Possibly some refreshing news for SSC freights

[Scouse Gits]

solo...well done. Trade and Huts are the final frontiers of understanding the game. You have started to channel our thinking about trade ... and Civ 2 will shortly be 7 years old!

I want you to succeed but at the same time I want you to fail. Once the secrets of the mysterious lady are all revealed…who will worship her? (From a founder member of the GL )

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SG(2)

[Elephant]

Solo - are you investigating reciprocal trade routes, where the delivery of a commodity from City A demanded by City B causes one of the demands of City A to be "satisfied" (parenthesied?) by something supplied by City B?

[solo]

Not yet, but I have already noticed an example of this after making my first trade in one test. It is definitely one aspect of trading that has to be looked into, if we are going to solve the whole puzzle.

What about yourself? Looking into anything specific? If so, we might save time by not duplicating the efforts of others.

Right now, I'm concentrating of changes due to city size, and how this relates to the sequence of trades being made.

[solo]

TEST #1 of the effect of city size on supply when trading between two American cities.

The setup:

After a random start, the two American settlers founded Washington and New York. Then the cheat menu was invoked to make some changes to facilitate testing. The entire map was revealed, so AI tech progress could be monitored. The Americans were given 29,000 gold in order to rush buy caravans and other items that were needed. The Americans were given Trade and the techs leading up to it. Much of the terrain around the two cities was changed to grassland and was irrigated, to promote rapid city growth. The two cities were connected by a road. The government type was set to Fundamentalism to deal with unhappiness. Both cities were fortified by creating a few phalanxes.

Supply and demand started as follows:

Washington
Supplies: dye, salt, copper
Demands: hides, beads, wine

New York
Supplies: dye, wine, gems
Demands: hides, silver, wool

This starting position was saved.

This test involved several passes, in order to investigate the effects of different trading sequences as the cities grew in size. During the first pass, the cities were allowed to grow naturally, as they would in an actual game. When cities were not building caravans, wonders were used to accumulate shields. The only city improvements added were aqueducts, necessary to allow growth of both cities beyond size 8. After recording the results of this first pass, another pass was made in which the same actions were performed, the only difference being that city sizes were augmented using the cheat menu, instead of waiting for them to grow. The results of this pass were identical to those of the first, so for the remaining passes, the cheat menu was used to save time.

Each pass will be separated into events. If any supply or demand changes for either city were triggered by the event, they will be noted in boldface type.

Pass #1

Event #1 – Washington builds dye and delivers it to New York

Washington
Supplies: (dye), salt, copper
Demands: hides, beads, (wine)

New York
Supplies: dye, (wine), gems

Notice that the delivery of dye to New York, blocked its supply of wine.

Event #2 – Washington builds salt and delivers it to New York

Washington
Supplies: (dye), (salt), copper
Demands: hides, beads, wine

New York
Supplies: (dye), (wine), gems

Now New York’s supply of dye has been blocked by the delivery of salt.

Event #3 – Washington builds copper and delivers it to New York

Washington
Supplies: (dye), (salt), (copper)

New York
Supplies: (dye), (wine), (gems)

The third delivery of copper blocks the final supply of New York, gems. No commodities are in supply now, so city sizes will be augmented to see what happens. For now all caravans are being built in Washington and delivered to New York to keep things as simple as possible.

Event #4 – Washington and New York reach size 3

Washington
Demands: hides, wine, silk

New York
Demands: hides, silver, silk

Nothing happened when both cities went to size two, but there were demand changes for both when they got to size 3.

Event #5 – Washington reaches size 4

Washington
Demands: hides, wine, beads

Event #6 – New York reaches size 4

New York
Demands: hides, silver, beads

Demand changes are frequent as small cities change size, and these neighboring cities show they have a lot in common. Notice how new demands are appearing in the third spot, too. At this point, I decided to stagger city growth, so both wouldn’t change size on the same turn. This would make the effects of growth easier to pinpoint.

