trade: to be much developped

[grap1705]

Trade is an interesting aspect in backing diplomacy, but it is relatively poor in Civ3.

Two kinds of trade: at governmental level, and at private level.

Private level trade should be a factor of the population of each country, and result from a normal economic relation bringing profit to your firms, as well as consumption goods to your citizens. It is not necessary to go to the point of modelizing a foreign balance of payment with curency variations, etc... But if we consider this trade brings trade profit on one part and satisfaction from consumption on the other, we need to be able to control at a macro level with import and export tax (two different parameters) so as to favor or discourage trade to and from a given country. These tax rates must of course be specific for each country we are in relation with.
There can then be diplomatic negociations for lowering those tarifs to increase economic relations between two countries. And this should be able to go to the extent of having a free trade agreement, as second step (military alliance being the first) towards a political community so as to weight together more at the UN council.

At the government level, there are different things that can be traded:
- sell a military unit to a friend civ that has not yet discovered the relevant progress or doesn't have the resource to produce it.
- rent units, as mercenaries, to other civs. If you loose control of your unit during the time of the contract, chances are it'll be send forefront and will end up killed in battle. If you keep control, then it would be too easy to take the money and avoid tough fights and risk. So the right solution would then be to rent a unit, keeping its control, and getting a monetary reward based on the number of enemy units killed and their type (less for easy fights than for hard and risky ones).
- trade luxury goods while controlling the quotas sold or bought, so that you have enough left for your own people if you are selling, and don't use up your supply source too fast. Selling can be in bunch in one turn, or a regular amount for a given number of turns.
- sell improvements for terrain or cities to other civs: a hospital, an airport, etc... For terrain improvements, we would need to send workers to do it. For city improvements, we could produce it in a city with a "for export" option. And when it's ready, it automatically appears in the destination city of the buying civ.
- among those improvements, can be energy plants (along with my idea of energy management in the "energy" thread"): selling anuclear plant or a solar one to a civ that doesn't have the knowhow for that. And selling or buying power supply to or from neighbouring countries.

Overall, trade possibilities are heavily underdevelopped in the game while in real life, they are a major factor of integration between countries, as well as contributing to the cultural influence. What would the US cultural influence be in this world without the Hollywood business? Hollywood in this respect should definitely be a wonder, as it is in CTP2 if I remember correctly.


The game also needs more macro management levers for our civilization (some of which are successfully used in CTP2):
- tax rate (on domestic trade, as well as exports and imports)
- wage rate
- work load (hours)
If imports are only for citizen satisfaction, then it is unwise to tax it and diminish their satisfaction. Except that overall, all civilizations are always lacking money so that if you can get some on imports, not too much but a little, then it's still good to take.

[grap1705]

Another thing about trade:

In civ2, we had to open a route with a caravan or a freight unit to establish a trade link.
In CTP2, trade routes are established automatically, thus with no control of its exposure to piracy or closeness to enemy territory.
In both cases, the profitability was a factor of the distance between the exporting city and the importing one as well as the size of the importing civ (or was it the city...)

Now in civ3, none of this. All simplified to the extreme where trade looses much of its interest. Countries just bargain luxury goods or resources, for a fixed 20 turn period. Price seems to depend on the size of the purchasing civ, which is somewhat logical, but with no effect of ditance nor of going through enemy territory or going a long way around it, etc... Indeed, it is not cities trading anymore but civilizations...
I don't like it very much.

I want to:
- have control of my actual trade routes, determining where they go through to avoid piracy or on the contrary make tentation to have pretexts of war,
- be able to stop them when I want (according to my reserve of the good may be if it is quantitized), instead of being stuck with an agreement for a fix number of turns.

Whether trade is from one city to another or from one civ to another is not so much the problem. I can accept that it be from one country to another, and therefore have a price to be a factor of:
- the distance between a city of the importing civ and the closest occurance on the map of that resource (even if that is on land belonging to another civ): the farther away, the more exotic the good and the higher the unitary price.
- the actual trade route defined by the exporter: the longer the way, the lower the profit, so that it's a trade off between piracy risk (I do like piracy concept of CTP2)and safe but lower profits.
- and of course the number of units traded if the good is quantitized (which I hope for), or the size of the importing civ if it isn't.

[Fosse]

I'm a big fan of your first post, and not so much of your second.

Having a private sector trading with tarriffs sounds great, while controlling every trade route sounds like a nightmare to me.

But I agree completely with you that trade in Civ 3 didn't quite get the job done! Keep the ideas coming.

[GePap]

I found trade in Civ3 far more profitable than Civ2, since you know exactly what you are getting.

[Fosse]

I enjoyed in SMAC when trade occured between bases... so you could punish your trading partners by cutting them off, but you also suffered less income.

I see a series of tarriff options in Civ 4 as being able to modify both the income each Civ sees, and the volume of trade.

I started a thread about URL=http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=109929]abstract trade models[/URL] a while back, and there was some good discussion over there.

grap, you might find it jives with some of your ideas here.

[Panag]

hi ,

food should become a trade item , .....

even water could become a trade item , ....

have a nice day

[Max Sinister]

Or energy. (If they include energy in the game.) Or simply shields.

