Developer Hieroglyphs - Design Info

[Keith Heitmann]

How is trade in CotN handled? Do we buy trader routes and setup storageyards?

Tony Leier of Tilted Mill said:

Trade's a bit different in CotN- we've modeled the economic and political reality better I think. Most government trade isn't really the 'trade' you're thinking of- Pharaoh rules all of Egypt, so he already owns everything being traded. So what you get is you sending supplies to a mining outpost, and getting gold and gems in return- trade of a sort. You can also trade with a few foreign states, and again that's more or less bartering, where you trade Egypt's riches (food, papyrus, gold) for things you don't have (cedar wood from Lebanon for example.) Also, Egypt isn't at a trade crossroads, or really known for mercantilism- they were customers or exploiters for the most part (or exploited in some eras.)

Apart from that, you can have external merchants arrive, who sell directly to nobles looking for exotic luxury wares. This is private trade though.

[Keith Heitmann]

According to the info we have we know we will send out military expiditions to acquire new raw materials and goods. I'm not so sure that we'll leave our "city map" though and that any establishment of a mining community or trade center might be handled "off screen" like the distant battles were handled in Caesar III, Pharaoh, Zeus, and Emperor. All we may see is the influx of new materials and goods.

Tony Leier of Tilted Mill said:

That's basically it. It'll cost you food and goods sometimes- depends on what's going on. If it's a vassal or other self-supporting location, they may just send tribute. However, if it's a mining colony you set up, you better send them regular supplies of food if you want them to be able to send back metals or gems.

You don't found colonies in person, like in Zeus.

[Keith Heitmann]

So there is no money exchanging hands as in Pharaoh, and the economy runs on a barter system.

Tony Leier of Tilted Mill said:

Like some folks noted, the economy is based on food. It's kind of a feudal system; you've got farmers who work on noble's estates, and you, the Pharaoh, can take a cut of that food in taxes. That food is your wealth, and you mostly use it to feed and sustain the people you have working for you on your important government projects, like that enormous pyramid you just have to get done.

There are also shopkeepers in the city, who specialize in making various household wares, from cheap baskets or linen up to expensive jewelry or perfumes, for example. These shopkeepers sustain themselves by bartering these wares in exchange for food.

That's the economy, in a nutshell.

[Keith Heitmann]

Chris Beatrice is the President and Director of Development at Tilted Mill. What about raw materials, importing, exports, and production?

Chris Beatrice of Tilted Mill said:

First, regarding raw materials. Yes, those used for common household wares are readily available, and yes basic ones used for luxury wares are also readily available. Then, many fine raw materials for nicer luxury wares are available locally, but require mass (government funded) labor operations to obtain them - you must employ teams of laborers and overseers to mine gold & copper, quarry stone, etc. On top of that, many exotic raw materials are available in other parts of the world, for importation. All these fine raw materials are controlled by you and your government - you mine/quarry/import them and then sell them to private luxury shopkeepers. As far as how you physically get them to the shops, well, distribution always works on the "retrieval" principle, not a delivery principle. In other words, shopkeepers go to your "store" and buy these things. So strictly speaking you do not have to import any raw materials, but according to the principle I first laid out, the more variety of fine raw materials, the more valuable the luxury ware. This is very organic and dynamic. If you only supply gold, jewelers make gold jewelry. If you supply emeralds, they can make emerald jewelry. If gold and emeralds, they can make gold & emerald jewelry, and so on. As with all systems in the game, this is not a linear chain that must be connected or can be broken. It's more about optimizing and maximizing through various means (all of which push against one another for the challenge, of course).

As far as importing and exporting and how you pay for things, I'll try to be as brief and concise as possible (though that's not really in my nature...). There are all different kinds of cities and other sites in the world. The nature of the given location governs how you deal with it. For example, if you send a military expedition to set up a turquoise mining outpost in the Sinai peninsula, once you do that you own everything that mine produces. So you've got free turquoise coming into the city, which you sell to private shopkeepers, which boosts your economy, forcing / encouraging nobles to grow more food so they can buy all the cool stuff your widespread contacts have made available for them, which results in your receiving more taxes from them because you get half of everything they grow (well, half of the crops you are aware of ... but that's another story). Of course, such a mining outpost may require additional periodic upkeep, i.e. you must send them food every year, but this is very flexible (like everything else in the game) - if you can't make it one or two years they'll try to make do.

