Openciv3 - Trade

[Guildmaster]

Ok trade goods. You figure it was only a matter of time before I get you guys started thinking about what are going to have as far as trade goods...

To begin with, there are materials.
Iron
copper
silver
gold
wood
leather
lead
aluminum
helium
These and others would become available once the necessary technology is discovered to smelt them. This is handled by a materials by materials basis. However, once your civ develops atomic theory, you can compile an atomic chart, or, Periodic Table. Periodic elements (in game terms) are non major elements that are used in industrial use, but either too scarce or too unimportant to be used in game terms (like francium). Therefore At this point, others would be called the resource named "Periodic elements" or you could just call them "other." Construction resource cost on many modern equipment would require the "other" materials we're talking about, which would render automated-hover-tanks and SkyMechs out of the question for primitive civs regardless of how many shields they're producing (not that we're using shields.)

Other trade goods, food
Mostly this goes on within the confines of your empire. Vast agrarian areas like to pass excess food on to major urban sites. You can, however, buy or sell or trade or steal or give food to or from other civs. Price should be negotiated between the two.

Specialty items
As stated earlier, these items start as being unique to the origional civ. They can go to other civs, but you would always enjoy a revenue bonus because of authenticity. Listed here are some default trade specialty items, but we should leave this in a .txt file so the player can tweak them as needed.
Trinkets
Gizmos
Widgets
Doodads
Items
Thingys
Whatsits

Y'all expand on these ideas if you like

[The Joker]

Materials:

Iron and copper is ok.

Silver is not needed. It basically does the same thing as gold, so why not just have one - gold - to cover them both?

Gold and wood should of cause be included.

Leather is propably a bit far out. Is it really an important material?

Lead is also too far out.

Aluminium is great.

Helium is not very useful, so I wouldn't include it.

Other materials:

Oil
coal
uranium
stone (maybe not - can be found anywhere)
coffee? (it is one of the major trading goods of the modern world)

Besides these we need all the manufactured goods. I am not sure I think we should have widgets and gizmos. I would much rather have automobiles, clothes, gasolin, computers and such.

We would propably need several of these, but we should try to limit us to 50 or so. Of cause most of them would be traded by the people themselves, so the player wouldn't be directly involved. We would propably also need to make some generalizations, so we could have Small consumer goods as one category in stead of 20 gadgets.

[amjayee]

Joker: Yes, but in your system 1 pop meant 1000 people. So, 1000 people could eat 10 food. This is no problem. You could then give only 8 food for those 1000. Or, 10 food for 10000. It is after all only a relative figure showing how much the people get to eat. All production could be measured in "units" - for example your civ produces 10000 units of food. This would feed one million people, if the average rations are 10 units per 1000 people. The amounts could well be rounded, or we could use floating point numbers.

About the population system; I have quite good vision of it, but haven't been able to explain it very well yet. It will be one of the first things to do, yes.

Resources, materials, trading goods:

We shouldn't make the groups very specific, to keep the number under control. The total number of all items could go up to 60, but hopefully not very much higher. Notice that usually no civilization can produce all of these.

These are the raw materials we will need. They are found in deposits, and usually have only a limited supply:
iron
copper
tin (needed for making bronze)
gold (includes all valuable metals, as Joker suggested)
uranium (used for... well, you know.)
aluminium
coal
oil
methane?
rare metals (includes all other uncommon metals, used in modern world)
gems (precious stones)

Refined materials: These are basically raw materials, but are not found from the ground.

semiconductors
superconductors (in future)
ceramics (needed in space industry, electronics, etc. Might be very important in future.)
antimatter (far in future)
plastics
chemicals (Do we need to specify?)
water (in future, if fresh water supplies go very down... or demanded in dry countries)
steel
some other metal alloys perhaps?
bronze?
uranium? (refined from uranium ore)
some other refined raw materials? Perhaps mining should include also the refining effort. For some materials, you would need to build a special mine, for example.
plutonium? (refined from uranium, needed for H-bombs)
aluminium? (refined from ore, very difficult process)

These two are needed for fusion, so they might be very important in future world:
helium (or tritium)
hydrogen (or deuterium) (needed also for H-bombs)

These can be found almost anywhere:
food
wood
stone (important for large buildings, and eventhough it's found everywhere, it's hard to mine)
clay (for pottery&bricks, we could live without it, though)

These are "grown", but not anywhere:
wine
cotton
silk
coffee
spices
cocoa
tea
fruits
furs
ivory

These are produced in factories etc. They are not listed in any particualr order, I wrote them down as they popped to my head:
All unit equipment&war machines
All buildings (you could buy a nuclear plant, for example)
(These two are special - usually they are ordered in a package, and not traded regularly)

gasoline
automobiles
consumer electronics
computers
airplanes (civil aircraft)
ships (civil vessels)
software
clothes
machinery
electronics? (components)
telecommunicators
furniture?
paper
consumer chemicals? (Cosmetics etc. What would be a better word?)
explosives?
medicinery
Some biotechnical products?

Any more? I think there are around 50 of them now, so we can add some. But, if we want the game to extend into future, we need to think what people could need then...
[This message has been edited by amjayee (edited June 30, 2000).]