posted May 19, 1999 12:02                

The main ideas expoused so far have involved rehauling the caravan system, and the increasing interdependance of cities in the modern age.

dont expect other updates to be this long!!
Let me know if I forgot something!
Pythagoras(me) began suggesting auto caravaning, sorta like trains in RR Tycoon that would ferry goods back and forth, instead of caravans merely establishing trade routes. 'Caravans' would change with time and technology, increasing movement, and moveability into air and sea as tech advances were available. I also was interested in having trade being an intergral part of diplomacy More trade = better coorporation.

Isle chimed in with "The number of squares a cities uses should be equal to the city size not size + 1. This will not stop ICS as expansion always is the way to go, but it will stop it from being ridiculous.

Jeje2 liked my idea, suggesting that trade routes with alliance partners should yield bonuses, war should cancel trade between two civs

bab5tm liked my idea also, suggesting something similar to C:CTP's system, and allowing military protection for caravans through arming them.

EnochF then suggested we should have the ability to Airlift supplies/trade to besieged cities, and that affecting a Civs attitude towards you

Kerris suggested using the Public Works System ala C:CTP,

Pythagoras - I chimed back in suggesting my autocaravaning way could be flawed cause B.R. mentioned somewhere that a perfect pathfinding algorithm is mathematically impossible and I was grumpy that Not many talked about trade's relationship w/ diplomacy

Druid stated that we needed to recognize the interdependance of cities for resources in the modern world in creating trade schemes.

Prefect then made a pretty long, but good argument on why we should use MOOII type trading system, getting trade+science treaties, no caravans

Trachmyr liked the autocravan idea, but allow the creation of way points ala SMAC

don Don then suggested using commoditties, and needing certain ommodities to build certain improvements, he suggested to decrease micromanaging using 'contracts' allocating x amount of different resources be transferred between city Y and Z.

Hans2 suggested allowing the creation of groupings of cities, that all drew from the same resource zone, ie the support radii of all cities. With efficiency of transport determined w/ techs.

Hans2 the in another post stated he did not like caravans. up to a certain tech/year caravans should be used. Afterwards trade is done through diplomacy screen.

Utrecht suggested that once a trade route is established, parts of the partner's map is slowly revealed, as is some basic info on the civ, due to merchant's ability to get around/get maps.

Bulrathi stated that he also wanted a commodity system with the inclusion of a labor force which decreased when you went to war, and was dependant on population.

Pythagoras came back into the conversation. Cities should get a financial bonus/tax for transferring basic resources.[b] There should be an advance to [b]increase the carrying capacity of intercity resource transports. I also suggested that the max number of trade routes should not be limited to three, but based on population. Also there was the idea that trade should not even be set up by the player, instead the AI - coorporations/merchants should.

delcuze then suggested limiting the amount of buildings a city could build, through limiting it to [/b]city tiles.

Diodorus Sicilus had a lot of good input including-
1 - did not like any attempted trade models. 2 - He liked the [b]merchant exploration idea above
3 - He suggested using waypoints to set up trade routes. For instance in hostory there were the many routes to get to the orient.
4 - Then he commented on trade goods saying trade should be based on commodities and that commoditties are depleted through time. Also this should be refined for the modern age, become less commodity based.
5-On City Radii he liked them for early years, but wished intercity transport of resources was better as tech improved.

Zorloc agreed with Diodorus, stating also that large, modern metroplis do not provide their own food, but are solely based around trade. He preffered the Imperialism system.

EnochF wanted a complex trade system, agreeing with Diodorus, and he also suggested [/b]manufactured resources, based on commodities and improvenments needed.

mindlace suggested if a route [b]moved through another nation they should get a cut. He liked caravans in the ancient times, but a more abstract model later on.

Pythagoras I basicly said this commodity stuff sounded too complicated. And sounded like Colinization.

Trachmyr said he liked Colinization, and said commodities should be put into catagories.

Lancer asked why the King had to worrty about establishing Trade routes, saying his underlings should take care of it. He also suggested assigning military units to protect trade routes.