Event #7 – Washington reaches size 5

Washington
Supplies: (dye), (salt), gold
Demands: hides, wine, silver

Gold is the first new supply in Washington, triggered (and probably also caused) by the change from size 4 to size 5. Another demand change occurs, too. Note how the first new supply popped up in the third spot of the supply list.

Event #8 – Washington builds gold and delivers it to New York

Washington
Supplies: dye, (salt), (gold)

The delivery of gold to New York triggers the re-supply of dye. This is a surprise and the cause for this new supply of dye can not be determined yet. The following passes shed a little light on why this might have happened.

Event #9 - Washington builds dye and delivers it to New York

Washington
Supplies: (dye), (salt), gold

Gold is back in supply again! This turned out to be one of those desirable alternating supply situations, since events 8 and 9 were repeated many times before Washington reached size 8, at which time the gold-dye alternation ended. Having alternations of supply available as early as size 5 is very good news, especially if it turns out that they can be pre-arranged by carefully planned builds and trades.

Event #10 – New York reaches size 5

New York
Demands: hides, silver, gold

Another demand change, also appearing in the third column. It is interesting that it is demanding gold, which was the first new supply for Washington after Washington reached size 5, earlier.

Event #11 – Washington reaches size 6

Washington
Demands: hides, wine, silk

City size changes seem to affect demands the most.

Event #12 – New York reaches size 6

New York
Demands: hides, gold, silver

This is the first unusual demand change for New York. The two existing commodities on the list, gold and silver, just switched their positions. It is hard to know what such a different kind of change in demand signifies.

Event #13 – Washington reaches size 7

Washington
Demands: silk, wine, silver

Another departure from the usual. Hides, which lasted a long time in position 1 of the demand list, is finally supplanted by silk. At the same time silver, which has been dancing with gold in New York’s demand list, turns up in position 3, where silk used to be.

Event #14 – New York reaches size 7

New York
Demands: silk, silver, gold

All three positions change, and hides also is supplanted from New York’s demand list. Once again, silk is the hitman. Silver and gold flip again!

Event #15 – Washington reaches size 8

Washington
Supplies: (dye), (salt), wool
Demands: silk, hides, silver

With so many demand changes when the two cities reached size 7, I figured something new was up for when Washington grew to size 8, and sure enough, wool has appeared as a new supply in position 3, taking the place of gold. The gold and dye alternation has ended, too, which has been repeated every turn since it started, long ago.

Event #16 – Washington builds wool and delivers it to New York

Washington
Supplies: dye, (salt), (wool)

Delivering wool triggered another supply of dye, just like the gold delivery during event 8. Another alternation?

Event #17 – Washington builds dye and delivers it to New York

Washington
Supplies: (dye), (salt), wool

Yes, and this one worked just the way the previous one did, since events 16 and 17 were repeatable until Washington reached size 11, later on. Notice that once a new supply is first revealed, such as the first appearance of gold, something new to the supply situation occurs after the city grows by 3 more citizens. In this test, new supplies were introduced for Washington when it reached sizes 5, 8 and 11. Also noteworthy is the fact that all the supply action has been centered on Washington, so far, probably an effect of the simplified one-way trading adopted for this test. New York is yet to have a new supply, only changes in demand.

Event #18 – New York reaches size 8

I was expecting something big here, but nothing happened, not even the usual demand change! But in a way, no change at all is in itself a significant event, since demand changes came at every size change since the city had been at size 2.

Event #19 – Washington builds an aqueduct in order to go to size 9

Washington
Supplies: wine, (salt), gold
Demands: copper, dye, silver

Wholesale changes! No trades were made this turn, so the aqueduct must be the trigger. Maybe it is, but the effect was only temporary, because things went right back to the way they were the next turn when I built another caravan. This must be some sort of glitch about aqueducts, and after seeing this happen here, it reminded me of an OCC game where I noticed two “new” supplies after building an aqueduct. My poor OCC city had been stuck on food for awhile, so I jumped at the chance to build something else by rushing a caravan. The next turn only food was available! Well, to return to this test, a few turns later I built another aqueduct in New York, and the same thing happened: wholesale changes and even the first new supply for that city. However, after a caravan from Washington was delivered, the supplies and demands returned to their previous settings, making it another false alarm.

