BIG money! Should Civ return, just a little, to caravans?

[Lancer]

Consider the vast $ made in human history on the profits from a single ship of spice, or a treasure fleet from central america or the Philippines. A risk, certainly. Pirates, foriegn ships traveling under letters of marque, as well as nations with whom you are at war. Your hopes pinned on a roll of the dice! Consider the Spanish treasure fleet from the new world that Spain was waiting for before they would declare against the Brits and join the dark forces of the evil Boney! The Spanish based their whole economy on huge inflows of gold from their far flung empire and on the fleet was years worth of operating expenses for their empire. They were addicted to this great wealth from abroad. When the Brits discerned their intentions and took the fleet in a sharp ship to ship action, the repercussions for the Spanish and the French were terrific, while the Brits got a major shot in the arm, though they screwed the ship captians out of their prize money, the greedy bastards.

There's something about secretly working a ship across the face of the world, threading it through the hazards of storm, sea and enemy to bring it home...I just think it would be fun.

Btw, it is MUCH too easy to see ships at sea. The whole thing should be reworked so that only if the opposing ship attempts to move into the very same square you are on can you see each other, until the advent of radar anyway.

[Proteus_MST]

The trading system should be reworked.

You should be able to use ships as privateers (and not only the privateer-unit of Civ 3), but any military ship.
After all, even in WW2 subs and other ships where sent out to capture and/or sink enemy freighters.
But the enemy should be able to protect his trade routes by sending his own military ships on escort duty.

Decisive for success of a privateer mission would be, how many ships you send on the mission (and probably their strength) and of course, how many Escort ships the enemy has (and their strength).
If successful the enemy income from trade across the ocean would be decreased. Most of the drecrease in trade would be from ships sunk by the enemy, but the player who sent his ships on the privateer-mission should also be able to capture a small part of the trade goods (i.e. money) the enemy looses (how much should depend on the type of ship used, nothing if the player sends only Subs, a small part if he sends larger warships and a larger part, if he sends designated privateer units [like the privateers of the 16./17. century)

The player should be able to choose, against which enemy the privateer-mission will be and the enemy will know, from which nation the privateers came from which attacked his freighters, as long as the player doesn´t send only designated privateer-units or subs on privateer-mission (but even in this case there would be a small chance that the enemy finds out, from which nation the ships were send).

IMHO this would be much more realistic. In all times states used part of their navy to protect commercial ships (espacially from the 16. Century on, when piracy became something which really cut into the profits of the countries)

[Senethro]

Trade caravans sound good to me. I also liked their function of being able to transfer food/shields from one city to another.

Wouldn't it just be the best thing in the world if they also were able to work squares for resources which they caravaned back to their home base?

[Nikolai]

I would be in favour of an improved trade system, but caravans? No thanks.

[Adagio]

I don't like caravans, and I hated how trade worked in ctp...

[Dis]

I can't remember trade in ctp2. I don't think I got that far in the game before becoming bored.

But one way is to build caravans (assuming you have access to the appropiate resource), and just pick a known city to send them too. Depending on if you are at war, or there are barbarian encampments, there should be a chance it doesn't make it. And this is done automatically- although perhaps allow 1 turn before it takes effect for travel time.

But I certainly don't want to manually move caravans. That was a pain in the ass.

[Lancer]

That was a pain in the ass. However there were far too many and the payoff was far too little. It was dealt with city to city instead of civ to civ, which made it a real pain trying to match up a type of good with the need of a far off city.

[Dis]

and then the city enters a new age just before you get there, and they no longer need that good. . Now I know why I no longer play Civ2.

[CarnalCanaan]

Has anybody brought up the idea of combining Civ3 and CtP's trade models? I really liked Civ3's idea that certain things in the game should not be possible without a certain resource (no horses; no mounted units), however the trade system was a bit odd. Although resources were addmissable as a unit of negotiation in the diplomacy model, there was little simulation of the actual trade process. If you bought aluminum from the Babylonians it mysteriously showed up in every one of you (connected) cities.

Meanwhile, CtP had the idea of physically moving resources to a certain city so as to monopolize it. This is a bit more realistic, especially with luxury items like diamonds and spices but also with commodities like oil and grain (think: Chicago Trade Board and OPEC).

Why not give a single resource to a single city? This single city can then utilize it (build a unit or make its people happy) or hoard it so as to negotiate up the price on the market with opposing cities (though, obviously, intra-civ trade is all up to you). This makes the veritable smorgasbord of resources from the first Civ3 editions reasonable. It also means smaller civs can spend their moneies to collect and then re-trade those resources (just like real life with diamonds in Antwerp and sapphires in Bangkok and furs in Quebec, etc.).

