Resources

[ChaosOnline]

One thing I'd love to see added to CKIII is resources. Food, iron, gold, horses, spices, and the like.

Right now, in CKII, it's just kind of assumed that, not matter how large your empire is, or how desolate the land you control is, that you have enough food to feed your entire population. But that's not really accurate. Droughts and famines have no real impact in CKII. Likewise, places like Egypt or Mesopotamia, which were known as breadbaskets in real life are mostly unimportant in the game.

I'd like to see food supplies tracked in the game. Maybe as ruler you could set areas aside as farmland, and even have a region become the breadbasket of your empire.

If an area has a drought or famine, is hurt by warfare, or is just lost to a rival state, food production goes down. If you don't have enough food to feed your people, you can't field as many soldiers and they have lower overall morale, possibly even leading to peasant revolts.

This would give you an incentive to keep grain stores to feed your people in times of famine. Also to maintain and protect fertile regions from invasion or raids, since they would be especially desirable targets.

You could do something similar with iron. Controlling iron mines could make fielding troops less expensive, and allow you to field higher numbers of more well equipped troops. If you didn't control any sources of iron, you might have to get it in trade. Same with horses, in the middle ages, some places were famed for their well bred and trained horses. Having a good source of horses would be vital in maintaining a strong force of cavalry.

Having certain provinces be resource rich would make them a more desirable target in war, and at the same time, make them more vital to defend. It would make things interesting as rulers would have to capture, develop, and maintain resource rich areas in order to support their people and militaries.

What do you all think though? Would you like to see resources implemented into the game? If so, how do you think it could be done?

 

[fredrikslicer]

Trade in general need to be significantly improved in CK3

 

[Denkt]

While interesting, I doubt it will be a first priority since this is an role playing game first and foremost so that will be what most time is spent on.

 

[ChaosOnline]

While interesting, I doubt it will be a first priority since this is an role playing game first and foremost so that will be what most time is spent on.

It's equal parts empire management sim though. So I think things that flesh out the empire management would be of equal importance. And beyond that, how much a king pays attention to the development of their realm is equally important to roleplaying as external diplomacy and warfare. At least that's what I think.

 

[mpsdevil]

Basically all major aspects of statecraft in CK2 would be better if given more depth, including but not limited to : warfare (more interaction than raising levies / building retinues and assigning your highest mil commanders to lead your army,) diplomacy (things like treaties involving actual meetings between rulers and actual long term consequences - or not,) and economy with aspects like resources as mentioned and actual taxes on citizens.

And while all these things certainly could be improved and would give a greater depth of gameplay, the issues are that for one thing PDX wants to make games more accessible to newer players, and adding more complexity would almost certainly work against this goal, as well as the fact that the CK series is primarily a roleplaying strategy game with a focus on political intrigue, so putting large amounts of effort into these systems that aren't the focus of the game would most likely detract from the core experience.

That being said, I would like a simple resource system and revamps of the areas I mentioned (and possibly more) as they do often feel lacking in CK2.