THE END!!

[This message has been edited by Pythagoras (edited May 19, 1999).]

posted May 19, 1999 12:41                

Please, Please, Please no comodities as in Colonization. This system is ok with a very few "centers", but putting a system with detailed commodities in a many-centers (cities here) game like civ produces mind-numbing amounts of micromanagement. I intentionally would stop expanding in Colonization (even though I would have liked to strategically) because the micromanagement burden became rapidly intolerable after about 10 cities.

Only with Very good economic AI would this be a workable concept.

posted May 19, 1999 13:24                

For Civ this could work by having 10 raw materials, and 10 manufactured goods. All of these will be shared between all of your cities. Then to trade, you make an agreement with another Civ (similar to CTP) and a caravan creates a trade route from your closest city to their closest city. Then your caravan (or whatever) will travel this path continuously - and can be prirated.

posted May 19, 1999 19:49                

"So you SPANISH want a naval base in Seville, We FRENCH will agree for a cost of X gold. Do you accept?"

posted May 19, 1999 19:49                

"So you SPANISH want a naval base in Seville, We FRENCH will agree for a cost of X gold. Do you accept?"

posted May 19, 1999 19:58                

Alot of this could probably be automated with "trade advisors" which could be told what to try getting a surplus of, or to use their judgement as to what they think we need - make sure we have enough food and oil to last us for # months ... Do we trade for the lowest price, trade with our allies only, trade with multiple nations to stay a trading partner and friend even if it costs more, trade with only certain nations to get their economy going, or wait until the price comes down to a certain level, or buy as much as we can to make sure another nation doesn't get it?

Some of the trade lines could be disrupted by the presence of military units in certain squares (gunboats just outside of enemy ports, infantry units on border crossings) like Imperialism, maybe being able to disrupt trade in the adjacent squares as well, but would not hinder trade if at peace. This way you could enforce trade sanctions of a certain nation, and even protect trade with your friends. Black market trade of items near borders with unfriendly nations, how much depends on your government and presence of military / police units in area (bribes?).

Maybe make this a checkable option in the beginning of the game for those that don't want to micro-manage trade of commodities, just use the trade from SMAC.

posted May 19, 1999 23:27                

IE DanS's suggestion: menu pops up-
1 - let them move on, not detrimental (maybe benificiary) to relations.
2 - Toll them, somewhat detrimental to relations.
3 - Pirate them - attack and pillage!! Act of war. Special units should be available so that a civ can use "Priva

What would be really cool, is that every time your caravan goes to their city, then you slowly see their map, more cities are seen, more trade routes are set up, and on and on . . I have this bad feeling the map would get cluttered with merchant traffic, much like the world is now though . .

Also, what would be even cooler is if say city X supplied 1 gold,(1 gold in radii). And city Y, and Z both got gold from there, that gold whos influx is 1, but outflux is 2 is labeled as rare, and its price doubles.

posted May 20, 1999 01:05                

Excuse me if I jumped to conclusions on this issue. It's just that when you mentioned more units moving automatically, I conjured up pictures of the really slow unit movements of CTP and even the slow High-Res 3D units of SMAC (which I set up for Lo-Res to keep me from getting bored). Since I only have a P200 with 64 megs at present, the very length of time it takes for a unit to move is fairly long (read that CTP is still slow on a PII450). Now multiply this by 25, 50, or 100 and this program is suddenly not really usable on my machine, and may need a high end machine to enjoy it. The cost of this $49.95 program is now $2400.00, just a bit high at present. Yes I will be upgrading soon, when I don't know exactly when since I need a few other expensive gadgets first. My idea may not waste as much time showing units running around, but you won't see what's really happening either, or even know what if any effect your military is doing to trade like you would with your idea. Both ideas are still going to be memory hungry though, but number crunching it what the computer does the best and fastest, especially if the human doesn't have to see the results updated on the screen all the time. Besides, memory is fairly cheap.

my 2 cents worth

posted May 20, 1999 10:33                

Before we start replacing the old trade system maybe we should look at revamping the civ2 trade system first. Several months ago in the "suggestion for civ3 forum" I made a suggestions for an improved civ2 trade system.

