ECONOMICS/TRADE (ver1.0): Hosted by Pythagoras

[Pythagoras]

Here's an idea - with that autopathing-trade route idea(or any trade route). How bout this to tag onto it, after a while a road begins to appear between the 2 cities, later on in the modern age a railroad. Also perhaps shipping lanes in oceans could be created, where the ships are more safe and have a decreased chance of falling victim to random events.

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"I think you're all f*cked in the head!"
Chevy Chase-Nat'l Lampoon's Vacation.

[delcuze2]

I am willing to bet that most of us would agree that the CIV II trade model has GOT TO BE AT A VERY MINIMUM REVAMPED! If we get nothing else to Firaxis of out of this thread, I pray to the gaming gods that this one thing is changed.

IMHO anything would be better than moving individual caravans all the way across a 150 square (huge) map!

[delcuze2]

Has anyone here ever played the board game called Civilization from Avalon Hill?

I personally always enjoyed the personal interaction, dirty dealing, and diplomatic negotiations that went on at the end of every turn to maximize your civilization trade.

It is not readily apparent how such a player interaction system would work in Civ III, but I like the general ideas of

1) Having Trade tied to both diplomacy and economics.

2) Using Trade as a means of regular and meaningful player interaction.



[This message has been edited by delcuze2 (edited May 26, 1999).]

[don Don]

How about a happy medium between civ-like caravans and SMAC-like automatic trade? One aspect of this is covered in my movement proposal (see <A HREF="http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum6/HTML/000520.html">MOVEMENT (1.0)</A> and <A HREF="http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum6/HTML/000434.html">Movement Rules</A>).

Trade contacts are initially established with caravans/freights, but after the first is established have some way of using that route as a "springboard" for trade routes from other cities in your civ and/or to other cities in the other civ.

[Harel]

Let's start by saying that civ II model is totaly un-useful. It might be right along history, but it depressing. Many novice players tend to leave inner-nation trade alltoghter beacause of this.
Here it what i suggest:
A city would have a potenial trade route with every friendly city in the world. The potential level is measure by the current city size, the other city size, distance and affilation. Bigger distances would mean more income, and if the city belongs to another empire, thats another bonus alltoghter.
You build A basical unit, a caravan, merchent, trader, whatever.
You build them it stocks, you don't assign them anywhere. You can't even see them. Think as in moo2 frieghters. They are just numbers. It will then compute the most profitable city, divided by time-to-destination. Future techs would increase those speeds ( once planes are discovered, for example, they would be much faster ). The distance is a straight line ( no path-finding ), even over seas ( using your best sea speed tech ).
For example, a trade between two cities can generated 20 units of goods. Every good is worth 4 gold. ATA is 8 turns. The caravan can carry up to 10 goods, so a full run is worth: 10*4=40, generated every 8 turns to a computed worth of 5.
Big cities can support a trade of several caravans.
This would keep it technologicaly accaurte, and still useful and easy enough to use ( all automatic, just build them ) so trade would be a common thing.

[NotLikeTea]

I've always hated the CivII caravans, and never used them for anything but building wonders.

So, of course, I like the idea of caravanless trade. But since this proposal features invisible caravans, why build them at cities at all?

Why not just allocate global resources at the government screen (under economics, or something) to trade. More resource, more trade, without having to build imaginary concepts in very concrete cities.

[Pythagoras]

I have played "Age of Rennaisance" which is supposed to be a sequel or something . . . It makes me think of monopoly, where the more lands with a certain commodity you control, the more $$ you get as a whole.

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"I think you're all f*cked in the head!"
Chevy Chase-Nat'l Lampoon's Vacation.

[VaderTwo]

Ecce Homo posted an idea in the Radical Ideas thread and I thought I'd bring it here for possible discussion: Corporations as Civ Players (controlled by the AI or possibly human players). Personnally, I think the idea sounds interesting.

One problem I do have with the CivII and SMAC economies is that they were seller-driven. One possibility of including buying is by giving certain benefits to the commodities. For examples, Wood could speed up city improvement production, Metals could speed up military unit production, Horses could speed up cavalry production, Spices produce additional luxuries.

[Harel]

Pythagoras, you have to build them in cities could they give the bonus to that city alone! If the city which is traded with wants to earn also, she needs to build caravan also.
I belive that my system is the best, cause you need no unit movement, or pathfinding, both things are resource consuming...
And we need an easy to make, powerful trade, with hundreds of caravan in your empire... can have that with all of them moving and path fiding...

But my post is not about that, it's about BUDGETS.
Why not have a real budget in civ III? For example, let's take hospitel. Each one, takes lets say 2 gold per turn? Why not have an advanced budget section, when you have "Health care". Here you allocate a budget that is shared between ALL hospitels in the empire. The more money is per hospitel, the more useful it will be. The more useful is will be, the happier people will be and will live longer.
Same thing with schools ( "Education" section ), that will decide how much +% to research it gives, army which decided how useful the units will be ( a minus if support per-unit is below standard, a plus if above, etc ).
You can even have the council fight for different increase in sections.
In the realigon section, someone said that the popes ( or other big-shots ) of the religon would be like civ's inside your civ, you will need to debate with them.
Let's show up how terrible are the democartical struggle for budgeting in civ III. Each party would demand something else... This could be fun...

