DESIGN: Trade

[Maquiladora]

What about changing Gold benefits to Commerce straight away. Altering Trade should be not just design, because Trade isnt even worth 1 Caravan in the vanilla patched game and the AI builds Caravans. Obviously disabling the AI building Caravans is a cop out, better to make it useful.

Id consider this a fix for Trade to put out along side, unit/building/pw/wonder rebalancing, that sort of thing, and ill leave the grand designs for later to someone else

Good, bad idea? Got a better one?

BTW i searched for Trade threads in this forum and didnt find any, i think it got lumped in another thread i forgot.

[MrBaggins]

Sure. In the midst of working, I've been jotting down a few notes. Trade and gold rebalancing has been a part of that.

Heres the concept I've been thinking of so far.

In the trade db a couple fields are added (and the name of one field changed for consistancy)

GoldValue
ShieldValue
FoodValue

This forms the basis for the value of a good. A city with a good in its radius, which isn't trading it, adds these values to its gross food, shields and (gross) gold.

Thats basically a GoodMod effect, but would be implemented in the game.

If the good is sent internally in the civ, to another city, then these values get multiplied by a trade coefficient.

The trade coefficient is...

sqrt({distance in tiles *100}/{travel distance [I](in 100's)[/I]}) * sqrt({distance in tiles *100}/{max empire size})

with a minimum value of 1.

then is multiplied by {[I]internaltradecoef[/I]}

[I]internaltradecoef[/I] would be a new coefficient in govern.txt, just for the purpose of calculating (internal) 
trade values per government.

I.E. Say a city is sending a good to a city 40 tiles away, 
fully railroaded (and railroads had a move value of .2), 
the maxempiredistance for its government was 2000, 
and the internaltradecoef was 1.25

That would calculate as sqrt(800/4000) * sqrt
(4000/2000), which calculates to a multiplier of 3.16, 
which would then be mulplied by the internaltradecoef 
of 1.25, for a final coef of 3.95.

Thus the value of the the good would be multiplied by 
3.95 for the purposes of this internal trade... of course, 
caravans would still need to be built, etc.)

The receiving city gains 3/4's of each of the trade's net values (food, shields and gold), rounded down. The remainder is kept by the sending city.

Thus you can implement food and shield caravans... included in the trade system.

---

If the trade is international, that is, between different civs, the system is almost the same, with a few slight differences...

The first is that a different government trade coefficient is used... foreigntradecoef

The second is that the sending city (I.E. you) gets 3/4's of the trade's net values, and the destination city (I.E. them) gets 1/4. Thus trade is mutually beneficial, but still overwhelmingly biased to the good owner.

Lastly, and most importantly, 'gold' is treated as commerce rather than just gold, for both parties.
---

Regarding gold rebalancing

Gold will never be important without a use. Currently its not very useful; its main use is construction through rushing, which can be achieved as about as well in other ways, and in diplomacy which is pretty marginal at best. City improvement maintainance is negligable.

Other ways gold could be used (should in my view)

• Introduce unit updating (ala Updater2, but integrated)
• Proportional City Improvement costs (so upkeeps should include optionally upkeep_gold_per_pop)
• Introduce TI upkeep costs

[Martin Gühmann]

I faviour a different method to implement, trading ressources and terrain boni.

I propose six fields:

The three existing ones:

Gold
Production
Food

Of course they can be renamed and three new ones:

TradeGold
TradeProduction
TradeFood

This way the values for terrain boni and Trade boni can be separated, if we do it is another question, but this would allow modders to change it.

-Martin

[MrBaggins]

Sounds good... although maybe a goodbonuscoef would achieve about the same thing?

In retrospect, I think that having as much flexibility in being able to alter values is the best policy.

In terms of implementing separate terrain bonuses and trade bonuses, how would that work in practice?

[MrBaggins]

Incidentally... I don't really see much point making this new trade system optional: its an extension to the existing trade system, and can largely simulate the existing system. Perhaps the only optional thing might be whether gold should be treated as commerce for just international trade, all trade, or no trade.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by MrBaggins
In terms of implementing separate terrain bonuses and trade bonuses, how would that work in practice?

You could imagine some kind of food that decay during the long way between, two cities. Of course some food decay faster, and methods to preserve food costs also some value of the food.

Of course for diffrent kind of food these values are different and actual also diffrent with differnt preservation techniques.

-Martin

[MrBaggins]

What I was referring to, was the actual calculations involved:

I mean that I've dealt with the 3 situations... untraded goods, internally traded goods and externally traded goods, with the relative value that each situation gives the host and destination city.

If you include a separate set of values for untraded goods, is it still in effect when you also trade that good? and how does that effect the values of the trading?

[Martin Gühmann]

You could completely seperate terrain boni and trade boni, so that you get the terrain boni irrespective of the fact if the good is traded. Or something could be removed from the terrain boni. Of course the trade effects should be mutual for the cities and the empire. So if one city gets some aditional food, the other city should get some gold, of course we could also introduce luxary goods that makes the people of one city happy and give the other city some gold. We see that things here are really getting complicated.

-Martin

[MrBaggins]

Yep... a little bit complicated... here's a solution:

Four structures in the goods.txt

BaseGoodBonus
{
GoldBonus
FoodBonus
ShieldBonus
HappyBonus
}

TradedGoodBonus
{
TradedGoldBonus
TradedFoodBonus
TradedShieldBonus
TradedHappyBonus
}

SentGoodCoef #each sent and received pair should equal 1
{
SentGoldCoef
SentFoodCoef
SentShieldCoef
SentHappyCoef
}

ReceivedGoodCoef #each sent and received pair should equal 1
{
RecdGoldCoef
RecdFoodCoef
RecdShieldCoef
RecdHappyCoef
}

So... the good if untraded has one value and another if traded (modified by the coef I mentioned in my first post,) and the proportions of the sent and received values can be altered... so food can be 'sold' for gold, or all the 'values' equally shared, should we wish.

This allows us to implement luxuries too...

[The Big Mc]

Maybe a dumb idea here but if we make it so that when a city makes a unit for example a tank a city with oil allows that tank to move 1 turn more for a period of five turns. Then we can use gold to buy the goods that would improve are units.

[MrBaggins]

A slight extention to the system too... renegotiation.

Another tab is displayed, showing preexisting foreign trade routes. You are allowed to "buy-out" a route by paying double what its worth to both parties. It still requires a number of caravans to form, too. The trade is revalued, given the new situation.

Your reputation with the previous "buyer" is hurt... slightly. Your reputation with the sender is possibly hurt or enhanced.

[The Big Mc]

enhanced

they think that you are loaded

[MrBaggins]

Depends if you give them a better or worse payout than the last guy did on a turn to turn basis.

I like your way of thinking though

[Martin Gühmann]

Another thing I like to have is a field for the GoodMod pilage good Improvement effect, like:

GoodRestorationTime intval

This is the time needed for restoration of the terrain boni of a good after pillage.

0 would be good can't be pillages
-1 effect would never be restored
and any other value bigger 0 gives the good restoration time in turns.

-Martin

[The Big Mc]

I would also like to see goods go out of date this would be fun for example a civ is trading with a player oil. The player discovers fuel cell technology and cancels the trade for oil. This means that the civ who was exporting oil now has to trade with a different civ for a lot less. This means that you could get big due to trade and then your empire falls apart because all your goods are out of date.

(note my new mech is nearly ready and it looks so cool)