Rules

Okay, I got tired of trying to move rules around here. This is the SRD for the system.

Ask rules questions below.

This was brought to me as a question, and I figured everyone would want to know sooner or later, so:

The base level of tech in the Covenant Lands is the 1600's give or take a decade. The exceptions to that currently are:
- There are warforged, basically, which are magically-powered robots, sort of sentient golems.
- There's firearms, though they're hard to come by. Many of them use enchantment over physics to work.

If there's special tech you need for your nation, run it by me, and I'll work with you as long as it's nothing too over-the-top.

It can be both! You have one workforce per province. That means if you have three provinces and three workforces, you can produce three available resources. For instance, you have the following resources available:
- Chemicals
- Cloth
- Cloth
- Gunpowder
- Metal
- Wood

You want to make ships. You can do that, because two cloth give you woven cloth, and woven cloth and wood give you ships. But, say you want to arm those ships. You can't just remove your workforces from what they're making, because then your ships disappear. The chain has to stay active as long as you want ships (think upkeep and repair). What do you do?

You expand, OR you develop provinces. A developed province is split in two, and you've got two workforces there now. Do that a few times and you've got three new workforces. Now you can take that gunpower, metal, and chemicals, and make cannons, and attach those to your ships. But to expand or develop, you need that RP post, and that's where you say, 'alright, we've got these factories now!'

One last thing. That's six resources, right? It's going to take a while to get that. Does that mean you just don't have ships until then? No. Your resources are supplies so sizable that they can affect your ENTIRE nation. If your nation has a merchant marine or just everyone and their pet squid owns a boat, that's perfectly cool. You're just not going to be able to use the ships for the use listed on the resource; in other words, you're not going to be able to transport military across the water. Until you build those ships.

Can we go a bit deeper into that Armed Ships example? As far as I can tell from the Rules, everything is produced as basic resources, and has to be combined. If we want an Armed Ship, that looks like this, I think:

Armed Ship needs Unarmed Ship and Cannons
Unarmed Ship needs Wood and Cloth
Cannons need Gunpowder and Metal and (Chemicals or Enchantments or Wood)
Gunpowder needs Chemicals and Chemicals

So the list of stuff we actually need is:
- Chemicals
- Chemicals
- Wood or Chemicals
- Wood
- Cloth
- Metal

(In your example you mentioned that Ships needed Woven Cloth, but that doesn't seem to be the case in the Rules. Woven Cloth isn't used for anything, as far as I can see. But anyway...)

Okay, six resources needed. The initial city produces three, each additional city seems to produce one, and you get an additional city for every ten provinces you develop. So to get six resources, you need to have developed thirty provinces. Is that right?

If so, there are thirty workforces available from those provinces. To make the Armed Ships, we need six to make the resources, and four to combine them as above. That's ten workforces accounted for... what can the other twenty do? There are no more resources available.

Not sure if I'm missing something.

Also on the subject of resources, Medicine and Stone seem to have no use in crafting and no other effects. Are they intended to have a purpose?

I think you need to factor in the number of workforce needed to produce 1 unit of a resource. Dedicating 2 workforce to the resource capability of a city means 2 units of that resource are produced. (I forget, but I think resources are produced weekly).

Yeah, I wondered about that. The Resources sections says that a Workforce can "Produce a unit of any resource you control (up to the maximum number that you control)," and "You can produce more than one of a resource, but only if you have more than one available to begin with."

I assume that the "maximum number" is the cities that can produce that resource. So you can only produce two Chemicals if you have Minerals chosen twice for the resources your cities produce. I'm not sure how to interpret "You can produce more than one if you have more than one to begin with".

If you can use two workforces to produce two Chemicals from one Mineral-city, then what determines the maximum number "that you control"?

So a few things that you guys mentioned are the result of either typos or me not writing everything in one go. So here's some patch notes, so to speak:

- Textiles is the name of the resource. It takes two textiles to make Cloth, a manufactured good. The rest of the resources have been adjusted to bring them in line with this setup.
- Stability has been added to the manufactured Goods table by adding Stone back into the places it was accidentally removed from.
- 1 Workforce makes all the resources in a city available (this will generally only matter in your capital, although there could be other major cities in the future.). If a city produces 2 chemicals and 1 stone, spending one workforce will get you 2 chemicals and 1 stone. You can't spend another workforce in that city, it's already working.
- 1 Workforce combines resources into manufactured goods. It doesn't matter how many components it needs; if you have them all, one workforce will combine them.
- Cannons do not provide Military Supply; they make naval military action possible.
- Armaments now add +2 Military Supply. This is to balance the complexity of their creation.
- Guns now add +5 Military Supply. This is also to balance the complexity of their creation.

oh, cool! *totally has read all the rules*

So 1 workforce gives +1 basic resource per city (ten developments) and +3 per capital then?

That is correct. You're basically putting the city to work.

Ah, okay. That's good to know, but it still begs the question of what all the other workforces can actually do.

Let's say you've got your capital, and a second city, and you therefore have ten workforces. You can generate all four of your resources using two workforces, and combine those resources into something using another workforce. Do the other seven workforces just sit idle? What can they do?

I agree with kadeton's question, because the latest rules now differentiate between military force and workforce. Previously, spare workforce could be allocated to military or production. (So there'd be no idle workforces because non production workforces would simply be military). But now they are two different stats.

You're right, that is an unintended side effect. Let me review a few things and I'll have an answer for you.

Military Patch Notes

Automatic Generation: You get 3 military units from your capital and 1 per other city you control. This is a change from 1 per province, but was necessary considering the other changes.

Conscription: 1 Workforce can be conscripted to form 1 Military unit.

Unrest: Your nation can handle only so much of it's population being conscripted into the military. If more than a third of your total workforces (rounded down) are conscripted, you'll gain unrest each week equal to the number of Workforces that exceed that third.

Example: You have 9 Workforce total. You can safely conscript three of them. If you conscript five, you'll gain 2 Unrest.

Could having free workforce improve (slackers) or worsen (unemployment) stability? This way you'd get unrest from not having food, having a far too big army or having too much unemployment. Workforce would then be a really important factor to consider, instead of just putting it all in resources and then in the army and leaving the other just there. Maybe this would be making it too complicated as well, since I feel the idea is to be more a writing game than a mechanistic simulation ;)

Workforces are supposed to be groups that can be focused. If you're not using them, they're probably still working, just attheir own crap.

That being said, I do like that idea, but you're also right in that I don't want people to have to work TOO hard at the mechanics part. I want the focus to be writing. However, I am going to be generating events as we go. Some of those events might be related to how much free workforce there is...

ehehe not sure if you ever played EU, but there be events if you want inspiration :D

I agree with CESN, we'll focus on the writing. Not looking to play the PbP version of Civilisation.

CESN: I'm in the middle of a full run from CK2 > EU4 > Vic2 > HoI3