Resources
The lifeblood of every civilization is its resources. Without them, they fall.
Topics
Resources
Resource Tiers
There are hundreds and hundreds of items in Minecraft. It would take incredibly long to consider all of them, and give them unique, balanced properties in the Civilization View. Having to juggle a hundred different items confusing and unintuitive. Ideally, users should focus on 2-5 resources at a time, from a selection of 10-20 resources in total.
One way to simplify this is by using Resource Tiers.
| # | Resource Tier | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Dirt | Sugarcane, Flowers, Mushrooms, Sand |
| 1 | Wood | Logs, Hardened Clay, Bookshelves |
| 2 | Stone | Cobblestone, Furnaces |
| 3 | Iron | Iron Ingot, Cake |
| 4 | Diamond | Diamonds, Obsidian, Enchantment Tables |
| 5 | Nether | Potions, Blaze powder, Netherrack |
| 6 | End | Elytra, Shulker Boxes |
| 7 | Modded | Boom Bows, Special Resources, Enchanted Terracotta |
Resource Tiers would not value items, but categorize items. For example, a smithy would still require an anvil and two furnaces, but it could also require 100 wood tier and 100 stone tier resources to be registered as a "large smithy".
The rules for tiers are as follows, using iron as an example: Iron ores, tools, ingots and nuggets are on the same tier. Anything that must be mined with iron is on the iron tier. If you can mine something using cobble, it's tier moves down to the cobble tier. Techically obtaining a high tier object with low tear gear, like finding iron ingots in villages or fishing for it, doesn't count.
By using resource tiers, the game is simplified, making it much easier to track who has what in the world.
Famine
Abundance... is boring. If you have everything in the world, why bother working at all? Our current economy is built on the idea that resources are scarce. Trade fundamentally derives from a person wanting what someone else has, and vice versa.
So, a very easy way to ramp up activity, and ramp up the tension in the world, is with a Famine.
Selective Famine - The Silk Road
Every civilization has different needs, and wants. This naturally encourages trade.
If the Green Civilization produces wood, and the Gray Civilization produces stone, they trade. That being said, consider the problem of "good enough". The Yellow Civilization produces an abundance of wheat, but Green and Gray both produce their own wheat supply. Green and Gray have no need to trade with Yellow, since their wheat supply is secure, and "good enough".
This happens often in vanilla Minecraft. You see redstone farmers produce stacks and stacks and stacks of sugarcane, but since every player can just grow their own, no one is incentivized to trade with them.
The Selective Famine cuts off a specific resource. When a Wheat Famine occurs, all wheat production slows down, (or the demand for wheat artificially increases). Suddenly, wheat is wanted and needed. Green and Gray have an incentive to trade with Yellow. Through proper, fair use of the selective famine, trade, cooperation, and co-existence is incentivized.
Competitive Famine - The Prisoner's Dilemma
Destructive Famine - The Reset
Sometimes, you just need people to die.
Whether it's an abundance of small civilizations crowding up a space or abandoned civilizations keeping their hold on the land, sometimes, you just need empires to fall, and land to be reclaimed.
In this famine, multiple resources can be removed, starving out civilizations. This results in claim boundaries being reduced, powers being removed, players getting restless, and anarchy exploding onto the server. Consider it this civilization's method of performing a "map reset".
This famine is dangerous by design, and damaging. Whenever possible, it should be avoided. Competitive and Selective Famines should be used instead whenever possible, and care must be taken to ensure that Competitive and Selective Famines don't spiral out of control into a destructive one.
Wildfires tear through the land, laying waste to all. They are a destructive force. But wildfires clear the canopy, allowing new trees and vegetation to grow from the ashes of their ancestors. In the same way, a destructive famine is... destructive. But from the ashes of old civilizations, new ones will be able to rise.