Other sites are not directly owned by you, and with these you are swapping valuable raw materials and produced goods that are abundant in Egypt (gold, papyrus, etc.) for those that are rare or non-existent (wood, tin, etc.). Remember, there is no money in this game!! This type of government trade is pro-rata: make more gold, papyrus, etc. available and the foreign traders will take it, and leave you with more wood, tin, etc. Once those materials arrive in your city they are acquired by shopkeepers in the same manner as those you might have mined or quarried locally. As far as the whole "storage yard" thing, again, as with all systems in the game there's the lazy less efficient way and the precise more efficient way - if you do nothing, cargo ships arrive in the city and drop their stuff wherever, then leave. Local consumers will find the items, though (to beat a dead horse) the more time it takes them to do so the less time they have to be doing what you really want them to. If you want more control, you can designate specific cargo drop-off points, and go further, dedicating these to specific sites if you want.

Then there are private commercial merchants who come to the city to buy and sell luxury items. They sell exotic things like animals, furs, incense, and so on, and they buy fine local wares, like jewelry, perfume, sandals. To buy these things, they visit local shops, just like everyone else. To sell their exotic imports, they set up stalls which local consumers visit, just like htey visit shops. This all happens whether you do anything or not, but, again, if you want to get the most out of this you designate a trade center and employ scribes to monitor the activity there to collect tariffs. This commercial trade also benefits you and your city by boosting the economy, which has a trickle down effect (except here it really works ), increasing taxes as noted above. Hey, Pharaoh taxes only the rich, how's that for progressive leadership?

Like so many things in the game (kind of like real life), the explanation takes a lot longer than just experiencing it (and I still left a bunch of things out!). Our goal was to make the city work according to standard principles that we are all familiar with. In fact, the only times fans on the forums tend to "get it wrong" are when they're thinking of how games typically work. But games don't have to work that way. One of the driving principles in CotN can be looked at as "fail safes" or an organic model, whichever you prefer. But the point is most things work, however poorly, even if you do nothing. Your decisions and expertise center around optimizing, and focusing your people on what you are trying to accomplish at the given time. Like a real city, whether one can ever achieve perfection remains to be seen (though with some of you guys I wouldn't rule that possibility out).

-Chris

[Keith Heitmann]

And shops?

Chris Beatrice of Tilted Mill said:

Shops are the most complex building/ occupation in the city, and they were the first Jeff and I worked out oh so many years ago. The shopkeeper family alone encompasses almost all aspects of life in the city. Common shops have an additional burden in that the wife both works and shops. With two family members gathering raw materials (dad and kid), it is true that proximity to raw materials is the least of the common shopkeeper's concerns. Being close to other shops (so mom can get shopping done quickly) and customers (so the family can survive) are paramount.

As for setting up industries and leaving them running, first, material needs for 90% of the city's families don't change over time. Material needs are mainly based on social class, so this is pretty stable. However, if customers are removed, the shop's situation can change. Shops aren't really "industry" though. Anything you might term "industry" (brick making, papyrus making, weapons making, etc.) are carried out by government craftsmen who are paid directly by you, and therefore don't rely on having customers.

-Chris

[Keith Heitmann]

Some of you may be thinking that CotN will be nothing more than Pharaoh 3D, or simply a graphics update to the old game. Ken Parker, the Titled Mill team writer for CotN, provides some info on what makes Children of the Nile different:

Ken Parker of Tilted Mill said:

CotN is an all-new game whose underlying design philosophy and technology are unique to Tilted Mill. Although people inevitably compare CotN to Pharaoh, discussing our game in that context is not very enlightening -- in fact, it will impede your understanding. Certainly, all games owe a debt to the ones that came before, and those of us who worked on the old Impressions games are proud of our previous work, but CotN is in no way "Pharaoh 2". This will become obvious as you read all the design notes, designer interviews and game previews linked on our main page. You'll grasp CotN better if you take it for a new game, without forcing comparisons.

