Trading System

[civman2000]

This is my feeble attampt to bring this forum to life....

My friends and I have found it unwieldy to trade city cards when trading resources, as is provided for in the rules. After several changes and discussions, we came up with the following alternative trading rules for resources: Rather than actually axchanging anything, you just proclaim that a monopoly exists. All civs involved get a certain portion of the monoply money immediately (during the trade phase), depending on the negotiations. Also, any civ controlling a monopoly without trading gets their money during the trade phase.

These are the suggested splits of various monopoly combinations (the payouts to each player) that my friends and I have developed. The first numbers represent how many of the resource a player controls, and the second numbers say how much money the respective player should receive during the trade phase:
2-1: 10-10
1-1-1: 7-7-6
3-1: 30-10
2-2: 20-20
2-1-1: 20-10-10
1-1-1-1: 10-10-10-10
4-1: 60-20
3-2: 50-30
3-1-1: 40-20-20
2-2-1: 30-30-20
2-1-1-1: 30-17-16-16
1-1-1-1-1: 16-16-16-16-16

Comments?

[Jonny]

This sounds like a good idea, since you wouldn't have to deal with trading the city cards and then keeping track of who each card belongs to. I might try this in my next game.

Some comments, though:

Some of the payoffs could be split up more fairly, (for example, 2-1 should possibly be 13-7 and not 10-10), but that's just something to consider.

Also, when the resources are split up 1-1-1 (payoff 7-7-6), how would you determine who gets 7 and who gets 6?

As for your attempts to bring this forum back to life, well, I don't think it's working.

[MrWhereItsAt]

This would have been great at the time I had access to the game and was playing it. In fact in one or two games we came up with a very similar table of payouts vs monopolies available.

This is great if there is the "default" state that you will trade for a monopoly, but in the case that someone doesn't need the money and would rather have their opponent languish, or they are planning to attack that opponent in the future. Then, negotiations actually have to take place for the player that holds out to feel he is getting his fair (or unfair) worth.

[civman2000]

Some of the payoffs could be split up more fairly, (for example, 2-1 should possibly be 13-7 and not 10-10), but that's just something to consider.

Also, when the resources are split up 1-1-1 (payoff 7-7-6), how would you determine who gets 7 and who gets 6?

The 2-1 split is split evenly because there's no way either party could get a monopoly without the other; they are both dependent on each other. In a 2-1-1 split, on the other hand, if one of the 1's doesn't like the deal, the 2 can still trade with the other 1.

For the 7-7-6 split, generally the poorer civs get more or if a civ has 3 or 4 one gold thingies that are useless they will get 7 or 6 respectively.

This is great if there is the "default" state that you will trade for a monopoly, but in the case that someone doesn't need the money and would rather have their opponent languish, or they are planning to attack that opponent in the future. Then, negotiations actually have to take place for the player that holds out to feel he is getting his fair (or unfair) worth.

That exactly correct. These are meant to be default ones, but if one civ thinks they deserve more because, ofr example, they believe they have the power to crush the other civ in a few turns, they will often get more (although because war is so destructive to your progress and economy, some weak people might be willing to go to war believing they will be weakened but survive and their opponent will also be extremely weakened.).