Cool ideas of course, if done in an interesting way not making some factions boring to play, but it will need a lot og balancing, and also making the work on the AI much harder...... so we'll see if it's considered worthwhile in the end by the developers......

Given that:

- units will be designed from a list of components

- each component requires x units of some resource

- those resources ust be produced (generally from raw materials, it would seem)

- components become available through researching the prereq tech

- each faction has a different tech tree

There will be some diversity of economic systems anyway.  Some factions will have techs that give iron-heavy components, some will have techs that give wood-heavy components, etc.

And even if the stock factions don't have this sort of diversity of primary raw materials (I'd be surprised if they didn't), creating/modding factions could introduce it.

As for different mechanics for spending gold/mana... dunno, hard to say.  I echo the concern about overly RPS'ing it though.

I'd say that having wholly seperate economic models for the seperate races (and there are only two playable races, across 12 distinct factions) would ultimately be unacceptable. It'd be like learning a new game entirely for every faction, and an utter horror to balance.

The way different factions spend and use their money, whether their benefit is greatest from trading or domestic production, or even magic, could of course be different, based around the diversity of the races; the unique tech trees, the unique base bonuses, possible super powers, etc.

That is exactly what I had in mind.

Well, here is my problem.  What about when you capture other town.  MoM, AoW, and Homm are all about getting a bunch of different races in the towns.  If they have have different economic structure then you wouldn't be able to get different races.

I actually wouldn't mind the way that could possibly develop, i.e. you might actually have to raze some buildings/replace them with some of your own faction's to create a fully functioning city. Without doing so wouldn't mean a useless city, merely that it would produce lower level units/benefits/whatever. Defensive structures could be repaired and units there healed (so that it isn't completely defenseless). I also like the idea of sliders as done in EU (along with events and characteristics tied to them)

Just the fact that you're limited to 4 buildings/tile means that you'll have to prioritize and make choices.
Just like in GalCiv2.

Think of a basic city, with 1 tile, as a class 4 planet. You've got room for 4 structures. Even with 14-or-so spots to build on in GalCiv2, I can never fit everything I want. I -have- to make the choice wheter I want THIS planet as a throw-away planet to just sit there and make money, or if I want it to be a planet capable of producing some worthwile units (without taking twelve years, to boot!).

I'm expecting similar choices have to be made, in Elemental. On the other hand, I really hope there won't be any "useless" cities, like some planets tended to be in GalCiv2. The fact that we're limited by the number of tiles of the cities, and that we can actually expand, instead of being limited to a somewhat flat planet quality, bodes well.

Barracks, Bear Stables & War Academy are all in the military ballpark.
Marketplace, Stock Exchange, & Trading Post are all in the economical ballpark.
Mercenary Post is in both the economical and the military ballparks.

Every time you have 1 economical building, all economical buildings unlock an extra bonus. Marketplace gives +10 Economics, but if you build another Marketplace, both marketplaces now give an -extra- +2 Economics. If you build a Trading Post (+1 trade route), you now have 3 economical buildings, unlocking another +1 extra economics from each of the marketplaces (bringing all marketplaces up to a total of 13 each). But hey, you also have that trading post, that now gives +1 trade route for every economic building, so now it gives 3 trade routes, instead of 1!

A Mercenary Post would count as two building types for the purpose of determining this; One in the military ballpark, and one in the economical ballpark.

Sort of like "item" sets, but with buildings, and for cities instead of heroes.

Edit: All numbers are of course completely arbitrary, and only used for the sake of argument. I'd want to keep them quite minor, however, to avoid having to pigeonhole cities. Often, you -want- a city to be a little bit of everything, so that a single city isn't your first and last line of defense, or you end up with a nation of poorhouses if you don't do the 'X'-tactic.

There's also the potential to give one civilization the special power to specialize, by giving them double the benefit from sets of buildings.

My own economic concept is to have a specific overarching monetary based system with a commodity based system overlapping for different races..

I feel that the difference should only be enough to make them feel different.  I've seen in other games they try to create different systems and it ends up making certain factions really hard to play.    It can cause a lot of trouble balancing and such if they are wildly different.

Several races that have similar economy models but very diffrent other features may work just as well or better!