trade system

[molly bloom]

I suppose the financial returns and the opportunities for acquiring knowledge and disseminating religion made the risks worthwhile.

It did help that there were watch towers, forts and beacons along the Silk Road, as well as oasis settlements.

It's interesting that it's known as the Silk Road, because to me this always seems to imply or give the impression of one-way traffic, which certainly wasn't the case- the various Chinese dynasties were avid consumers of novelties and rare Western and Iranian derived products and artefacts, such as Tyrian dyed woollen cloth, Roman glassware and coral, Iranian metalwork and so forth.

Of course the silver bullion from Rome, Byzantium and the Iranian empires helped too....

[GeoModder]

Yes, especially the latter.

[Vince278]

The potential for highway robbery was extremely high. I don't know how they managed to secure it.

[alms66]

Originally posted by Vince278
The potential for highway robbery was extremely high. I don't know how they managed to secure it.

The route wasn't secure, exactly, it was more that everyone knew that the caravans would get ambushed by robbers, so every caravan had guards. Sometimes the guards won, sometimes they lost, but the profit to be had made the risk acceptable to some. So you see, deep down, all humans are greedy bastards, not just Americans.

[Dauphin]

The CtP system would have worked better if the routes weren't destroyed by an attack. That is you get no trade until you destroy the raiders or until they leave, but once you do you don't have to build the new caravans etc..

[DeathByTheSword]

pirating shouldnt distroy a trade route just rechannel a part of the 'goods' to the pirates...

[Dauphin]

Privateers (as in Civ3) would have something more to do too if you could attack trade routes.

[DeathByTheSword]

maybe like in galciv have a little boat/camel move from capital to capital or city to city..with the goods...it will take x turn to move the goods (of course the goods will be availble to the recieving country all the time) but pirates can then attack that boat/camel and cancel the trade route and recieve or X turns (like 3 or 4) the good. next turn a new boat/camel well go from the starting point the recieving country will not have the good until it arrive at it destination again...giving a change for the pirates to attack again...but then there also has to be an option to cancel a trade route during a war without problems with the recieving country or with building a new caravan (just putting it on hold or something

[Maniac]

A trade route system should be the first thing to program in ourselves after we get the standard dumbed-down Civ4.

[biru biru]

The trade system is crucial, it's definitely one of the things that makes this game a well-rounded and pleasant sleepless night.

[Cvetin]

i was thinking... we should have a world market established sometime in the late middle, early industrial ages, probably with the discovery of magnetism (when the brits started connecting the whole world through their trade ports).
how about establishing a East Indies tea company great wonder? It would make the owner city a center for trade and give it, dunno, 5% on all transaction? the transactions would look something like this: all the specific resources and luxuries together. like a coal market. say five civs have a total of 10 coals. they all participate in the market and each of them uses coal depending on a production index produced shields + total population. so, a country with 3 coals would have 3o% of production share, but if it is a large country, with a lot of factories, and is more developed then the other four, it might use 40% of world coal and it would have to import another 10 percent of world coal production for a price (we can put the price for every resource market at 100gp and it would have to pay additional 10gpt to the civs who produce excess coal, and the city which has the great wonder would charge 1gpt for the effort).
a small civ, without little industry and a small population, but with same 3 coals, would also have 30% of the producing market and would be a net exporter, for a good profit.
we could use this same principle for luxuries, only industry would not play a role here. the price of gems on the market for a civ would be dependent on the population and the gnp of the civ.
this can be made fairly easy for the player, coz all it would take is join the stock exchange in the city which is the center of world trade. it can even be obligatory for all rep. and dem. civs (no democratic country today can get out of the world trade, like the Us and Arab civs are in war, and huge trading partners at the same time). only commie and fascist states would be able to manipulate their share of number of resources (and especially luxuries) they want to trade on the stock exchange.
this is not a case for piracy, i'm afraid. in case of war involving a large exporter, it can increase the price of coal on the world market. so if you attack a small country with a lot of coal, other big importers may get angry at you and do a kuwait on your ass. if you manage to take it quickly and kill off the civ quickly, then the market can be back to normal in no time.
if a civ holds more then 1/3 or 1/2 of the market in coal, it should be able to dictate the price, but just to a degree. maybe, for complexity, we can add OPEC cartel like mutual agreements between the biggest producers?
i think this would give a nice background to the wars in the industrial ages, and would keep a player on his toas, forcing him to go after new and new resource sources.
what da ya'all think?

[Spiffor]

If I understand correctly, cIV's trade system will be similar to cIII's. The difference is that there will be one other category of goods to trade (kinds of food, which will add a "health" bonus to the cities).

I don't know if the trade routes will appear on the map, and if they'll be pirateable. Since they didn't say anything about it, it either means that trade-route piracy isn't present at all, or that they'll announce it later during their marketing campaign.

[curtsibling]

Originally posted by alms66
So you see, deep down, all humans are greedy bastards, not just Americans.

I don't recall anyone ever stating this was not the case?

Americans, Armenians...We are all the same species, non?

[alms66]

Originally posted by curtsibling


I don't recall anyone ever stating this was not the case?

Americans, Armenians...We are all the same species, non?

Well, there tend to be more jokes and whatnot about Americans being greedy, but we're OT so...

now back to your regularly scheduled programming...

[Vince278]

Originally posted by curtsibling
I don't recall anyone ever stating this was not the case?

Americans, Armenians...We are all the same species, non?

Actually, we are a more advanced species.
Also, we are not greedy bastards. (well, not bastards anyway )