Hi all,
I'm positive this can be done with a simple Microsoft Excel sum, but I can't work out how to do it, here goes:
My game has eight different Goods, these goods are produced by either different types of resources. Every good costs ten resources to construct. The game objective is to produce a certain number of goods.
For example: To construct a House costs two stone, six clay and two grain.
One of the key features of my game, will be that the amounts of goods required for each game will be different.
For example:
Game 1: You must produce one house, two thrones, five flour and three luxuary goods.
Game 2: two houses, one throne, four flour and three luxuary goods.
Each good must be created by resources; for example six stone and four clay create one Brick.
My questions is: how do I change the required amount of goods each game, without creating imbalance issues for the resources. The main issue here is that if a game requires lots of goods that use lots of a particular resource, then that resource will have a much higher demand than the others. This is a serious balance issue because each player in the game will have the ability to produce ONE type of resouce through out. If this player can produce the resource that has the highest demand (and hence value) they are out of balance with the other players.
What I'd like to do is map my table of resource costs against the table of goods required so that it balances out.
Any thoughts or input would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks so much for the spreadsheet Cog, it's really helpful, I'll be certain to buy you that house!
Also thanks to you both for your advice. I understand that this model will make the resources the same, but this is one of the points of the game. Please keep in mind it's very early days on my design but the basic idea is: Instead of resources being worth more than other things like most games, the idea here is that all resources have the same value BUT one of each is able to be utilised for additional options by each player. I guess I've confused the idea here by making it thematic. Think of this more of an abstract game where each player has a colour and this colour is related to objects of the same.
For example: Blue player can buy blue tokens for less than everyone else and earns 'gold' every time any blue tokens are bought or sold. They will also be able to sell blue tokens to other players etc.
I haven't nutted out the mechanics yet so that's why the terminology I'm using leaves a lot to be desired; but thanks again for the sound advice. I don't think the end 'product' will even have a medieval theme to it at all. I'm just using this theme as it's how I started off, wanting to make a medieval trading game.
Thakns again, I'm sure to be back with more questions as I progress!
Edit: after further thinking I've realised that what i'm trying to do is indeed impossible and doesn't make sense. It's okay, I'll try something else.