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Lancer
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Oregon Coast, USA! or Bohol, Philippines!
Apr 1999
time: 05:37
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Consider the vast $ made in human history on the profits from a single ship of spice, or a treasure fleet from central america or the Philippines. A risk, certainly. Pirates, foriegn ships traveling under letters of marque, as well as nations with whom you are at war. Your hopes pinned on a roll of the dice! Consider the Spanish treasure fleet from the new world that Spain was waiting for before they would declare against the Brits and join the dark forces of the evil Boney! The Spanish based their whole economy on huge inflows of gold from their far flung empire and on the fleet was years worth of operating expenses for their empire. They were addicted to this great wealth from abroad. When the Brits discerned their intentions and took the fleet in a sharp ship to ship action, the repercussions for the Spanish and the French were terrific, while the Brits got a major shot in the arm, though they screwed the ship captians out of their prize money, the greedy bastards.
There's something about secretly working a ship across the face of the world, threading it through the hazards of storm, sea and enemy to bring it home...I just think it would be fun.
Btw, it is MUCH too easy to see ships at sea. The whole thing should be reworked so that only if the opposing ship attempts to move into the very same square you are on can you see each other, until the advent of radar anyway.
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Proteus_MST
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The trading system should be reworked.
You should be able to use ships as privateers (and not only the privateer-unit of Civ 3), but any military ship.
After all, even in WW2 subs and other ships where sent out to capture and/or sink enemy freighters.
But the enemy should be able to protect his trade routes by sending his own military ships on escort duty.
Decisive for success of a privateer mission would be, how many ships you send on the mission (and probably their strength) and of course, how many Escort ships the enemy has (and their strength).
If successful the enemy income from trade across the ocean would be decreased. Most of the drecrease in trade would be from ships sunk by the enemy, but the player who sent his ships on the privateer-mission should also be able to capture a small part of the trade goods (i.e. money) the enemy looses (how much should depend on the type of ship used, nothing if the player sends only Subs, a small part if he sends larger warships and a larger part, if he sends designated privateer units [like the privateers of the 16./17. century)
The player should be able to choose, against which enemy the privateer-mission will be and the enemy will know, from which nation the privateers came from which attacked his freighters, as long as the player doesn´t send only designated privateer-units or subs on privateer-mission (but even in this case there would be a small chance that the enemy finds out, from which nation the ships were send).
IMHO this would be much more realistic. In all times states used part of their navy to protect commercial ships (espacially from the 16. Century on, when piracy became something which really cut into the profits of the countries)
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Senethro
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Trade caravans sound good to me. I also liked their function of being able to transfer food/shields from one city to another.
Wouldn't it just be the best thing in the world if they also were able to work squares for resources which they caravaned back to their home base?
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Lancer
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Oregon Coast, USA! or Bohol, Philippines!
Apr 1999
time: 05:37
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That was a pain in the ass. However there were far too many and the payoff was far too little. It was dealt with city to city instead of civ to civ, which made it a real pain trying to match up a type of good with the need of a far off city.
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Gen. Atkinson
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of the Allied States of Celtatia
May 2005
time: 05:37
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Sounds like too much micromanagement, and the CtP trade system was annoying at best, with giant beavers moving accross the planet. No. And what would happen if a city wants to build, for example Pikemen, they'd have to wait until every other city has built them first in order to build any themselves.
I agree it should be re-worked but not so that it is more confusing and time consuming. I'd hate to have to send iron o every city in my empire one turn at a time in orde to build city defences.
One way to do it. Sharing resources is the same as in civ3, but in order to set up a trade route with another civ first you have to do all the negotiating with their leader. You then automatically gain a caravan unit in your capital. This then has to be sent to any city in the other civ in order to establish said trade route. And you only have to do this once. As soon as the initial trade route is set up any more trades are automatic.
As for Privateering, any ship could be a privateer. How many times have you known that the enemy civ is sending several ships full of troops to invade your nation, but you don't want to go to war with them?
Simple, you send your ships to block passage etc, and ask the civ to leave your waters. If they leave, hooray. If they stay, you can either i, sink them and proclaim war, ii, Wait until they attack you, or iii, go into privateer mode and sink them without any repercussions, for you did warn them, and they refused to leave, thus giving you a clear vindication for sinking their ships. Hmmm?
