Poll: Do you want CtP-like Trade Routes?

[Mannamagnus]

Yes, Great Idea!

[candybo]

Originally posted by Martinus Magnificus
My idea is to make trade routes visible a la CtP 2 (for example by a moving merchant vessel), with a slider bar in the trade menu where you can set the level of protection for your trade vessels/wagons. The idea is to make you pay more for better protection (gold/shields per turn). This way, you wouldn't have to move units across the map to protect your trade routes, while on the other hand your subs and privateers can actually start hunting for enemy (or friendly!) merchant vessels, and finally have the role they should have.

Now how about that?

Sounds doable, if in need of refinement. And how would that affect YOU attacking AI routes? How would you know how much strength to bring? How would it work with MP? Sounds like a good concept, though..

[Dinner]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Tiberius
If you are thinking "public works" then: NO NO NO, please no! The workers are the last civilian (or non-military) unit left in the game. [/quote[

The public works idea is ten times better then Civ3's tedious worker micromanagement. Time saving improvements such as this is why CTP2 makes a great MP game while Civ3 will be handycapped from the get go. There is so much more micromanagement in Civ3 compared to CTP2 that each turn will be much longer. Who wants to sit around waiting for seven other players to click and move twenty different workers? Automating helps some what but you still have to sit and wait for each one to move individually and you have less control of what is built where then in CTP2.

The only advantage of the CTP2's trade system was the fact that you could pirate the trade lines. Exactly that advantage turned out to be the most annoying as the AI continuously pirated my trade routes. No, thanks.

Like in real life you have to go out and stop pirates from attacking shipping. With the Apolyton pack you can often get the AI to stop by threatening them with war if they don't stop their piracy.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Didymus
The way piracy work in CtP2was awful ... build caravans, get money for 2 turns, then hand it all over to the strongest sea power. Not my cup of tea.
Come to think of it, trade in CtP2 sucked, period.

You could always try to use diplomacy to stop the piracy and if that didn't work then you can go to war. If you don't bother to build a strong military then yes the AI will pimp you like a cheap whore but then that would be the player's fault and not the AI.

[hzm]

I want trade routes. I want SMAC style trade relations. I don't want caravans. I want a domestic and foriegn food and sheild trade system. I want to trade resources with the ai (not 2000 gold per turn and 2 resources for the other guys 1 resource, a fair 1 resource for 1 resource). I want trade to make up a serious % of a civs income.

But perhaps there could be some sort of automatic resource trade (I would want this to depend on a civs economic system but asking for social engineering is sort of off-topic) and you could impose tariffs which would boost your industrial capacity but make other civs angry.

[AlecTrevylan00]

this is my view. For two cities to be in contact, you have little boats move between them. They can be destroyed by regular units to starts a war, or destroyed by privateers and subs to get their goods and no war

When a boat arrives, it leaves enough supplies for X time (based on city size) and your port cities connected to your capital will automatically send new ones out often enough so that there will be a large overlap.

That way, if you block off a small body of water, trade cannot be conducted.

And in war or peace you can go and destroy trade routes to control goods (uranium in late game)

And these little units are automated, nobody controls them. They try to avoid privateers, but cant see submarines

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by hzm
I want trade routes. I want SMAC style trade relations. I don't want caravans. I want a domestic and foriegn food and sheild trade system.

This is close to what I'd like to see in civ3. (XP2?)
I don't remember exactly, was it in SMAC or MOO where after you signed a trade treaty a few gold per turn started to flow automatically.
This is how I see it:
- first, there must be a Peace Treaty in order to do anything else, that's obvious
- then, you could sign a Trade Treaty, which would give you a steady income every turn (but not too high). After all, trading means trading a lot of things, not only raw materials and jewelry. The better the ralations, the more gold would flow.
- when you had the Trade Treaty, you could trade for additional resources/luxuries

Some kind of naval blocade would be nice, too. However I'm not sure about the mechanism that should be used.

I want to trade resources with the ai (not 2000 gold per turn and 2 resources for the other guys 1 resource, a fair 1 resource for 1 resource). I want trade to make up a serious % of a civs income.

This is indeed quite annoying. I tried to obtain one time a luxury and offered in exchange 2 other luxuries and a horse, and the AI civ was insulted! They wanted also some high-tech a had. As if!

[Adagio]

I just got another idea:

This idea changes some of the aspects in the game...

There's 3 different types of harbors:

Harbor
Advanced Harbor (Couldn't find a better name )
Mordern Harbor (Still couldn't find a better name )

Harbor:
-ALL coastal cities can build it
-Adds ONE food per water square

Advanced Harbor:
-1 out of 4 coastal cities can build it
-Requires Harbor
-Adds one more food per water square (+2 food in all, because of the Harbor)
-Makes it possible to trade luxuries, etc. (Gives ONE trade line*)

Modern Harbor:
-1 out of 3 coastal cities w/ Advanced Harbor can build it
Requires Harbor and Advanced Harbor
-Adds one more food per water square (+3 food in all, because of the Harbor and advanced Harbor)
-Makes it possible to trade luxuries, etc. (Gives FIVE trade lines*)


*Trade Line: To be able to recieve/send luxuries, etc, you need a free trade line PER luxury/strategic recurce. When an advanced habors tradeline is used, it can't be used again, until the other trade agreement has been stopped. No trade line is required for trading between your own cities

To make it more strategic, there should be some "trade lines" (Ala CtP1/2, but they can't be pirated**). The computer automaticly finds the shortest line for the trade line (Between the two cities that is trading). The person who makes the deal, has to pay 1 gold/turn for each 5 squares the trade line is. That gold just dissapears (The other player doesn't get the gold)

**If it should be possible to pirate, then pirating should be an act of war (Which makes privateers more usefull)

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Hi ADG,

You make some very good points! I guess though, that I should clarify a few things!

1) There should be some way of limiting the total number of trades you can have going at one time. Perhaps if you have harbours for trade across seas and oceans, and "trading posts" (or even marketplaces!) for trades which are limited to the same land mass (like your harbour idea, ADG, perhaps you can have 3 levels of trading posts).

2) I do agree with the "trade-lines" idea, and I do think that CtP got at least THIS PART right!

3) I believe that trade-lines should be invisible to all civs but the trading partners, but that it should become visible if it comes within "visual range" of another civs unit(s)

4) Privateers and Subs should get a bonus to their "Visual range" for seeing a trade route (should be a flag, so you can potentially add it to ground units!)

5) Should be two seperate actions: Pirating and blockade. Pirating does not break a trade route, but blockading does! (alternatively, pirating should have a chance of breaking a trade route, if done on conecutive turns)

6) Both of the actions in 5) should use up all the remaining movement a unit has, so that the unit can only perform one such attempt/turn.

7) "trade lines" should have a strength, which determines the chance of a successful blockade/pirating attempt. If such an attempt fails, then the unit half it's current hit points, making an attempt dangerous! The strength of a "trade-line" could be determined by either tech level (each new naval tech increases the strength of new and existing trade-lines) or by the slide bar method suggested by Martinus.

8) A pirating or blockade attempt (successful or not) will provoke a war, unless performed by any unit with a "hidden nationality" flag.

Anyway, I hope this helps to clarify my own position.

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.