[Keith Heitmann]

Some people have expressed concern that Tilted Mill may be promising more than will actually deliver:

Ken Parker of Tilted Mill said:

We're pretty careful not to promise anything we can't deliver. The interviews with Chris, Tony and Jeff reflect our game very accurately, and should answer your concerns.

[Keith Heitmann]

Some of you that have played the old games are what I coined the term "bean counters" for, or people that try to calculate exactly how many pots a potter will make to support a certain size population, or how much food each farm produced to feed a certain size population. How will such things be handled in Cotn?

[quote author="Ken Parker of Tilted Mill"
link=board=cotn&thread=1094655072&start=0#0 date=1094655072]
A lot of things that you're accustomed to viewing as hard number systems -- economics, production and distribution -- are "fuzzy" in CotN. A potter's output depends upon her proximity to clay, and how good her family is at gathering it. If she never runs out of clay, and works continuously, she can make a predictable amount of pottery. That much is familiar. But she spends time doing things other than throwing pots -- shopping at other places that are various distances from her home, and tending to household chores. She might get sick, and need to seek healthcare. She'll periodically want to worship one or more gods, whose temples and shrines are various distances from her home. There are other subtle variables that I won't go into. Together, these variables make it hard to say that she will make "n" pottery in "t" time -- she's going to have good days and bad days. Each pottery shop will differ, based on its particular circumstances. You could calculate a maximum possible pottery output, but knowing a theoretical maximum won't help you as much as just noticing that households some distance from the potter chronically run short of pottery and could use a closer supplier.

It's not about distributing pottery. It's about making it conveniently available to people, so that they don't have to spend too much of their time getting it, without placing so many pottery shops that they rob customers from each other. Pottery is only one of four wares that everybody wants, and they have other concerns beyond their household wares. Likewise, you have other things to think about than pottery. You're Pharaoh! Within broad parameters, you can let shopkeepers and their customers deal with their own pottery needs.

I suppose you could lay out repetitive neighborhoods, minimize variability, deduce some rules, and build very efficient cities, if that is what you want to do. But it's not at all necessary, because you aren't building a distribution system. Is that at all enlightening?
[/quote]

Moderator: P.S. - I am not a "bean counter". As long as my storageyards or granary was full I didn't care how many pots or units of food were produced.

[Keith Heitmann]

CotN will function somewhat realistically in terms of checks and balances. If there is a demand for something and not enough is being produced some of your people may go into that business. Likewise if too much of something is being produced some of your people may abandon their industry and try something else if they can:

Ken Parker of Tilted Mill said:

That's the gist of it. Shops don't "pop up" without you placing them, but unsuccessful ones can shut down, and if a new family moves into the vacant household wares building, they might decide to go into the mat making business instead. If nobody is looking to migrate into shopkeeping, and no children are ready to form a new middle-class household, the building could fall into disrepair and be abandoned. People do tend to sort this kind of thing out for themselves. None of this rules out an important role for you, of course. You're the one who decided that there should be a shop there in the first place...and if a succession of businesses fails in that location, you're the one who'll notice, and decide that it's not such a good place for a shop after all.

[Keith Heitmann]

How will CotN work in terms of placing housing, industry and specific industries in your city?

Ken Parker of Tilted Mill said:

Actually, and just for the record, you place either a common or a luxury household wares shop. You can then right-click to define it, or you can leave it undefined for the occupying family to choose.

[Keith Heitmann]

To be effective, a potter will need at least two things, close proximity to a river bank and close proximity his customers.

Ken Paker by Tilted Mill said:

That's right as far as it goes, but turn the relationship around. The potter needs customers for her business to thrive and her family to prosper, yes. But the customers are the ones who really benefit from proximity, because it means they spend less time getting pottery (and have more time to work and fulfill other needs). You want to think more in terms of satisfying citizens than running businesses.

As you can see from the Characters section of our site, the potter also does the family shopping -- a woman's work is never done, at least among the common craftsmen. So the time that she has to spend getting linen, mats and baskets is time that she can't spend working and selling pots, not to mention worshipping, seeing the doctor, or whatever else she needs that day.

So you will need to import certain items to make luxury wares for your wealthier citizens?

Tony Leier of Tilted Mill said:

Yep, Keith (your friendly neighborhood moderator) gets it here on raw materials.

