Each task is rated in each region on two main variables:
How much effort, per unit, must be invested to produce
How much total production is possible here
There is a table of region types which determines where production
is seeded. Cities get lots of entertainment cookies, town less,
and other places get none.
Mountains get gold sometimes.
Beyond this, there is a table which determines how quickly a resource
replenishes. Stone in the mountain "replenishes" immediately. Entertainment
demand can rise at most 1/3 per turn. Forest grow back at 10 or 20% per turn.
I may have bitten off more than I can chew here. My code for this seems
to work, but the complexity is a bit beyond what I'd like for a production
system.
It also has one serious problem: players don't know what the production
potential is for a region for a given task, and don't get a lot of
feedback if competition is cutting into their production.
Perhaps this could simply be solved by better documentation. Or maybe
a simpler production model is necessary.
I'm willing to reveal the actual tables used for all of this in the
interest of getting them tuned correctly.
-- Rich Skrenta <skrenta@rt.com> N2QAV