My idea is keeping the caravans and trade routes but instead of just generating trade arrows these trade routes also generate shields. The number of shields supplied is affected by demand,commodities,city improvements and technology advances.

Example 1 'technology'&'city improvements' : mining coal/oil is only relatively unimportant until industralization arrives. A factory in a city with a coal resource square could receive a 10/15% production bonus.

Example 2 'commodities': A city which has no coal squares could set up a trade route with a city that has those squares, so it would receive the same bonus. We should keep in mind that cities only have 3 trade routes so that would prevent one city from setting up supply routes to all the other continents.

Example 3 'trading' : Because cities only support 3 trade routes we should have the ability to break them. My suggestion would be improving the trading screen with a map showing the routes. Once a route is broken you'll have to sent a new caravan.

Example 4 'a new role for spies': disrupting trade routes would be an excellent role for spies. A spy would have to move to a city and select 'disrupt trade route' instead of the all powerfull 'plant nuke' or 'bribe city'. The route would be out of commission for a number of turns and the city would lose the shield bonus from the trade route for those turns.

This way we keep micromanagement to a minimum and the programmers don't have to worry about an extensive trading system...

posted May 20, 1999 10:56                

The terrain system should be same as in SMAC, with one difference: warmth. Warmth doesn't affect to anything vital, but with nutrients, rockiness and altitude it decides what kind of good is the square good for producting. These goods are mostly different kinds of vegetables, livestock and minerals. For instance, you need to have warm territory to grow bananas.

Also, there are different kinds of food. Most simplistic model would include wheat, meat and fish. The thing is that citizens reproduce better if you feed them different kinds of food. These foods could be traded from one city to another to achieve the best diet for everyone. If you produce spices or fruits those help as well.

Maybe you also could get more production by combining different kinds of minerals and metals, or maybe you need them for different tasks. Granite for buildings, iron for units, gold for minting and so on.

Third category is goods or produced vegetations/minerals. These add to happiness, of course. You need to have processing plants/factories to make goods.

posted May 20, 1999 10:57                

First, I really like the 'automated caravans' idea of Pythagoras. 2 comments: cities that are contiguous (connected by land) and of the same civ would not have caravans. Only if they're across water or another civ would there be caravans.

MERCANTILE EMPIRES:
During this period in history, the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and English were most _definitely_ involved at a government/king level with trade. I'm learning a lot about this since I'm in Portugal.
There was a royal monopoly on trade, in fact, though they subcontracted

Anyway, I think that the 'mercantile' unit should be used to set up trade relations. The mercantile unit is treated a lot like a spy, including expulsion (for those that want to stay isolationist) except that it travels over land and sea (hopefully changing icon.) (credit to whoever mentioned that before me).

This way you can also deny trade to other Civs by 'expelling' their traders from near a Civ you want to have monopoly with.

LATER TRADE:
Once a trade route is established, the diplomatic system and the automatic system takes over. The automatic system, with moving caravans/ city-city links is as Pythagoras describes.

The diplomatic aspect (as mentioned in the Diplomacy thread) does 2 important things:
1. determines what portion of trade goes directly to the government coffers (protectionism) and what goes to improving the economy (free trade)
2. allows the players (through Embargo) to suspend trade relationships established.

However, once a trade relationship is established, it _never_ needs to be re-established.

Trade routes, as P. says, can be messed with.

posted May 20, 1999 11:25                

INCREASING NAVY VALUE:
This whole thing would drastically increase the value of a strong navy, in a historically acurate manner, which is also something I like.

posted May 20, 1999 23:35                

Maybe we could introduce the concept of monopoly, where if you control a vast majority of a commodity, you get twice its value in trade.

Also on the tons of 3d units thing, I think caravans should be either small, 2d sprites, or not have caravans, but instead the trade route is shown as a straight line showing the fastest way to get between the cities, like CTP I've heard. Once you block the line, you pirate, toll, whatever you want to. The line should be non intrusive into the terrain.

