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

[Fugi the Great]

Pythagoras, nice idea, it basically does everything I'd want, but how big of a computer are we assuming this is going to run on? What speed of processor and memory needed? With all those extra units running around, won't that suck up alot of processor time and memory? I'm NOT saying my idea would use less of either, it may even use more.

Excuse me if I jumped to conclusions on this issue. It's just that when you mentioned more units moving automatically, I conjured up pictures of the really slow unit movements of CTP and even the slow High-Res 3D units of SMAC (which I set up for Lo-Res to keep me from getting bored). Since I only have a P200 with 64 megs at present, the very length of time it takes for a unit to move is fairly long (read that CTP is still slow on a PII450). Now multiply this by 25, 50, or 100 and this program is suddenly not really usable on my machine, and may need a high end machine to enjoy it. The cost of this $49.95 program is now $2400.00, just a bit high at present. Yes I will be upgrading soon, when I don't know exactly when since I need a few other expensive gadgets first. My idea may not waste as much time showing units running around, but you won't see what's really happening either, or even know what if any effect your military is doing to trade like you would with your idea. Both ideas are still going to be memory hungry though, but number crunching it what the computer does the best and fastest, especially if the human doesn't have to see the results updated on the screen all the time. Besides, memory is fairly cheap.

my 2 cents worth

[This message has been edited by Fugi the Great (edited May 20, 1999).]

[CapTVK]

I've just read through some of the suggestions for a new trading system and I already see a major flaw coming up: new micromanagement. Don't get me wrong some suggestions are good but the standard trade system in civ2 isn't so bad when it comes to micromanagement: "you sent a caravan to a city and that's it, no micromanagement whatsoever!'

Before we start replacing the old trade system maybe we should look at revamping the civ2 trade system first. Several months ago in the "suggestion for civ3 forum" I made a suggestions for an improved civ2 trade system.

My idea is keeping the caravans and trade routes but instead of just generating trade arrows these trade routes also generate shields. The number of shields supplied is affected by demand,commodities,city improvements and technology advances.

Example 1 'technology'&'city improvements' : mining coal/oil is only relatively unimportant until industralization arrives. A factory in a city with a coal resource square could receive a 10/15% production bonus.

Example 2 'commodities': A city which has no coal squares could set up a trade route with a city that has those squares, so it would receive the same bonus. We should keep in mind that cities only have 3 trade routes so that would prevent one city from setting up supply routes to all the other continents.

Example 3 'trading' : Because cities only support 3 trade routes we should have the ability to break them. My suggestion would be improving the trading screen with a map showing the routes. Once a route is broken you'll have to sent a new caravan.

Example 4 'a new role for spies': disrupting trade routes would be an excellent role for spies. A spy would have to move to a city and select 'disrupt trade route' instead of the all powerfull 'plant nuke' or 'bribe city'. The route would be out of commission for a number of turns and the city would lose the shield bonus from the trade route for those turns.

This way we keep micromanagement to a minimum and the programmers don't have to worry about an extensive trading system...

That's all for now...

[Stefu]

OK, here's my view.

The terrain system should be same as in SMAC, with one difference: warmth. Warmth doesn't affect to anything vital, but with nutrients, rockiness and altitude it decides what kind of good is the square good for producting. These goods are mostly different kinds of vegetables, livestock and minerals. For instance, you need to have warm territory to grow bananas.

Also, there are different kinds of food. Most simplistic model would include wheat, meat and fish. The thing is that citizens reproduce better if you feed them different kinds of food. These foods could be traded from one city to another to achieve the best diet for everyone. If you produce spices or fruits those help as well.

Maybe you also could get more production by combining different kinds of minerals and metals, or maybe you need them for different tasks. Granite for buildings, iron for units, gold for minting and so on.

Third category is goods or produced vegetations/minerals. These add to happiness, of course. You need to have processing plants/factories to make goods.

This would allow trade where you actually need those goods. In Civ, you didn't get anything but trade bonus for trading, for instance, coal from one city to another. Well, no you would.

[mindlace]

MERCANTILE EMPIRES/ LATER TRADE:
(and the Interaction between Diplomacy
and Trade)

First, I really like the 'automated caravans' idea of Pythagoras. 2 comments: cities that are contiguous (connected by land) and of the same civ would not have caravans. Only if they're across water or another civ would there be caravans.

MERCANTILE EMPIRES:
During this period in history, the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and English were most _definitely_ involved at a government/king level with trade. I'm learning a lot about this since I'm in Portugal.
There was a royal monopoly on trade, in fact, though they subcontracted

Anyway, I think that the 'mercantile' unit should be used to set up trade relations. The mercantile unit is treated a lot like a spy, including expulsion (for those that want to stay isolationist) except that it travels over land and sea (hopefully changing icon.) (credit to whoever mentioned that before me).