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Proteus_MST
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Maybe you could simulate it with a mix of CtP2 and GalCiv.
You could have defined Traderoutes like in CtP 2 (which of course, you could switch on and off in the map of the world  )
And you have Minifreighters which really move along the traderoute like in GalCiv.
The trade itself would also work differently:
You would pay the other player for "Loads" of a vcertain Resource. And one load woud consist of Resources for a fixed number of turns, for example 5.
So take for example a trade between me and the Egyptians. I pay the Egyptians 20 Gold per Load of Furs and the traderoute connects the harbors of Luxor (Egypt) and Hyperborea (myself).
As soon as my ship leaves Luxor the Egypts get 20 Gold (as my Traders bought the load of furs from them) and as soon as the ship arrives at hyperborea, my empire has furs for another five turns. As soon as it arrives, it sails again to Luxor with gold from my empire.
Every 5 turns a ship arrives at hyperborea, so normally, if the traderoutes aren´t interrupted, your empire would have supplies of furs for every turn.
But of course, the eveil evil enemies might try to pirate your route. If a ship on your trading route moves through a tile with an enemy ship which has the order to pirate the route, it depends on the destination of the ship which wares the enemy might capture. If the ship is on the way to Luxor, it might capture gold (which means, that neither you get your furs from this ship nor the egyptians get gold for the load). If it is on the way to Hyperborea, it might capture (or sink) a load of furs (which means that you paid the egyptians for a load of furs that never arrived ).
It would even enable you to let your frigates etc. escort a certain tradeship (you could click on a certain ship on your traderoute and order a warship to escort it [which would mean that the warship also turns into a miniwarship, which moves with the minifreighter; if you want to use the warship for other purposes you could click on the freighter&Escort and you would be allowed to select which warship/s you want to withdraw from escort duty, which would turn the mini warships into warshiops of normal size again])
Of course this system would mean, that the longer the traderoute the more tradeships are underway, as every 5 turns a tradeship has to sail from its origin to the destination, to have a constant supply of resources. (and the more warships are needed to protect every single tradeship)
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sophist
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It's certainly a step in the right direction. Things to be resolved:
1) How automatic is that? I think the cargo ships should be automated, but piracy should be manual.
2) Requires quantified resources.
3) This only pertains to trading of strategic resources, not the more abstract and general trade as in commerce.
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The_Aussie_Lurker
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Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
May 2001
time: 05:37
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I have long advocated a system wherby when you make a trade deal, it forms a trade route which only you-and your trading partner-are able to see under normal circumstances (and even then, only with an appropriate filter on). Anyone else needs to discover it via espionage or via a unit being in the right spot. Also, trade routes would have an 'underlying cost', depending on the distance between the two nations-and the number of 3rd party cities through which the route passes.
The other thing I have long advocated is that trade routes have both a 'Speed' and a 'Strength' rating-dictated by current technology levels. The speed affects the value of the trade route, and Strength effects how likely an enemy is to disrupt the route if they choose the 'Piracy' or 'Embargo' option. In the trade screen, it should be possible to adjust either the speed or strength of a trade route, usually at the expense of the other rating-unless you want to increase the cost of the trade route.
Hope that makes sense.
Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
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Lancer
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Oregon Coast, USA! or Bohol, Philippines!
Apr 1999
time: 05:37
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Sea captains of the age of sail had their routes determined by the prevailing winds, the 'rivers of wind' according to Columbus. Then, with the horizon being just a few miles away entire fleets could sail past each other and not know. This is why the English were so fond of blockades...once the blockaded ships escaped they were very hard to find again. Better to keep them bottled up than trying to find them. Also, while bottled up the enemy would gradually lose sailing skills. When coupled with the need to escape during storms when blockading ships were blown off station, it became very dangerous to go to sea. So whole fleets just rotted at their moorings. If they did set sail and were caught, the Brits would sail circles around them while hammering away with broadsides.
Anyway, a game that could acurately model stuff like prevailing winds, and blockades, and even smuggleing by blockade runners, could have an interesting trade system.
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Yarco_TW
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quote:
Originally posted by The_Aussie_Lurker
I have long advocated a system whereby when you make a trade deal, it forms a trade route which only you-and your trading partner-are able to see under normal circumstances (and even then, only with an appropriate filter on). Anyone else needs to discover it via espionage or via a unit being in the right spot. Also, trade routes would have an 'underlying cost', depending on the distance between the two nations-and the number of 3rd party cities through which the route passes.