[yin26]

-=*MOVING THE THREAD UP*=-

[EnochF]

Harel: Cool idea! Definitely post this in the Radical Ideas thread.

I've been thinking about a complete change of strategy in late-game Civ. In higher government forms, the city-by-city approach to empire management is done away with in favor of a new, "national" system of government. Your idea would fit in perfectly! You'd have a national budget which can be siphoned off into the military, education, social programs, health care, scientific research, national projects, wonders, taxes, national "reserve" funds for rushing production or bribing the enemy, government bonds or even invest government funds in the stock market.

Cities would still produce military units, city improvements and wonders as per usual, but instead of receiving a single message for each city telling you what it built (in the late game this could be almost twenty messages in a turn), you'd talk with your government advisors at the end of the turn, and they would tell you (if you want to know) what has been built, how much this will cost, or how much extra income has been generated, etc.

[Flavor Dave]

I see a consensus that we don't like the time it takes for ancient trade. I have two thoughts.

1. A new WOW that would enhance the movement of caravans in some way. There was a great market in Ancient Africa (Timbuktu? Mali?), and you could kill two birds with one stone by adding a non-science, non-happy wonder, and adding a non-white WOW. Either caravans have 10 MPs, or can travel over water without ships, something.

2. Give explorers a new function--create trading post. It would be kind of like a combination of the airbase and a settler becoming a city. The explorer converts into a unit with a1, d3, and the trading post is a fortress. You give it a name. NOTE: you have to build it on plains or grasslands.

Anyway, you can automatically move any caravan to a trading post, as long as it is within X squares (think paradrop). You could set up a couple of them in order to get caravans from your land to China in two-three turns. Also, you can put one other military unit in the trading post. (An offensive unit to ward off sieges).

I like this change b/c it would give you reason to build explorers, is realistic, and enhances strategic options (namely, building military for the purpose of defending trade routes, rather than conquest.)

The trading post becomes obsolete with railroad, or automobile. It simply disappears, and the other military unit is "magically" teleported back home.

I like the idea of giving spies the option of destroying a trade route. Think about a big AI city with all the fixin's, losing a 10 arrow trade route. Multiply that by 1.5 a couple of times. WOW!!

I also like the idea of a relationship between trade and diplomacy. The number of trade arrows with a civ. should affect their attitude toward you, and also how much of a diplomatic penalty you get. Anything that moves us away from military conquest as a key to winning at Civ is cool.

<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by Flavor Dave (edited June 04, 1999).]</font>

[Flavor Dave]

I was told this idea should go here:

In another place and time, I made the following suggestion--there will be 3 kinds of shields. Fuel, building material, and exotics. Each square is given a value, totaling 3 points. 1-1-1 means an equal portion of each shield is fuel, building materials, and exotics. This would be equal over the whole board, but there would be concentrations in different areas--one area might be heavy in building materials, or weak in fuels.

Anyway, you would have a building advisor, who would keep track of this for your empire as a whole. Let's say your empire produced 100 shields as a whole. As long as each of the 3 elements was at least 25 (1/4), you're OK. But if you are 20-25-55, then you lose the last 20 shields of exotics (to get your lowest to 1/4 the total), and lose them in
each city in proportion to the shields produced (20 of 100 is one of every 5, so every city producing at least 5 loses one, if 10, loses 2, etc., until you've lost 20 shields).

I think this would add an element of strategy to the game, and also enhance the value of explorers. If you find your home are is weak in a certain element, you need to think about tradeoffs--conquer your pesky neighbor, or that other, nice, neighbor, who just happens to be sitting on a bunch fuel.

The random element should be similar to the terrain, where some areas have alot of mountains, but no huge mountain ranges. There shouldn't be large areas that have a huge abundance or lack of one shield type or another. That would make the luck of your starting position too important. OTOH, there should be some concentrated areas of each, for strategy's sake.

It might be simpler to triple everything--cost
in shields, and the yield too.

[croxis]

A few things....
1) Remember, don't make the learning curve too steep.
2) I like BOTH CivII and SMAC's trading systems. Automatic trade (SMAC) can
represent privet trade from privet corporations (This would be non-existent under
communistic government). The caravan system, with the initial cash, trade arrows, from
the CivII system, while adding a few extra shields to city production, will represent
government sanction trade.
3) CivIII should be a game of changing history, not following it.

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"A human imprisons one of us? Intolerable!"
-Ulkesh

[Pythagoras]

Just so you know I wont be here the next few days (be back Sunday), so Yin I guess just let the topic pass the critical mass if it does, when I get back I will summarize, make a new thread.

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"I think you're all f*cked in the head!"
Chevy Chase-Nat'l Lampoon's Vacation.