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Rethinking Civilization Resource Management
Taking inspiration from Catan and Imperialism games to rethinking how resources management works in Civilization.
Sid Meier’s Civilization is one one of my all time favorite world building and strategy games.
It is an exceptionally well designed game, but that doesn’t stop me from dreaming about ways to improve it and make it more realistic. If you are a history buff like me, then you dream of ways to change the game to better convey the major factors deciding how civilizations of the past developed.
One of the key flaws that I see in civilization in its present form is that resources used to build things are just presented as generic resources. It makes sense if you want to keep the game simple, but present day civilization is anything but simple. A lot of elements have been added from religion, to culture and strategic resources and luxury resources.
I think this opens up the prospect of rethinking the whole system. There are two games which I really like in terms of resources management. These are the board game Catan and an old computer game called Imperialism from the late 1990s.
These games don’t deal in generic resources. E.g. in Catan building a settlement requires bricks, lumber, wool…