Event #20 - Washington grows to size 10

Washington
Demands: silk, silver, hides

Another demand change. No changes occurred when going from size 8 to size 9 earlier.

Event #21 – New York grows to size 10

New York
Demands: silk, gold, silver

Ditto.

Event 22 – Washington grows to size 11

Washington
Supplies: (dye), (salt), gold
Demands: silk, wine, hides

After three more citizens have been added the wool-dye alternation comes to an end. Gold comes back as the next new supply, which appears again in the third position. This supply change is accompanied by a change in demand, too.

Event 23 – Washington builds gold and delivers it to New York

Washington
Supplies: dye, (salt), (gold)

It looks like the gold-dye alteration is back again.

Event 24 – Washington builds dye and delivers it to New York

Washington
Supplies: (dye), (salt), gold

It is, and it does continue this way until New York reaches size 11. Events 23 and 24 are repeatable, setting in motion the third cycle of alternating supply.

Event 25 – New York grows to size 11

New York:
Supplies: (dye), (wine), cloth

Well, well, well! New York gets its first new supply, which is cloth. At this time, I decided to break from one-way trading and built a caravan in New York, as well as the usual one in Washington.

Event 26 – Washington builds a dye and delivers it to New York and New York builds a cloth and delivers it to Washington right afterwards.

Washington
Supplies: (dye), (salt), gold

New York
Supplies: (dye), wine, (cloth)

Washington’s gold-dye alteration continues and what turned out to be New York’s cloth-wine alternation begins. A very nifty dual alternation came into being. However, this relationship was quite fragile, since the sequence of deliveries on following turns did have an effect on re-supply, in some cases causing a block to one of the alternations, and in some cases re-supplying the same commodity two or more times in a row. In the future, I plan to test for the optimal sequence of deliveries, to make the most out of this dynamic of dual alternation. I concluded pass #1 of the first test here.

The next step was to try and repeat pass #1 using the cheat menu to speed up the process of changing city sizes. This worked, with duplicate results. In fact, I found out two more things while changing city sizes this way. One, was that aqueducts were not needed for sizes above 8 when cheating. Two, it was possible to skip over sizes where events had occurred that had changed demand or supply, yet duplicate the supply and demand situation for a city at the size selected. For example, after Washington had delivered it first three caravans, I could immediately set its size to 5 and observe the identical supply and demand lists I had seen after an orderly progression through intervening sizes. I found that I could even go back to a previous city size, causing a reset to occur of the supply and demand lists originally observed at that size! It appears that the link between city sizes and these lists is a very strong one, and possibly city size is the primary cause of these changes, and that all other events simply function as triggers. If this turns out to be true, testing will be simplified quite a bit.

Since this post is now quite lengthy and was promised a few days ago, I will terminate it here. The five remaining passes of the first test will be summarized in the next post.

[samson]

Solo,

You should be aware that revealing the map via the cheat menu very often changes the supply and demand of cities. This may invalidate some of your testing.

[solo]

samson,

That is very possible, and I will be trying an actual game next in an attempt to duplicate the alternations observed in this test, by attempting the same sequence of trades. Even more than revealing the map, I'm afraid that my terrain changes might be another source of trouble. We shall see.

If the test are only partially valid, they may still reveal some of the underlying mechanisms at work governing supply and demand. Further results of this test follow:


TEST #1: Additional passes

Five more passes were made, to test the different sequences of the opening three trades. Only the events where changes occurred will be noted:

Pass #2

As in pass #1, Washington built a dye caravan first and delivered it to New York, but switched the order of the following two builds and deliveries:

Event #2 – Washington builds copper and delivers it to New York

Washington
Supplies: (dye), salt, (copper)

Event #3 – Washington builds salt and delivers it to New York

Washington
Supplies: (dye), (salt), (copper)

This switch did not produce any changes in supply or demand during all of the following events. Results were identical to those of the first pass.