[Panag]

Originally posted by Max Sinister
Or energy. (If they include energy in the game.) Or simply shields.

hi ,

and energy , like elec , a nuke powerplant aint build in every city , .....

have a nice day

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

OK, I am a big fan of placing taxes on imports and exports, and I did like the idea of workload and wages from CtP-if only for the purposes of your peoples satisfaction rate!
As far as the trade route idea, I think the best way to do it is to have a 'default' trade route form, based on the AI 'pathfinding' system. It should be possible for players to modify these default routes, as Grap has suggested, in order to minimize risk or maximize profits.
Another important thing is that two trading partners should be able to see their trade routes, but not be able to see enemy trade routes, and vice versa. The only way another civs trade route would become visible (or even a trade route between a trading partner and another civ) would be through espionage, or by coming within X hexes of the route. If you see the route, then you can try to either pirate it or break it. Pirating is harder, but earns you a reward (Gold and/or shields/food). It also leaves the trade route intact. Breaking a trade route (embargoes) is easy, but requires constant attention lest it be re-initiated.

Anyway, just a thought.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

I have to say, also, that the private sector economy is one of the MOST underrepresented element of society in the Civ Series.
One way to rectify this is to have a Social Engineering trait of 'Private Sector Influence', or PSI, from 0-100%.
The higher you set this trait, the more wealthy, powerful and influential your private sector is. Of course, the more wealthy your private sector, the more money you get from them, through taxation.
The flip side of this, though, is that you also increase the chance of your 'private sector' coming to you and asking and, yes, even DEMANDING things from you.
For instance, if you have your PSI set to 65%, then there is a 65% chance each turn that you will be approached by your Private Sector. Things they can ask for are money, tax breaks and to buy/sell techs, resources and improvements. You can also go to them, at any time, to ask them for things-or give things to them. As an example, lets say that you have a whole heap of factories that cost you more than you feel they are currently worth. The 'private sector' comes to you and offers you money for them. Not only do you get an instant cash injection, but now you also don't have to pay maintainance for them-thus freeing up cash for other things. Where things get interesting is that you lose control of any shields that those factories produced-shields that the Private Sector can either sell back to you or use for their own 'nefarious purposes' . An interesting scenario might be the private sector building a unit, like a worker, and using that worker to 'Prospect' for resources. They could also use purchased or built research facilities to discover new techs. In both cases they could trade them either to you or with another Civ!
What I like about this whole idea is that it gives you an uncontrolled element within the game. The other civs are, to some degree, a known quantity-the private sector of your civ and every other civ, on the other hand, is almost a complete mystery! Depending on their degree of influence, your private sector could enter into trade deals with other nations, or those nations private sectors, and foreign Private Sectors could approach you with trade deals completely seperate from their parent nation. Theoretically, even if you were hostile towards a civs government, it wouldn't prevent that nations private sector from approaching you!
Anyway, this is really just the bare bones of my idea but, if people are interested, I'd be more than happy to spell it out in more detail for you.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[Mr. President]

Trade is like the most crappy part of every Civ game.

Well, apart from the worker micromanagement.

[Shogun Gunner]

Originally posted by Mr. President
Trade is like the most crappy part of every Civ game.

Well, apart from the worker micromanagement.

Are you kidding? Yout put trade and worker micromanagement above AI negotiations/strategy/abilities as the most crappy part?

These trade ideas are all very interesting ideas, and I would love to see some representation in the next Civ release. However, it's been pointed out many times before that without more sophistication by the AI, these features become exploits because the computer doesn't know how to use/handle effectively and the human does.

[Patroklos]

I want quantative trade, as it is right now a civ of a 100 cities running an army of 400 units can do it all off one source of oil. Furthermore, having a monopoly on resources is not to powerful of a feture, as most cives can grab at leas t one random source of anything, and they never need more of it.

There is only a minor strategic bonus to having more than one source, and that is incase one disappears.

I thin their should be a quantity, such as each oil source supporting 60 units/buildings using it. You can build units/buildings until your total amount of it unused is zero. Not very hard to represent graphically or keep track of. And if you loose a source giving you a deficiet, you lose units using it turn to turn just like if you were low on maintenance money.

It is a huge boon to builders, becaues civ in its current form is still a "war" game. Imagine have a Venice of an oil emirate.

[Addled Platypus]

Keep trade


I like the idea of the privateer ship, brake trade routes without
knowing the civ behind it.

Only way to make it better would be later on in the years to be a hacker to attack/alter trade etc.


I llike the ideas of setting your own limits (cornering the market too?) or have the option of a "Trader AI" handle it.


Keep the juices flowing

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Hi Patroklos,

I agree with you 100%. I would be very easy to have an abstract way of representing 'resource qantity'. As I've said in other posts, the larger the 'size' of a resource, the smaller the chance it has of disappearing and, ergo, the more cities and units that one resource can support. Of course, even the LARGEST resource 'lode' cannot support an entire civilization, thus you would still be encouraged to seek out multiple sources of a resource in order to take the pressure off.
In addition, when you pick a resource you want to trade, you should be able to select what 'portion' of a resource you want to trade. For instance, say you have 3 sources of Oil-one at Size 3, one at size 6 and one at size 9! You keep the size nine oil to fuel your tanks, battleships and local industry, whilst trading a total of size 5 oil to another civ. How you assign what sources make up this trade will determine the likelihood of the resource drying up. For instance If you took 2 'units' from the Size 3 oil and 3 from the size 6 oil, then the former would have a very good chance of drying up, thus leaving you with only a 3 unit oil trade!

Anyway, I hope that helps!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.