stone-age RTS.
food: from fields.
gold: from mines
Hate to break it to you man, but agriculture is not stone age. Neither is mineing.
Easy to fix, just use the correct term: Neolithic setting, not Stone Age (Paleolothic).
The problem is "gold". It's a nice symbolic resource that can be both "high level" construction material and is a typical resource for unit (military) production in many games (doubling as metal, wealth and so on). But with the style it fits better with "stone". Would that seem strange? To have stone being the main unit resource? Maybe it can double as flint as this is used in weapons, but then it goes badly as constrution material.
if you're going to assign arbitrary resources with arbitrary uses, they can be anything you want, say mandarin oranges, suspenders, and paper clips.
IE gold is not a construction material, its a trade good, with almost zero practical value in .Neolithic times. So using gold as a construction material (as opposed to money) - heck it might as well be paper clips, mandarin oranges, or gentlemen's suspenders - makes just about as much sense.
Do you build straw huts and totem poles out of stone? don't think so.
Are soldiers made of flint? Whats up with that?
Or should I make gold fit better into the style and stay with it?
The best thing to do is start with how it really worked. Then you can jing it from there to get the gameplay you want if reality sucks.
so what can you build? units and buildings.
what do they require? units require a place to muster them (a building), and money - and people. In the case of military units, you might include some raw materials for weapons, either copper, or bronze, or iron, depending on how new you go. first came copper, then bronze, then iron, then steel, along with early high quality steels such as damascus steel, and ulfbert swords.
and what do buildings require? wood. its a hut, right? maybe a big one for the chief (longhouse), but its still a wood structure. And they require labor, and money.
I assume you do not model upkeep costs for units or buildings. if you do, units cost food and require housing, and military units might cost some copper etc as upkeep too (replacing weapons etc). and everyone has to be paid!
So where does that leave you?
Well, you have wood, money (of some sort), and people, and food. and maybe some early metal such as copper (utzie the ice man circa 5000 BC), bronze (3000 BC), or iron (1200 BC).
It also looks like neolithic is considered the period when we had agriculture and permanent settlements, but no metals yet. in that case you would have wood, food, money, people, and flint as your resources, and the time period would be about 10000 BC at the earliest - IE the latest possible date in Caveman 3.0, which is 100% paleolithic.
copper age: replace flint with copper. time period = 5000BC
bronze age: replace flint with bronze. time period = 3000BC
iron age: replace flint with iron. time period = 1200BC
take your pick.
re: upfront costs vs upkeep costs. if you don't model upkeep costs, you might increase the cost of units. Make units cost food to build, instead of consuming food as upkeep. But i would not recommend it. Much better to have food production limit the number of units you can have - IE food as unit upkeep costs.
So you can model upkeep costs, or fake it by rolling some upkeep into the initial price.
I have to say that i notice a recurring theme of you coming up with cool ideas for games, but they are set in historical periods, with which you seem unfamiliar. You might want to try something in a non-historical setting. then things only have to make sense within the rules of how your fictional game world works, and not from a historical perspective as well. Might make life easier. remove some design constraints - IE does this make sense historically?
Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it - or at least fail history class! <g>