Do you want the Netherlands' assistance in the war against the Aztecs? Sure. No problemo. It'll only cost you your share of the incense racket.

[Gen. Atkinson]

Sounds like too much micromanagement, and the CtP trade system was annoying at best, with giant beavers moving accross the planet. No. And what would happen if a city wants to build, for example Pikemen, they'd have to wait until every other city has built them first in order to build any themselves.
I agree it should be re-worked but not so that it is more confusing and time consuming. I'd hate to have to send iron o every city in my empire one turn at a time in orde to build city defences.
One way to do it. Sharing resources is the same as in civ3, but in order to set up a trade route with another civ first you have to do all the negotiating with their leader. You then automatically gain a caravan unit in your capital. This then has to be sent to any city in the other civ in order to establish said trade route. And you only have to do this once. As soon as the initial trade route is set up any more trades are automatic.
As for Privateering, any ship could be a privateer. How many times have you known that the enemy civ is sending several ships full of troops to invade your nation, but you don't want to go to war with them?
Simple, you send your ships to block passage etc, and ask the civ to leave your waters. If they leave, hooray. If they stay, you can either i, sink them and proclaim war, ii, Wait until they attack you, or iii, go into privateer mode and sink them without any repercussions, for you did warn them, and they refused to leave, thus giving you a clear vindication for sinking their ships. Hmmm?

[Addled Platypus]

the two best parts of CTP trade was setting prices

1)to high and no one buys/ to cheap and not enough profit
2) being able to disrupt trade routes

the worse part --building all those frack'n caravans


the best part of C2 was going from caravans to semi-trucks

make trade more behind the scenes:

a percentile of your gold goes for "protection" of trade routes

if another civ has a higher amount dedicated to piracy, that civ would gain the difference...a quick check of the numbers and you change the percentile...

to much MM still ?

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Platypus Rex
the two best parts of CTP trade was setting prices

1)to high and no one buys/ to cheap and not enough profit
2) being able to disrupt trade routes

the worse part --building all those frack'n caravans

And a barbarian on island hundreds of miles away disrupting one of your juiciest trade routes, or some crappy A.I. nation breaking one with the equivalent of a rowing boat.

I used to like caravans you could accumulate or destroy though... I'd still like to be able to steal another Civ's caravans, especially if there were several on board a ship or transport.

Or trade a few surplus caravans with another Civ for a mercenary- there was always some utterly annoying wool or cloth caravan in Civ II that passed its sell-by date just before it reached the requisite city in another Civ.

Very vexing..

[LordShiva]

What? No attached picture?!

[Proteus_MST]

Maybe you could simulate it with a mix of CtP2 and GalCiv.

You could have defined Traderoutes like in CtP 2 (which of course, you could switch on and off in the map of the world )
And you have Minifreighters which really move along the traderoute like in GalCiv.

The trade itself would also work differently:
You would pay the other player for "Loads" of a vcertain Resource. And one load woud consist of Resources for a fixed number of turns, for example 5.

So take for example a trade between me and the Egyptians. I pay the Egyptians 20 Gold per Load of Furs and the traderoute connects the harbors of Luxor (Egypt) and Hyperborea (myself).

As soon as my ship leaves Luxor the Egypts get 20 Gold (as my Traders bought the load of furs from them) and as soon as the ship arrives at hyperborea, my empire has furs for another five turns. As soon as it arrives, it sails again to Luxor with gold from my empire.

Every 5 turns a ship arrives at hyperborea, so normally, if the traderoutes aren´t interrupted, your empire would have supplies of furs for every turn.
But of course, the eveil evil enemies might try to pirate your route. If a ship on your trading route moves through a tile with an enemy ship which has the order to pirate the route, it depends on the destination of the ship which wares the enemy might capture. If the ship is on the way to Luxor, it might capture gold (which means, that neither you get your furs from this ship nor the egyptians get gold for the load). If it is on the way to Hyperborea, it might capture (or sink) a load of furs (which means that you paid the egyptians for a load of furs that never arrived ).

It would even enable you to let your frigates etc. escort a certain tradeship (you could click on a certain ship on your traderoute and order a warship to escort it [which would mean that the warship also turns into a miniwarship, which moves with the minifreighter; if you want to use the warship for other purposes you could click on the freighter&Escort and you would be allowed to select which warship/s you want to withdraw from escort duty, which would turn the mini warships into warshiops of normal size again])

Of course this system would mean, that the longer the traderoute the more tradeships are underway, as every 5 turns a tradeship has to sail from its origin to the destination, to have a constant supply of resources. (and the more warships are needed to protect every single tradeship)

[LordShiva]

I like this. It might work with some more thought, but it's probably too late now.