Also, I dont know if I mentioned this, different governments could have different levels of control over there trade-

Despotism/Communism - complete control, fewest $$, more $$ for commies.
Monarchy -some control, average $$
Repub - little control, above average $$
Democ - No control (free market), tons of $$

complete control, cancel any route, anywhere, anytime.
some control -cancel 1 route a turn
little control - like cancel route every 5 turns.
no control - none whatsoever.

Also, maybe we could include the black market. Black lines represent trade with people you are at war with, or trade routes that were supposed to be cancelled, for goods in demand by your citizens . . . No $$ is gained, and only military blockage can slowly decrease the amount. Another idea - likelihood of using black market - proportional to number of discontent citizens in city of demand. Maybe the civ sending black market stuff would get TONS of mula, at the risk of detrimental relations. Or maybe we could also have illegal commodities, but thats sounding too complicated. . . any feedback?

posted May 22, 1999 05:40                

------------------
CIV3 DEVELOPMENT LIST COORDINATOR

posted May 22, 1999 10:35                

But I guess I should throw in my two cents since the Civ2 economic model needs a major overhaul:
1) Caravans in Civ2 were the worst part of the game IMHO. This whole system needs to be a whole lot more automated than moving camels around. The less I need to fool around with it, the better. CTP's system is a step in the right direction.
2) Resist the temptation to have the trade routes appear graphically on the main screen, especially if you want all those commodities available. No matter what it will be a mess. At best, you can hope for a separate "trade map".
3) A good way to simulate the desperate need for some resources is to require the civilization to have a minimum number of key resources each turn to function at top efficiency. If they don't get what they need, they suffer some sort of penalty in an appropriate area. (Example, run short of oil in the modern age and the military weakens and if you don't have enough other energy, your production drops. If they run short of uranium, they can't build nukes or nuclear power plants). What exactly they need changes with the times. Of course, some commodities just produce cash/trade arrows (spices, jade, etc.). Using this construct, to have shortages in key resources will doom a civilization in the long run, requiring war (which makes sense since most wars are about economics).
4) Trade should be nearly fully automated. Trade, even in command economies, tends to flow in an obvious direction - from those that have more than they need to those that need it the most and can pay for it. Have the computer decide who is most profitable to trade with and do it automatically. Otherwise, you will have turns go 20 minutes by 500BC just fooling around with trade.
5) However, if you want to go with this automated system, you should be able to give it some guidelines. You should be able to tell your trade advisor to not trade a commodity under any circumstances (holding back uranium would have obvious advantages in the modern world) or to hold back some of the surplus to stockpile (in case of shortages later). You should also be able to give buy commands like "get all that you can" or "get the minimum". Embargoes and Most Favored Trading Nations should also be options. Perhaps spending limits as well.
6) If you want finished goods, let them be converted AUTOMATICALLY from raw materials and immediately sold for a profit. Make the labor force be solely a function of your population and productive capacity. No micomanaging. (True, this is cool in Imp, but in Imp economics is your main focus - not so in Civ).
7) Replace the caravan concept with the trade capacity concept. The more capacity you have the more you can trade. You can make this on a city or national basis (national is easier). (OK, this IS from Imp but it is a good idea).

posted May 23, 1999 17:54                

Of the top 100 economies in the world today, 49 of them are countries, and 51 of them are corporations. Walmart has a larger economy that Holland. Mitsubishi is the 21st largest economy in the world (1-20 are countries). Ford is bigger than Saudi Arabia.

posted May 26, 1999 12:53                

So, of course, I like the idea of caravanless trade. But since this proposal features invisible caravans, why build them at cities at all?

posted May 26, 1999 18:29             

I personally always enjoyed the personal interaction, dirty dealing, and diplomatic negotiations that went on at the end of every turn to maximize your civilization trade.

It is not readily apparent how such a player interaction system would work in Civ III, but I like the general ideas of

1) Having Trade tied to both diplomacy and economics.

