The way the supply chain works in the game is functionally wrong. The basis is that the chain is supply driven. That’s not how it works in the real world, unless it’s a Soviet communist system and people work regardless of the demand for the product or not.
An obvious example is pottery. As long as there is an infinite supply of clay, the pottery will churn out pots, forever even if there is no market for them. This is wasteful of resources, labor and storage. The only way to control product output is by micromanaging the number of workers in a building (more or less of them) or toggling the building on/off. It’s clumsy and inefficient.
The system needs to be demand driven. Product is made and delivered to the consumer as demand dictates. The maximum number of workers allocated to the building then dictates the rate of production, so if you say allow 4 of 4 to work in a building and there is high demand for the product and there is sufficient labor and resource material available then output will rise. When demand drops the workers will return to the labor pool and back to the building when demand increases again. This is closer to real world logistics where a business puts people on as demand increases and lays them off as it reduces.
A demand driven supply chain reduces the micro management of resources, products, labor and buildings.
Now you may say, “but I want to produce lots of pots to trade. How do I do that?”
Easy. There are only four demand streams.
- Citizens
- Buildings
- Trading Post
- Upgrade requirements
The first two are obvious, citizens consume products made by buildings that consume products from other buildings (except primary products e.g. clay, iron ore although one could argue that a primary producer only consumes the labor output to produce a product, where as other buildings consume products and labor. Nit picking a bit here).
The trading post (TP) is just another consumer. If you set a transfer order into the TP then goods will continue to be made and supplied until the order is satisfied (if it is the only demand).
The last one, upgrade requirements is also a consumer, so when a building needs materials to upgrade the buildings that supply those things it gets made until the requirement is met. If other things are consuming that product in other demand streams then it continues to get made until the upgrade requirement goes away. The one caveat here is that to ensure the upgrade item isn’t flicking between satisfied and not, due to competing demands, product should be “over made” (i.e artificially higher demand) so there is a little excess to stop this happening all the time.
This isn’t rocket science and we all know what a demand based economy is. Resource management would be a whole lot better and easier if it “self” managed in a more “just in time” delivery mode.
Of course, the system could also be controlled by setting production floor and ceiling limits, but that’s still micromanaging to an extent and not as effective.