Pass #3

This time the sequence started with salt:

Event #1 – Washington builds salt and delivers it to New York

Washington
Supplies: dye, (salt), copper

Event #2 – Washington builds dye and delivers it to New York

Washington
Supplies: (dye), (salt), copper

Copper was built and delivered last, with the same results as in the first pass.

Event #8 – Washington builds gold and delivers it to New York

Washington
Supplies: (dye), salt, (gold)

A new supply of salt is triggered rather than a supply of dye as in the first two passes.

Event #9 – Washington builds salt and delivers it to New York

Washington
Supplies: (dye), (salt), gold

As in the first and second passes, an alternation of supply begins, but this time it is between gold and salt instead of between gold and dye. Similarly, salt took the place of dye in following events initiating a wool-salt alternation at size 8 and another gold-salt alternation at size 11. However, there were not any changes to any of the events causing a change in demand or to event #25, when New York went to size 11.

Pass #4

This sequence also started with salt, but copper was built and delivered during event #2 and dye came last in event #3. The remaining events produced the same changes in supply and demand that occurred during Pass #3. Again the three alternations featured salt instead of dye, when Washington went to sizes 5, 8, and 11.

Pass #5

Event #1 – Washington builds copper and delivers it to New York

Washington
Supplies: dye, salt (copper)

Event #2 – Washington builds dye and delivers it to New York

Washington
Supplies: (dye), salt, (copper)

Event #3 – Washington builds salt and delivers it to New York

Washington
Supplies: (dye), (salt), (copper)

Now it’s copper’s turn to go first, and if things happen the same way, one would be expecting copper to have its turn in the three alternations that follow, but that did not happen.

Event #8 – Washington builds gold and delivers it to New York

Washington
Supplies: (dye), (salt), (gold)

That was it. One gold delivery and no alternation at all. The same thing happened for Washington, when wool came into supply during Event #16. After the first wool caravan was built and delivered, all of Washington’s supplies became blocked. Ditto at Event #22 when gold returned. So instead of 3 sets of alternations at city sizes 5, 8 and 11, Washington only produced 3 single trades. New York’s alternation of cloth and wine, beginning later at event #25 was not effected, though.

Pass #6

The last opening sequence was tested in this pass, with gems leading the way in Event #1, followed by salt second and dye coming last. As expected, results were identical to those of pass #5. A likely explanation for the failure of Passes 5 and 6 to produce alternations is the fact that the new supplies of gold, wool, and gold at sizes 5, 8 and 11 all appeared in the third position of Washington’s supply list, removing gems from the picture and blocking it as the alternation partner. If it’s not there, it can not participate.

The results from these 6 passes suggest a few tentative conclusions and/or trading rules regarding supply and demand:

1) Changes in city size can cause changes in commodity supply. Once a new supply occurs, another can be expected when the city grows by 3 more citizens, and then another when an additional 3 citizens have been added.

2) Changes in city size can cause and trigger changes in demand.

3) The sequence of early trades is important in determining whether alternations become available later on.

4) The commodity chosen for the first trade will be the alternation partner for the first new supply.

5) New supplies or demands tend to appear in the third position of their lists.

6) Trade one of the commodities in position 1 or 2 of the supply list before the one appearing in the third position.

More testing will follow, the next logical choice being to make another 6 passes, but switching the roles of the two cities. There was enough consistency observed during the first six passes to predict exactly what will happen, but at this time it might be helpful to make use of the excellent start provided by SG, and play a real game using it, in an attempt to duplicate the alternations observed during this test, by attempting the same sequence of trades.

[Scouse Gits]

Wow ... solo, impressive testing and excellent posts.

Some time ago when there was a discussion on cities with a repeating Hides supply, I recall Xin saying that you should never use Hides as your first choice for a trade route. The order in picking the commodities does seem important.

Most of my civ is on large worlds and I have found it important to keep building new cities throughout the game as the new ones are often suppliers of prized commodities like Silk/Oil/Uranium.

