Well, we just call this PP stockpile 'money'. I also got real excited about some simple trade system that would enable us to put embargoes and stuff like that, for some variety to diplomacy. So if is also about trade it makes sence to call it money.skdiw wrote:I thought we passed all the resources kind we need. I don't see why any of the four resources can serve as money also. What is so difficult to say pp is industry and pp is stockpile behave just like money because you can exchange for other resources.han_krum wrote:I don't know if we really need money; they could be just an unnessesary complication of the resource system. Trade would work fine without them, only with RP and PP. What money seem to be basically is a stockpile for stuff. The game could feel more dynamic without them; I think we should think twice before including them; in a way it can spoil the game if a player accumulates a large amount of money and mess up things... remember, KISS. Money is only needed if there is something really important that can't be done by something more simple, IMHO.
About conversion of resources: have empires exchange them. About the above examples like:
Empire A has minerals, needs food
Empire B has food, needs production
Empire C has PP/money, needs minerals
They could work out the situation by not trasnferring all their surpluses at once, which is too risky because they can't trust each other; Instead, here's what they'd do:
Empire A agrees to tranfer a portion of its surplus minerals each turn to Empire C.
Empire B agrees to tranfer a portion of its surplus food each turn to Empire A.
Empire C agrees to tranfer a portion of its surplus PP/money each turn to Empire B.
That way if someone stops th ransfer at a given moment in order to get stuff for nothing, he doesn't get too much, and loses the trust of the other two empires, which would supposedly be a bigger loss.
EDIT: just occured to me that this could be a little complicated for the AI... I guess it would have to be one contract made by three empires rather than three seperate contracts. That means we would need to have diplomacy a lot more complicated to allow for multi-sided diplomatic agreements or whatever we'd call that. It still seems simpler than the alternatives to me, though. And as you all know. I'm an AI expert...