The other thing I have long advocated is that trade routes have both a 'Speed' and a 'Strength' rating-dictated by current technology levels. The speed affects the value of the trade route, and Strength effects how likely an enemy is to disrupt the route if they choose the 'Piracy' or 'Embargo' option. In the trade screen, it should be possible to adjust either the speed or strength of a trade route, usually at the expense of the other rating-unless you want to increase the cost of the trade route.
Hope that makes sense.
Yours,
Aussie_Lurker. |
This being just one more discussion on trade, I cannot abstain.
Current system of revenue collection is based on taxing city squares, which have roads or rivers. In history long-distant trade (Silk Route, across Sahara trade, Mediterranean trade, Spice Trade, America-Europe and India-Europe trade, European India-to-India trade) played important role in short-term economic growth of Civilizations on earth.
Therefore, it should be modeled.
But here are some problems with what Civ is nowadays.
In real history it took 3 or something years to circumnavigate Africa, and 2 years for Columbus to cross the Atlantic and 4 years for Magellan's folk to circumnavigate the globe. It also took one turn to travel across great Silk route. But not all travels were successful.
In terms of Civ3 these are one-turn events. However, it will take you over 50 turns to do so, if you decide to actually play Civ3. The reason is that there is nothing available to stop your ship on its route. It can sink only in the sea at the end of turn. Therefore, without real-history limitations of 1) storms 2) icebergs 3) riots on board 4) piracy, which should ALL be possible ON YOUR WAY (not after) we will never get rid of "micro discoveries" (and micromanagement).
The world of caravans was very like micro discoveries and micro conquests in existing Civ. The proposals of Aussie_Lurker are more of a one-turn approach (i.e. creating constantly existing routes).
But then we should have all Civ removing the micro-movement approach. The new somewhat faster moving Civ should
1) have "order" approach to game. This means that if in year 200 B.C. you have 10 armies and 3 fleets, you make orders for them in one shot. Unlike Civ3 you must not be able to Conquer city 1, and only then conquer city 2 (and reload, if failed). If you order both armies capture city 1, you lose resources (extra idle army in the city). If you order two armies attack 2 cities, both might fail. And you will lose two armies.
2) have long route capabilities. This means I can send an army to conquer 3 cities in one turn. It can win city 1 and city 2, but be defeated at city 3. And then the fate of cities 1 and 2 are in doubt. The same is true of caravels, caravans, and the such. I might well send a ship to circumnavigate Africa, but it will meet 4 storms and 5 barbarian attacks, and I really should not know if anybody would return. Only if they will, I will get the news of a new world.
3) There should be high risks of long-distance travel. Riots, Barbarians, storms and icebergs, swamps and diseases, etc. Overall, I should be theoretically able to circumnavigate globe on a trireme in one turn (speed permitting), but this should be 100% practically impossible. This achieves the same goal as the "operating range concept", but through different means.
4) If I send somebody on a discovery route to discover America, I should discover nothing if the ship is lost on its way back. Only successful return trips generate embassies, trade routes and discoveries.
5) The cost of suicide travels, conquests, and trade should not be prohibitive. I should risk my units for all three purposes of discovery, trade and war. AI should also make suicide orders.
6) Trade units and diplomat units should have 2 options
a) make one-turn trip
b) create permanent embassy or trade route.
Military units should have "patrol" and "fight piracy and robbery" functions. It should be possible to lose permanent embassies and trade routes through piracy and the such as well. But the cost of random success should be sufficient to cover the costs.
7) The game MUST not be reloadable. You should be encouraged to play for a fixed time, and then make auto-save. There should be one save available only. The current one. The risks should be your luck. You MUST NOT reload them.
8) Discoveries and trade should also be macro-generated by private citizens. You should get a note like "Our merchants managed to start trade with Timbuktu this year". But the Civ leader should be macro-responsible for maintaining the security of routes, defending the cities, and ensuring that taxes do not kill all merchants.
This is a radically new approach, but it is more in line with reality than anything else.
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10-08-2005 02:40
. Now I know why I no longer play Civ2.
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