As humans we take great care to found our cities using the maxiumum number of specials available...unlike the AI that builds one tile off the optimum site. When such cities have been captured I have noticed that their supply of commodities seems better than the "perfect" human cities. Initially this is down to the fact that the AI does not build freights as often as humans, but after establishing three routes the commodities (both supply and demand) can appear more plentiful. Perhaps there is some inverse relationship between terrain specials and supply/demand commodities?

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SG(2)

[samson]

The delivery of gold to New York triggers the re-supply of dye. This is a surprise and the cause for this new supply of dye can not be determined yet.

It's because you've replaced an existing trade route and thus freed up Dye. Your post does not include the trade-routes information which is critical to understanding the resupply phenomenon. See Xin Yu's post on resupply in the GL. As I mentioned in the commentary on my 16AD game, continual commodity availability hinges on getting a fourth commodity in a timely fashion and using this to replace an existing trade route. Once you've got this set up correctly, you can go on almost indefinitely, resupplying and delivering caravans to a partner city. It gets more complicated with multiple cities and when switching from one trading partner to another.

[solo]

samson,

You are right about the trade route info being important and thanks for pointing out how re-supply occurs when replacing an existing route with the delivery of a newly supplied commodity. I failed to make that connection, but I did keep track of trade route changes and will provide a summary here, since I did omit doing so in the original posts:

The first three deliveries in each pass created the three initial trade routes for each city, with the routes appearing in the order of commodity deliveries. During my tests only the first trade route in Washington was replaced by the delivery of the new commodities during events 8, 16 and and 23, when the deliveries of gold, wool and gold replaced the trade routes initally created by dye in passes 1 and 2, salt in passes 3 and 4, and copper in passes 5 and 6. Similarly, the new supply of cloth appearing in New York during event 25, supplanted the original trade route created when wine was blocked (and selected for trade route #1 in New York) by event #1 deliveries.

During alternations, whatever had been delivered last took up residence as Washington's first trade route, freeing up another supply of its alternating partner, which when delivered would be listed as the first trade route, after which the alternation continued until interrupted by another event. I should also clarify that after event #3, all deliveries from Washington to New York only changed Washington's first trade route. New York's first trade route did not change until it event 26, when it built cloth and delivered it to Washingtron.

SG,

I am still very tentative about what was observed during the first test. Samson's point is well taken. Any use of the cheat menu, when conducting tests may very well taint the results with invalid information.

Thanks again, for providing that start with Trade. I'll get started with that test game.

solo

[Elephant]

Solo, are you experimenting with the ORDER in which you build caravans (esp if Hides is first), and the ORDER in which you deliver them? There might be something there...

I am (trying to!) work on how a city's initial three commodity options are determined, and what events trigger or cause changes to those commodity options. There are both demand and supply issues involved, and I have noticed reciprocal trade routes pop up at wierd times. I am pretty sure there is a random component to some of this (from saved game restarts) but there is the element of what the other civs are doing that I am not aware of. Samsons post about cheat mode changing things made me go back and reconsider some things that happened in tests where I used Cheat to get Trade early or "gift" some settlers. I'm trying to run some basic "honest" games with multiple saves and restarts, duplicating moves and logging commodity lists. Lots of documentation! Looks like you are having fun too...

[samson]

Re: CHEAT MODE.

Specifically what I have seen is that using the cheat menu's Reveal Map command often causes changes in supply and demand in many, if not all, cities. This may in itself be a clue about what factors affect the commodities a city supplies. However, until this effect is better understood, be cautious about drawing conclusions from tests using this feature.

[solo]

Elephant,

I am investigating the effects of city size in conjunction with the order of commodity deliveries.

In my current game, using SG's start with Trade, I am playing "honestly", and probably long enough now to conclude that supply and demand changes do NOT follow the patterns I observed earlier in tests using cheat mode. For example, so far in my game, no supply or demand changes have occurred yet, during the turns that cities changed their size. This happened very often with the cheat mode tests. With one city at size 8 now, and the other at size 5, all of my supply and demand changes in this "honest" game have come on other turns, instead.