2) Using Trade as a means of regular and meaningful player interaction.

posted May 27, 1999 13:37             

One problem I do have with the CivII and SMAC economies is that they were seller-driven. One possibility of including buying is by giving certain benefits to the commodities. For examples, Wood could speed up city improvement production, Metals could speed up military unit production, Horses could speed up cavalry production, Spices produce additional luxuries.

posted June 03, 1999 20:13                

I've been thinking about a complete change of strategy in late-game Civ. In higher government forms, the city-by-city approach to empire management is done away with in favor of a new, "national" system of government. Your idea would fit in perfectly! You'd have a national budget which can be siphoned off into the military, education, social programs, health care, scientific research, national projects, wonders, taxes, national "reserve" funds for rushing production or bribing the enemy, government bonds or even invest government funds in the stock market.

Cities would still produce military units, city improvements and wonders as per usual, but instead of receiving a single message for each city telling you what it built (in the late game this could be almost twenty messages in a turn), you'd talk with your government advisors at the end of the turn, and they would tell you (if you want to know) what has been built, how much this will cost, or how much extra income has been generated, etc.

posted June 04, 1999 13:59                

1. A new WOW that would enhance the movement of caravans in some way. There was a great market in Ancient Africa (Timbuktu? Mali?), and you could kill two birds with one stone by adding a non-science, non-happy wonder, and adding a non-white WOW. Either caravans have 10 MPs, or can travel over water without ships, something.

2. Give explorers a new function--create trading post. It would be kind of like a combination of the airbase and a settler becoming a city. The explorer converts into a unit with a1, d3, and the trading post is a fortress. You give it a name. NOTE: you have to build it on plains or grasslands.

Anyway, you can automatically move any caravan to a trading post, as long as it is within X squares (think paradrop). You could set up a couple of them in order to get caravans from your land to China in two-three turns. Also, you can put one other military unit in the trading post. (An offensive unit to ward off sieges).

I like this change b/c it would give you reason to build explorers, is realistic, and enhances strategic options (namely, building military for the purpose of defending trade routes, rather than conquest.)

The trading post becomes obsolete with railroad, or automobile. It simply disappears, and the other military unit is "magically" teleported back home.

I like the idea of giving spies the option of destroying a trade route. Think about a big AI city with all the fixin's, losing a 10 arrow trade route. Multiply that by 1.5 a couple of times. WOW!!

I also like the idea of a relationship between trade and diplomacy. The number of trade arrows with a civ. should affect their attitude toward you, and also how much of a diplomatic penalty you get. Anything that moves us away from military conquest as a key to winning at Civ is cool.

posted June 04, 1999 14:05                

In another place and time, I made the following suggestion--there will be 3 kinds of shields. Fuel, building material, and exotics. Each square is given a value, totaling 3 points. 1-1-1 means an equal portion of each shield is fuel, building materials, and exotics. This would be equal over the whole board, but there would be concentrations in different areas--one area might be heavy in building materials, or weak in fuels.

Anyway, you would have a building advisor, who would keep track of this for your empire as a whole. Let's say your empire produced 100 shields as a whole. As long as each of the 3 elements was at least 25 (1/4), you're OK. But if you are 20-25-55, then you lose the last 20 shields of exotics (to get your lowest to 1/4 the total), and lose them in
each city in proportion to the shields produced (20 of 100 is one of every 5, so every city producing at least 5 loses one, if 10, loses 2, etc., until you've lost 20 shields).

I think this would add an element of strategy to the game, and also enhance the value of explorers. If you find your home are is weak in a certain element, you need to think about tradeoffs--conquer your pesky neighbor, or that other, nice, neighbor, who just happens to be sitting on a bunch fuel.

The random element should be similar to the terrain, where some areas have alot of mountains, but no huge mountain ranges. There shouldn't be large areas that have a huge abundance or lack of one shield type or another. That would make the luck of your starting position too important. OTOH, there should be some concentrated areas of each, for strategy's sake.