This way you can also deny trade to other Civs by 'expelling' their traders from near a Civ you want to have monopoly with.

LATER TRADE:
Once a trade route is established, the diplomatic system and the automatic system takes over. The automatic system, with moving caravans/ city-city links is as Pythagoras describes.

The diplomatic aspect (as mentioned in the Diplomacy thread) does 2 important things:
1. determines what portion of trade goes directly to the government coffers (protectionism) and what goes to improving the economy (free trade)
2. allows the players (through Embargo) to suspend trade relationships established.

However, once a trade relationship is established, it _never_ needs to be re-established.

Trade routes, as P. says, can be messed with.

Possible problems: Aren't you going to have a tremendous number of trade vessels in the modern/postmodern era? Won't it clutter the screen quite a bit? Should there be a certain point where trade vehicles go away, or should individual trade vehicles just increase in value over time (to avoid the above problem)

[mindlace]

TOO MANY TRADE UNITS SOLUTION:
If reigons are implemented, after a Civ has reigons (see OTHER) trade routes only go from reigon to reigon. If you make caravans/trade units increase in value over time instead of increasing in frequency, these two things could solve the "thousands of trade units" problem.

INCREASING NAVY VALUE:
This whole thing would drastically increase the value of a strong navy, in a historically acurate manner, which is also something I like.

NEW AUTOMATED BEHAVIOR:
to continue to intermingle threads, you could have standing orders/AI hooks for naval/land units:
Escort trade convoy.
This way, the automated trade units would be automatically covered by a military force.

[Pythagoras]

Here's a good way my model would represent history. Western trading empire A conquers all the cities that have the commodity - spice. Now automatically caravans start arriving from other western trading empires that demand spice. Like I suggested before, some cities would be taking in 1 spice from their radii, and have 2 spice routes, so the $$ gotten would be doubled for the producing civ.

Maybe we could introduce the concept of monopoly, where if you control a vast majority of a commodity, you get twice its value in trade.

Also on the tons of 3d units thing, I think caravans should be either small, 2d sprites, or not have caravans, but instead the trade route is shown as a straight line showing the fastest way to get between the cities, like CTP I've heard. Once you block the line, you pirate, toll, whatever you want to. The line should be non intrusive into the terrain.

Also, I dont know if I mentioned this, different governments could have different levels of control over there trade-

Despotism/Communism - complete control, fewest $$, more $$ for commies.
Monarchy -some control, average $$
Repub - little control, above average $$
Democ - No control (free market), tons of $$

complete control, cancel any route, anywhere, anytime.
some control -cancel 1 route a turn
little control - like cancel route every 5 turns.
no control - none whatsoever.

Also, maybe we could include the black market. Black lines represent trade with people you are at war with, or trade routes that were supposed to be cancelled, for goods in demand by your citizens . . . No $$ is gained, and only military blockage can slowly decrease the amount. Another idea - likelihood of using black market - proportional to number of discontent citizens in city of demand. Maybe the civ sending black market stuff would get TONS of mula, at the risk of detrimental relations. Or maybe we could also have illegal commodities, but thats sounding too complicated. . . any feedback?

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

[Lancer]

My post regarding market forces creating a caravan and presenting the king with the need to protect it might not be practicable.People like to manage these things and the worst Civ player could set up a better route than the AI.
It seems to me that trade carrying ships should be much harder to find on oceans thousands of mile across a hunting ship that can only see to the horizon would have a tough time finding it.It took many years for the English navy of the Napoleonic era to sweep the ocean clean of foriegn transports.Ships used for this purpose were the frigates of Civ 2.The Ship of the line of CTP were the great battleships of the day that decided the fate of nations.Frigates were also the eyes of the fleet.Why each game only has 1 of these units has me wondering if I shouldn't send a few history books to a few game companies.One bit of info they tend to overlook is that most ships of the age were not sunk.Most were captured.Of these many were taken into the service of the capturer.
It seems that much needs to be done to the trade system to make this era come to life.I would suggest curtailing the sighting area to the square the ship is on and the borders of adjacent squares which would show if those squares are land or water.If your ship attempts to move onto a square containing an enemy ship you would only then see it.If this were done there would have to be added a patrol mode to Civ 3 ala Empire Deluxe so that player could set the ship to searching back and forth and not have to do it manually.
Also transports could be set to pick up and drop off goods,hopefully raw materials included.Convoys could be assigned warships in the same manner.
Whatever is done it should be a tad less obvious than chasing an elephant across the ocean as in CTP.Also the blue line that stretches across the world would scare the living hell out of any sane merchant captain with ships of prey after him.Yo guys at CTP....HELLOOOOO,anybody home?
Lancer

[JamesJKirk]

I think that the choice to have a command economy, a free-market economy, or something in between is a great idea, but when set on total free-market, the nation's economy should waver from being really strong, to really, really bad. While the command economy would not fluctuate so much, but still only be a little under moderate growth, but it still could drop, I guess the safe road would be a mixed economy,but that wouldn't offer as much growth or happiness as the two extremes. The whole thing could be set up with a slide bar. And depending on how much control of the economy is given to the government, you can control some aspects of it.