However, I have confirmed in one case of re-supply, that this could be postponed by going back to a previous save, and making changes that delayed the growth of the city in question.

So for now I'm just sticking with "honest" games, saving them every turn, and using reloads and partial replays to test the effects of any changes.

My plan now is to start another game using MGE, using the hotseat feature so that I can play and observe every civ, and hopefully learn more about the trade mechanism by "knowing" what everyone is doing.

[Elephant]

I was suspecting something with the Cheat mode/Reveal Map, but had not done enough direct comparison yet. Tossed a pile of logs after realizing that one. Sigh.

Perhaps there is an element to how many times a particular cities is "checked", like a random number that says "if anyone checks the city X number of times, through Trade Advisor or whatever, trigger a commodity change"? That would be sneaky!

[solo]

Test with a civ having Trade at the start

Using the start provided by SG, I built just two cities, in an attempt to mimic the events in the test where cheat mode was used to manipulate events quickly.

At first, city growth was purposely held back a bit, so that London had time to build and deliver three caravans, of silk, dye and cloth to York, which resulted in the following trade displays for the two cities:

London

Supplies: (silk), (dye), (cloth)
Demands: hides, silver, wine
York silk +0t
York dye +0t
York cloth +0t

York

Supplies: (silk), (gems), (dye)
Demands: hides, wines, beads
London gems +0t
London silk +0t
London dye +0t

This was all done before either city reached size 3. So far, events were similar to those of the first pass of the first test in cheat mode, with all supplies exhausted and with all three trade routes for both cities established.

Shortly after, both cities reached size 3, with London doing it first. At this point, similarities to the cheat mode test ended, since no changes in demand or supply occurred.

So the game continued, letting the two cities continue to grow. A few turns after London grew to size 4, it had a change in demand:

Demands: hides, silver, beads

Beads replaced wine on London’s demand list, appearing in the third position of the list. The appearance of new commodities in the third position of lists was also observed repeatedly in the cheat mode test. England’s cities were not in the best locations for growth, so many turns went by before London reached size 5. One unusual event noted during this period was that York’s trade picture changed temporarily, since after it built a temple, I zoomed to York, and observed:

York

Supplies: (silk), (gems), salt
Demands: dye, hides, wine
London gems +0t
London silk +0t
London dye +0t

A new supply of salt and a complete change to the demand list seemed to occur. However, as in building an aqueduct, in the cheat mode test, this was only an illusory change, since things returned to their former state immediately upon re-entering York’s city window. Since I had been saving the game after each turn, I decided to go back and change my build from a temple to a barracks, just to see if the same thing would happen, and it did. I wish I had had a dye or wine caravan nearby, to see what would have happened demand-wise, if I had attempted to deliver it before re-opening York’s city display. Would the commodity have been in demand, and would this delivery have altered York’s trade situation?

In any event, the game continued, and while exploring with a diplomat and a trireme, I happened to trigger an advanced tribe from a hut shortly after London reached size 5. This new city, Nottingham displayed:

Supplies: beads, silk, hides
Demands: wool, wine, gems

Though nothing was happening with London or York, the next turn brought some changes to Nottingham’s display:

Supplies: beads, gems, hides
Demands: wool, wine, dye

Shortly after this, the Zulu’s declared war and destroyed Nottingham with an elephant. In the meantime, York was able to complete Marco Polo’s, which provided information about the other civs. At this point, I noticed that none of them had acquired trade yet.

Finally, a few turns before York turned size 4, a new supply appeared, which was salt:

Supplies: (silk), (gems), salt

As in the cheat mode the new supply appeared in the third position of the list, but this time it was the city that received the 3 initial caravans getting a new supply first, rather than the city that had done the initial building and delivery. It was interesting to see that salt was the same new supply as had appeared in the false change in the York’s trade picture when York completed its temple earlier in the game. However the demand list did not change, as in the earlier event.

