It's for a civilization like game, think Civ 5. I am trying to design the list of building. I did not want the construction of a building to be automatic mindless work, I wanted players to make a choice. So far I have used the following strategy:
The first important element is that buildings will be conditional to something else making them not always efficient. For example, you could have a building that gives you 1 production per forest, but if you have little forest in your surrounding area, the building is not advantageous to build. Still, the analysis of such building can be somewhat automated. It's just analyzing cost and rewards.
Second, I wanted to give each building 2 purpose, so that you could have different reasons to make a building. That has the effect of making buildings more attractive increasing the chance to build everything. The advantage is that it does not make any building left behind, since the dual function will make all of them eventually useful.
Both elements above does not seem to increase the strategy behind the selection of buildings.
Now the last one is the notion of path to victory, which should be the element that should require more thinking from the player. The best example is in Civ 5, where the player has the option of making a single city civ or a large empire. Both give access to different victory condition and are viable to win the game.
So when I was designing buildings, I was wondering if I could chose to ignore building a "market place" that produces more gold and enables land trade routes. The impact of producing less gold would be:
Less building to maintain Less unit to maintain No spending of money to accelerate production No spending of money on purchasable stuff. etc.
Now let say, I want that to be a viable strategic path. How can I make sure it will be a valid path?
I thought that I need a way to compensate for example that losses units. Maybe, I have a small empire, so I don need many units. Maybe I am stronger in influence and diplomacy, and have little chance of being attacked.
How can I map those strategic path?
In the example above, how can I know that sacrificing gold really have an alternative path to compensate for that lose.
Is there a way I could organize or schematize the information?
Maybe having 2 way of obtaining something is a way to do it. For example, I can acquire military unit by production, or by hiring. Here there is 2 path, if I have a poor production, I will focus on making gold to buy units.
Can simply duplicating the method of obtaining the same result be the solution to such kind of design?
No it is interesting, you make me see things in another that could be helpful
About binding 2 resources together, it's the idea of producing 2 things from a single source?
One possible application is that I could make specialist produce 2 resources. Example:
Merchants: produces 3 gold and 2 influence Worker: produces 3 Food and 2 production Bard: produces 3 happiness and 2 influence etc.
In the example above, if I have no merchants, I still have other ways to gain influence with bards
While opposing resources, would simply never be paired together.
As for maintenance vs growth, I thought that all resources where used both as maintenance and growth, but it does not seem the case. I should try to balance that too.
Also civ 5 have various path, like I can build worker, or gain a civic that will give me a worker as a bonus. Or make the pyramid that will give me extra worker. So sometimes you can get certain rewards from a different source.
So it seems the center of the modeling is the resources produced. So maybe I should list my resources and then define:
What is the income source?
What can you maintain with them?
What can you purchase with them?
What would happen if resource X is starved?
What would happen if resource X is focused?
It would be interesting if the choices where first influenced by the position of the city and other situational factor. Second, by the player's goals which could not always match the situation.