[EnochF]

Pythagoras: great! That way, in a democracy or republic, trade routes can automatically appear between you and another civilization, usually for the maximum profit.

Now, during wartime, there would be nothing to stop businessman in your country from trading with the enemy. If they are trading with the enemy, then there will be an increase in war discontent! So, your suggestions would actually encourage democracies to remain peaceful! (And it would also discourage democracies from going to war with each other...)

[yin26]

-=*BUMP*=-

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CIV3 DEVELOPMENT LIST COORDINATOR

**(un)Officially Making Lists for Firaxis Since SMAC Enhancement 3!**

[Eggman]

Regions? Commodities and Finished Goods? Naval Blockades? Wheat, Meat and Fish? Wow, there are a lot of Imperialism fans here! Though I think Imperialism is a great game myself, remember this is supposed to be Civilization 3, not Imperialism 3.

But I guess I should throw in my two cents since the Civ2 economic model needs a major overhaul:
1) Caravans in Civ2 were the worst part of the game IMHO. This whole system needs to be a whole lot more automated than moving camels around. The less I need to fool around with it, the better. CTP's system is a step in the right direction.
2) Resist the temptation to have the trade routes appear graphically on the main screen, especially if you want all those commodities available. No matter what it will be a mess. At best, you can hope for a separate "trade map".
3) A good way to simulate the desperate need for some resources is to require the civilization to have a minimum number of key resources each turn to function at top efficiency. If they don't get what they need, they suffer some sort of penalty in an appropriate area. (Example, run short of oil in the modern age and the military weakens and if you don't have enough other energy, your production drops. If they run short of uranium, they can't build nukes or nuclear power plants). What exactly they need changes with the times. Of course, some commodities just produce cash/trade arrows (spices, jade, etc.). Using this construct, to have shortages in key resources will doom a civilization in the long run, requiring war (which makes sense since most wars are about economics).
4) Trade should be nearly fully automated. Trade, even in command economies, tends to flow in an obvious direction - from those that have more than they need to those that need it the most and can pay for it. Have the computer decide who is most profitable to trade with and do it automatically. Otherwise, you will have turns go 20 minutes by 500BC just fooling around with trade.
5) However, if you want to go with this automated system, you should be able to give it some guidelines. You should be able to tell your trade advisor to not trade a commodity under any circumstances (holding back uranium would have obvious advantages in the modern world) or to hold back some of the surplus to stockpile (in case of shortages later). You should also be able to give buy commands like "get all that you can" or "get the minimum". Embargoes and Most Favored Trading Nations should also be options. Perhaps spending limits as well.
6) If you want finished goods, let them be converted AUTOMATICALLY from raw materials and immediately sold for a profit. Make the labor force be solely a function of your population and productive capacity. No micomanaging. (True, this is cool in Imp, but in Imp economics is your main focus - not so in Civ).
7) Replace the caravan concept with the trade capacity concept. The more capacity you have the more you can trade. You can make this on a city or national basis (national is easier). (OK, this IS from Imp but it is a good idea).

Hope this helps.

[Guest]

Materials should be limited to critical minerals and fossil fuels, such as Iron, Bauxite (Aluminum), Coal, Oil, Lumber. Also Uranium and some future minerals.
These can be sold directly (for less money), or turned into consumer goods (for higher value, using Energy + Factory+Labor=Goods). Also military hardware should require access to Oil, (Steel ???) etc..

[Pythagoras]

I suggest the commoditties stay the same as in Civ II, just implement them differently.

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

[NotLikeTea]

I heard something interesting on the radio today.

Of the top 100 economies in the world today, 49 of them are countries, and 51 of them are corporations. Walmart has a larger economy that Holland. Mitsubishi is the 21st largest economy in the world (1-20 are countries). Ford is bigger than Saudi Arabia.

How could this ever be modelled? Similarly, what about the increasing globalization of economies, with the decreasing powers of nations? It's a major factor in history today, but very hard for a game...

[Pythagoras]

Here's a good discussion question - in relation to past trade/economic schemes which of the following (or make your own hybrid) is best? What could/should(not) we take from each to improve Civ's trade/economic model?
-SMAC
-CTP
-MOO II
-RR Tycoon II
-Colonization
-Civ II
-Imperialism
plus any other Civ-type games you can think of.

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