Resource Depletion At Ports As a LH Multiplier

[Wesreidau]

Problem; why fight for a second port that produces a crucial resource when ten or ten billion labor hours spent at that port produce a resource at precisely the same rate per hour.

Solution; diminishing returns.

Each resource has a multiplier tracked for how many labor hours (and perhaps also the gold cost) are required to produce the resource recipe.

The multiplier is displayed in the crafting menu, and warned as a little blurb in the general port view. IE, "The sugar fields are normal." and the multiplier is "1.0" in the crafting menu.

Any given resource at a port could keep track of how many labor hours were invested into it that week, with another figure to track how much "capacity" the port has.

Example:

Sugar, normal, 9,000 / 10,000. Multiplier 1.0

So 9,000 out of 10,000 hours have been spent in this port. That's everyone's hours, not just yours.

You spend another 1,000 hours and the field becomes 10,000. Uh oh, it was tapped out on the 'normal' level. Its now in the "poor" level, the multiplier is 1.25, and harvesting sugar now requires 20% more labor hours. The port's capacity is now,

Sugar, poor, 0 / 15,000. Multiplier 1.25

Still, another 15,000 hours get spent at this poor sugar port and now...

Sugar, failing, 0 / 20,000. Multiplier 1.5

The insatiable European appetite could continue to..

Sugar, barren, 0 / 25,000. Multiplier 2.0

Of course, players have a limited number of labor hours per RL day and will eventually catch on that other sources of sugar can be had at a lower labor hour cost. You will note that each step downward becomes twice as painful for the producer, and the capacity of poorer yields increases. This is to make it harder to go down to the bottom of the abundance scale. And as players grow tired of barren yields at a convenient port, they'll move their outposts to a more distant port, alleviating the problem.

However a resource will never be tapped out. Some nations may only have one source of X or Y, and can't depend on foreign imports.

On the other side, at the start of the weekend, the ports automatically tick up one rank. This includes going into abundance ranks.

Sugar, abundant, 0 / 5,000. Multiplier 0.8

Sugar, rich, 0 / 3,000. Multiplier 0.7

Sugar, pristine, 0 / 1,000. Multiplier 0.6.

This creates a strong incentive to find untapped resources, and the "gold rush" will occur at the start of the weekend.

[Kiefer Cain]

I like it.  It would help to keep the population moving, another closer to natural variable for the economy, too.