Commodities List

[Dom Pedro II]

Tonic, the whole point of the Elephant and Horse commodities is because elephants and horses aren't found worldwide. I was rather irritated by the fact that on a World Map, the Americans and Sioux were building horse and elephant units when the Americas don't even have them. So in this game, to build either of those units, you need a supply of horses or a city next to a horse terrain or ranch. (The reason for the ranch is that otherwise horses would only be available to a civilization on the Asian steppe.)

And also about the terrain specials. I never actually said it because I thought it was assumed, but each of the naturally occuring commodities has its own terrain special. Only wood, fish, clay, and stone don't because they are found almost everywhere in their own terrain types. The others are harder to come by, and some are only found in certain parts of the world.

By the way, I still need a means of containing the production of consumer and electronic goods if anyone has any suggestions...

[chrispie]

Okay, these commodities are all very good, but what about us poor Brits?

In Ye old days..before Coal and Oil we had errm well not much. No horses=No cavalry...No iron=No infantry. See the problem is the fact that we don't have -huge- big supplies of things, but we do have them. How would that be represented? On a map even 5 times the size of the Civ2 ones, it'd still be unrealistic to put any resources in the UK. I think maybe cities themselves produce small amounts of random(?) commodities...otherwise a nation could die very very quickly.

[Dom Pedro II]

crispie, Britain will at least have Iron, Wood, Fish, and Clay. Those are very important resources in the beginning. the British on a world map, they would have to depend heavily on infantry, catapults, and the navy. That has always been the British strongpoint. But for cavalry, you'd have to wait for the Russians to take horses, the French or Germans to acquire them, and then you'd get them. I don't know how a civ would gain the right to build such facilities without having a city with the original resource. Maybe you'd have to buy the rights or steal some specimens??

For the rest of the resources, the Brits will have to do it the ol' fashion way, Conquest. Take those little resource rich places.

I think that some of the first primary resources should be generated from cities regardless of where they are, but the problem is that it makes blockades and sieges less effective. Maybe it should only be 1 unit of each important resource per turn. And they have to be global resources.

[Stuff2]

About the market.

I just want to point out that in developed countries
a big part of the 'goods' are actually services (like getting a haircut). And not to forget that in a totally capitalistic system even education and health care are made for profit.

Also, about raw materials and complex products:
The rich world has got much of our richness beacouse we bought raw materials (and components) sheap from poor countries and sold advanced products , to a high prize, to the poor countries. Nowdays we buy labour sheap and sell expertice for a high prize.

If civ3 ever will have a realistic economic model this has to be represented in some way.

It follows this pattern:

- Natural reasource
- Manufactured reasource
- Manufactured good
- Services

I'll give an example to show what I mean:

- Wood
- Paper (is made of wood)
- Books (is made of paper)
- Education (A service that usually use books)

Personally I think having alot of different categorized 'goods' will make civ3 way too complex.
But it would be great if it could be implemented on a more abstract level. I just don't know how.

[chrispie]

Been playing Imperialism 1 the past few days, and I have to say I -love- the market based idea...even though the game has some major flaws (I lost all my ships-of-the-line when they became obsolete? huh?)

Anyway...If kept within certain boundries of simplicity, I think it could really work for Civ3..as long as it's balanced so that a nation not having one resource would kill it (except maybe for food and wood ). And, obviously if a nation doesn't have a resource, it can steal it from others or maybe even....trade it!