Reform of trade

[e2thex]

I would like to purpose a change to trade.

1. Do away with trade routes and caravans helping building wonders

2. Caravans and freight should carry production, food, and
trade. (maybe 25 for the caravan and 50 for fright)

3. Every city with a marketplace would be allowed to store
up food and production, in a "market" for pick up by a caravan.

a. Cities with a Bank would be able to do so
with trade

b. Cites with a Stock Exchange would be able to
pay for goods with gold (for international trade).

4. Cities would be able to designate a number of their
food, production and trade to be place in the "Market".

Option A They would do this at a discounted rate
Most like 50% as this the rate that one
get when changing between unit,
Building and wonder production

Option B Their would be three kinds of
Production, Weapons (for use in units),
Wood (for use in buildings) and stone
(for use in wonders).

5. Cities would be able to set "prices" for each good in
terms of the other goods, so foreign caravans and
freight could trade. i.e. 2 food for one production.
Also diplomacy would allow for trade relations.

6. Also Trade routes could be set up so that A caravan makes
a preset path over and over again, (e.g. goes to Paris
gets food goes to Berlin drop off food and get
production and back to Paris).

7. Maybe have the spot where caravans are kill, a pick up
for the resources that it was carrying (piracy)

'trade' in freeciv is seldom used and beyond abstract.
That is to say it does not help game play, and it is not
grounded in an real world phenomenon. It confuses me why
so many game abstract trade like this. If we just let
goods move around Trade would be very useful. Just like
it is in the real world, only you don't have to worry
about the textile workers.

[Per]

Sounds like way too much micromanagement.

[e2thex]

It is not anymore micro-manigment then the the current trade system (is is basicly a combination of having cities on coinnage and the wonder building caravan).

And if you could establish more complicated goto commands you could automate the caravans.

And thus have real trade routes. This increase the need for roads and rail as well as making one need to defend trade routes.

[Vasc]

This is an interesting idea, but for it to work it would have to be automated.

[Corvash]

It would also turn FreeCiv into a significantly different game.

Many possibilities are lost, and many new possibilities are created.

If it could be implemented as some form of alternative ruleset (would also need coding, both implementing the new rules - as well as the automation and 'teaching' the AI). Then there is some potential.