With nothing better to do at this point, York built a salt caravan and delivered it to London, changing York’s display as follows:

Supplies: (silk), gems, spice
Demands: hides, wine, gold
London salt +0t
London silk +0t
London dye +0t

No changes occurred for London. As expected, the delivery of salt released gems from trade route number 1, creating a re-supply. Spice appeared in the third position of the supply list, replacing salt. A demand change also occurred, with gold replacing beads.

At this point, an alternating supply situation was available, since if a gems were built and delivered next, it would replace salt in the first trade route. Then spice could be built and delivered, triggering another re-supply of gems. So a gems caravan was built next.

In the meantime, London had completed an aqueduct, which produced another false display when I zoomed to the city:

Supplies: (silk), beads, gold
Demands: dye, silver, hides

Again, many changes that disappeared just as soon as I re-examined the city. One interesting thing of note, is that this had NOT happened when London built a temple, so I was left to wonder why and when this weirdness happens, since I had been careful to use the “zoom” option after every building had been completed. How come York’s temple (or barracks) made this happen, earlier, when nothing changed when London built its own temple?

To continue, after York built gems and delivered it to London, the alternation was established between spice and gems:

Supplies: (silk), (gems), spice
Demands: hides, wine, gold
London gems +0t
London silk +0t
London dye +0t

After this the first spice caravan was built and delivered to London, and a few turns later the following changes appeared in London:

Supplies: (dye), beads, gold
Demands: hides, silver, wine
York silk +0t
York dye +0t
York cloth +0t

Note how the new supplies of beads and gold were “previewed” by the false display after London’s aqueduct was built, just as York’s false display of salt after building a temple was “confirmed” later when salt actually appeared. This may end up being just a coincidence, but may also become a useful predictive tool of the future supply situation of any city.

Anyways, by this time, London had reached size 7 and York was still at size 4. Once the beads and gold became available in London, both cities were able to sustain alternating supply for as long as this test was continued. I decided to stop in 1650 AD, many turns later. This was a very desirable situation, but early growth had been so slow, that the game was already well into the AD years by the time this dynamic relationship got going. By this time, the English were solidly in last place in most other aspects of the game!

Before abandoning this game, I decided to try a few replays to see if playing differently would influence how the appearance of new supplies worked. London’s supplies had been blocked until the year 740 AD, when beads and gold appeared shortly after a delivery of the first spice caravan from York. I tried a lot of different things in replays, such as different builds, or different timing of caravan deliveries from York, but beads and gold always showed up in London in 740 AD. Finally, I went back far enough, back to the year 560 or so, where I was able to delay the growth of London to size 7, which had originally occurred in 600 AD. I delayed this event by about 5 turns, and sure enough, this resulted in the delay of the appearance of beads and gold. I was also able to cause a further delay by purposely postponing the delivery of gems from York to London, during one of the replays delaying London's growth to size 7.

So, although this test did not confirm any of the seemingly direct and/or immediate affects city size changes and caravan deliveries were producing in cheat mode tests, these replays do suggest that city growth and timely deliveries are necessary to obtain new supplies. Since it also took a very long time for supply and demand changes to appear in this game, it may be perhaps be surmised that this was due to the slow growth England experienced.

Some other similarities observed with the previous cheat mode tests were in how new commodities appeared on the supply and demand lists, after the first three trades. In both tests, the city getting the first new supply was able to begin an alternating cycle as long as the initial trades were made in one of the “right” orders. In addition, when a new supply finally appeared for the other city, a dual alternation was set up between the two cities.

At this point, I am trying an MGE hotseat game, where I am playing all the civs, and can observe all the supplies and demands that are in effect. Keeping track of these, as they gradually change, will be a bit time-consuming, since I’m hoping to record all events, in an attempt to isolate which are significant, and which are not. This may end up being like those high score record attempt games, i.e. endless, so I’m hoping samson solves all of this within the next few days, so I can get back to having some fun, which is just playing this game.