The ivory trade

[Argantonius]

Ivory was a highly demanded material in ancient times and has continued to be so until practically the modern day. Some old threads such as this suggested including it as an additional resource in some maps but that would be over-complicating the issue.

Say, instead, that some animals provide an additional ammount of metal when hunted - after all, ivory was traded for gold almost as soon as it was obtained, and a pair of tusks collected in Africa would pass from hand to hand all the way to western Europe or Japan before actually being carved. This would require a new animation for the women and citizen-soldiers though, carrying one or two white tusks over their shoulders as they move to drop the metal in a building.

The animals that provide metal by way of ivory would be the most dangerous when attacked, giving the player an incentive to attack them instead of leaving them alone - elephants, hippopotamuses (both of whom would be able to destroy buildings) and walruses (the current plan list has them as fleeing huntable animals but in reality they are very dangerous when pissed off and have been seen "convincing" polar bears and orcas that attacked them to leave them alone). Other sources of ivory could be treasure-like elephant skeletons in desert/savanna/tropical maps and mammoth frozen carcases in polar maps. These ones could also include narwhals, who would be the only animals-that-provide-metal that are inoffensive and collected by fishing boats.

A final though. Once herding is implemented, some types of elephant (Asian and North African) could be herded by some civilizations only (Persians and Carthaginians). The player that is using these civs would have to decide if he prefers having cheaper war elephants (herding) or an instant package of food and metal (hunting). Now, the player that *isn't* using those civs could decide to troll the opponent player that is herding elephants, and unless whatever building is holding them is well guarded he could sneak some men in and get some steaks and metal for free.

tl;dr

Some animals provide food and metal. From most to less amount (also danger):

- African Bush Elephant (Savanna, Tropical African Maps - not herdable)

- Asian Elephant (Tropical Asian - herdable)

- North African Elephant (Desert, Mediterranean - herdable)

- Hippopotamus (Desert, Savanna, Tropical African - not herdable)

- Walrus (Polar - not herdable)

- Narwhal (Polar - sea animal)

- Elephant Skeleton (Mediterranean, Desert, Savanna, Tropical - only metal)

- Mammoth Skeleton (Polar - only metal)

Thoughs?

[quantumstate]

This sounds like a nice idea. Currently there is only ever one resource type gathered from an entity though, how would you suggest changing the UI to show multiple resource types on a single entity?

[Guest afeder]

This sounds like a nice idea. Currently there is only ever one resource type gathered from an entity though, how would you suggest changing the UI to show multiple resource types on a single entity?

Maybe when citizens gather resources from e.g. a slain elephant, there could be, say, an 80% chance that they would get a lump of meat (i.e. food) out it and a 20% chance that they would get a tusk (i.e. metal).

Edited January 26, 2012 by afeder

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

Well wouldn't it be where they first snatch the tusks and then get the staples?

[MishFTW]

How about once the staples are gone, you get some extra metal (like battle loot); it just appears in the ribbon without you being aware?

[Guest afeder]

How about once the staples are gone, you get some extra metal (like battle loot); it just appears in the ribbon without you being aware?

I'm wary of stuff that happens without the player being aware of it - that way he/she may not find out about it for a long time (and they shouldn't be required to read manuals or things like that to find out what their own soldiers are doing).

[Cassador_Chris]

I don't know... I'd favor a system that blends the trade routes of AOEIII with the RoN approach to unique resources.