Some ideas about finite resources, prospecting and world exploration.

[Vandala]

Currently there is only a few reasons to leave the comfort of your base and explore the world, acquiring tech and your own sense for adventure, so really only for acquiring tech.

But what if we made Iron and Copper a bit more of a finite resource? If the resource nodes that currently provide these resources could run out of said resource and then disappear from the game world forever, it may motivate the player to explore, expand, and trade more.

In addition to this it would be nice if Iron and Copper also had their own hidden spots in the world that could be uncovered by the prospecting skill (same as how we currently find water and stone locations and crops conditions). These spots too would provide only a limited quantity of said resource before they ran dry, although once they run dry it would be nice if they still provided an infinite amount of their resource just at a much diminished rate. This would prevent the player from every truly running out completely yet still push him to explore more of the world for more of said resource to feed his forges and building projects.

Now if such changes would be made to the game I would like to see some further changes made to the functionality of our world map. I would like to be able to see our prospecting efforts represented on the world map somehow. Like a overlay that shows all the sections of the map you have prospected along with the resource data.

Maybe we can even assign characters to be prospectors (just shift-click the prospecting button I guess), which would cause them to auto explore and prospect sections of the map you haven't been to yet.

eventually Iron and Copper would "run out" in your local area, forcing you still further afield. It might be a good idea to somehow allow the player to set up a system of automatic trade for long distances where foodstuffs and building materials would be traded one way and raw iron and copper the other way. Players will have to consider how to manage these far off mining outposts, how much manpower and protection can you spare on them, how much electricity is available from the wind in those far off spots or will you need to build generators, or will you go for slower manual "slave" labor. Repairs and food can also be a concern.

I think a system like this would be far more interesting then what we currently have, which is basically just building a mine or two, upgrade untill you can't upgrade anymore and you're set for life.

[Redgard]

In short, there would be two types of veins (surface and underground).

It's an interesting idea but the economic system should be strengthened. I tried in my game the mobile merchant gameplay, it's really boring/uninteresting, because we are very limited. I started up with a capital of 200.000 Cr and I don't have a lot of(/enough) goods to trade (buy & sell) and merchants with whom to trade. other example, we are almost never visited by mobile merchant at our outpost.

it would be interesting for sedentary players to have alternative for supply routes.