There are two kind of wares, common and luxury. You only have the higher quality stuff with the luxury wares. Those particular perfume and jewelry examples are in the game too.

To confirm how the pottery is made- you indicate that you want a pottery shop in the city (by 'building' a pottery shop, which really just blocks off a spot for it), then a family decides to migrate in (usually a peasant family looking to join the middle class), builds the home, and gets to work. The man and children of the home go out and find clay to dig up (it's rather common along the riverbanks) and bring it home for the potter (the woman) to make into pots. These pots are then bartered for food.

Does this mean that we will have to trade for some of the very basic raw materials we may need for our shops?

Tony Leier of Tilted Mill said:

As far as raw materials for basic goods goes, every city will have the resources available to make all the necessities. Rushes (water grasses) are not something you harvest and import/export. They're something you go to the riverbank and get as needed. Anywhere you have water, you have rushes. And if you don't have water, you don't live there. Clay is similar, it's not hard to find in a river valley or delta or oasis. So raw materials production is pretty well limited to government goods- stones, metals, gems, for example.

Will there be more complex production chains than the one we've discussed about items like pottery?

Tony Leier of Tilted Mill said:

That's a good way to put it. For instance, you can make simple jewelry out of faience (quartz glass), which the jewelry can harvest and do himself. To make gold jewelry requires gold obviously, and getting that gold is where the production chain is interesting- you need people to mine the gold, people to oversee the mining of the gold, and then you need a scribe to manage the goods exchange where the jeweler can buy the gold.

Come to think of it, try thinking about it in terms of managing people and what the people need (food and services) rather than thinking of it in terms of managing resource flow around a city, which is basically what you did in prior games. Rest assured that you still have various levels of complexity in the systems, it's just associated differently.

[Keith Heitmann]

Some of you may wonder what the focus of the game will be. Buildings? Monuments? Military? Population?

Ken Parker of Tilted Mill said:

The emphasis is definitely on people, within the context of those other elements.

[Keith Heitmann]

In past citybuilders if you ingored or missed something, your city would fall apart without your constant attention. What's going to happen in CotN?

Ken Parker of Tilted Mill said:

CotN game characters tend to their own needs without your intervention. Consequently, you can watch people go about their business without worrying about systems falling apart because of some unnoticed minor flaw in distribution or service coverage. In fact, a CotN city functions better as individual citizens' lives grow easier and more fulfilling...and the best way to evaluate their lives is to watch them go about their day. In other words, you can spend considerable time in the course of normal gameplay "cruising around your city" and watching people interact. No special mode is necessary.

How much control over the camera tool will we have?

Ken Parker of Tilted Mill said:

I have to be vague about design questions, because the current state of the game is not what goes out the door in the end. Things change. However, I can say that you have complete control over the camera, and you can "attach" it to follow particular individuals around the city.

Will anything you've mentioned be changed?

Ken Parker of Tilted Mill said:

I'll just say that the best games incorporate changes suggested by playtesters, after initial implementation is complete. One cannot know in advance what those changes will be. Sometimes features turn out not to fit with the rest of the game, or they impose unacceptable performance hits, or they just can't work the way they were designed, and they have to be removed or overhauled. And now I really should leave design questions to the designers!

[Keith Heitmann]

In the past we had to worry about service walkers passing by various structures tagging each building with that specific service as they went and ther by distributing its benefits throughout the city that way. How will CotN handle things?

Ken Parker of Tilted Mill said:

In CotN, citizens don't sit around hoping that someone will pass by with what they need. The concept of "access walkers" is gone.

[Keith Heitmann]

So if the people provide for themselves and have everything they need to be satisfied, do they ever yearn for anything more or better?

Ken Parker of Tilted Mill said:

Peasants and middle-class people are content to meet their needs, and watch for opportunities to advance their family socially by migrating to a better profession. They are not big consumers, beyond the common household wares that they need. The elite -- especially the nobility -- want more from life, such as luxury wares, leisure activities and townhouse enhancements. These things cost food, so if they want the very best, they need to enlarge their estates by managing more farmers...which, incidentally, expands your tax revenue. Only the nobles might be called greedy, and even that is a little harsh. Once you achieve a certain status in society, you have to keep up appearances, don't you?