the screenshot that shows education and wealth levels. Consider all that, and the different levels of production for a given good seem almost obvious, now that it has been pointed out. :)

Of course, however, looking forward, it is not all so clear. :) And a lot of questions I have now. :) I wonder how an artisan can improve his skill, which I imagine is prerequisite to producing higher-level jewelry, to continue Tony's example. I wonder too, once a higher level is reached by a household, will they only produce the higher-level product, or can still produce a lower-level one, and if the latter how will the producer decide which to produce (I imagine availability of raw materials might play a role). After all, probably simple faiance jewelry is probably cheaper than gold jewelry, so maybe demand also plays a certain role when the jeweler decides what to make...

As well, that makes me think of exports. In previous games, any given industry produced one good and one good precisely. Here, we seem to have a certain differentiation. And hence, it would appear, you may be losing a certain amount of control as to exactly which level of a good you want to produce. And how does an industry worker get rid of his goods any way. We know that town people will just come to the producer's home-shop, and buy the goods there. Certainly, caravans would want some sort of centralized place to conduct trade instead?

Question, questions... :-)

[Tony Leier]

Since grain is the currency, is that also used at the goods exchange? Like a sack of grain for 2 kilos (the Egyptian equivalent that is) of gold?
Yep, that's it.

[GillB]

I like the sound of that :) Choice is everything

[EmperorJay]

Yep, that's it.
Cool, thanks :)

[eobet]

Since grain is the currency, is that also used at the goods exchange? Like a sack of grain for 2 kilos (the Egyptian equivalent that is) of gold?

Ok, this is interesting. I like the fact that money is also food. Do you eat and have happy citizens, or do you let them starve a bit, so that you can buy things to speed up progress?

Hopefully, a lot of interesting, strategic gameplay decisions will come from this.

[Miut]

Eobet, you're wrong. I actually didn't vote in the Poll at all because like others, a Yes/No answer was not either of my choices - Yes, I want some micro-management, but No, I do NOT want it like Space Colony where I had to cope with their moods etc - too detailed and it detracted from actually playing the building part of the game for me - as has been discussed in another thread.

Sounds to me from Tony's post that Tilted Mill have the mix right for players like me. :D

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