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Matthevv
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Crawley, W.Sussex, England
Mar 1999
time: 05:14
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I think this would be an excellent addition to the game. It needs to be carefully handled though, because it could result in excessive micromanagement.
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Frank Johnson
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Houston, TX
Jan 1970
time: 23:14
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Face it, since when has a ruler been able to order all their merchants around like chess pieces? Never, the leader just wants them to be prosperous so they can tax them.
The only way a leader can help trade is by improving infastructure, discovering and opening new markets to trade in, and manipulating tariff rates.
Supply and demand should play a greater role however. Civ2's limited resources just arent enough.
For example, exotic foods/spices would be a great trade item early for both sides. Try getting Chinese Food in 1400 AD  , but demand would deminish with time, today if I want Chinese food, I walk to the corner for all I can eat.
Tools would bring a pretty price if yours are superior to the civ you are trading with, say you have iron working and the other civ only bronze. Later in the game this could turn to steel, then computers and software that people want/need.
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Glostakarov
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York, Yorkshire, England
Feb 2000
time: 05:14
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This isn't really the same topic, but I've put one up already, and my other idea kind of fits here: Intraempire Trade/Resource Trade.
In the "real world" most cities do not produce everything they need. Taking the example of the USA, all of the major cities import food from an area much larger than is represented in the games so far. In some cases, the city itself covers that ground and brings in food from hundreds or thousands of miles away. The midwest of the country produce so much food that under the model of civ2 or CTP there would be exponential city growth there. Instead, they export their food to the cities and stay relatively small.
This would be a huge change to the city model, but would add a great deal of realism to the game. Technological advances in farming could allow a single unit of population to work two farm tiles. Most of that food could then be transported to the big cities that need it. A slider could be set up to adjust how much of the rural city's excess food would be exported, or the extra micromanagement could be avoided in favor of an empire-wide slider that regulated the excess food of any cities using such farming methods.
This would allow cities to concentrate on production and gold. They would still be able to grow, as long as they are getting enough food shipped in.
Now the questions. One of the big strengths of adding this would be the prevention of having 20 virtually identical cities. With terraforming each city (under the current models) grows up to large size, large production, and large gold, with only minor variance between them. There is currently nothing good about a small town. With this idea a small town would probably never have huge production rates, but the cities would. This could actually provide a solution to ICS. Yes you'd still have a bunch of cities all over the place, but not as many real producers. The "best" cities would be the large ones with a developed network of surrounding small towns supporting them. ICS wouldn't be a effective a tactic, because if each city were trying to grow large on its own, it would have to produce its own food, which would take people away from production and gold. ICS would produce several mediocre cities rather than a few great cities.
Weaknesses/exploits: Well it would have to be set up carefully to create a balance. A worker farming more than one tile would get ONLY food from those tiles, and not other resources on them. Otherwise people could just split their workers and have heavy prodicing cities in a heartbeat. Another weakness is that this would really only be a patch on ICS. Heavy expansion of farming towns could balloon the cities up to vast sizes in short order. Tacking on a transportation cost relative to distance the food is moved might limit this, though, or at least help to find a balance.
Hmm, I really should have posted this as a new topic idea. Oh well.
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Pythagoras
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Charlottesville VA
Jan 1970
time: 00:14
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I proposed a trade system a long while ago, it involved:
Trade routes are automatically set up with citys that supply a comodity and citys that demand a comodity within the explored territory of that caravans home civ (sorta like smac, but with commodities) using autopathfinding (pathfinding in SMAC was superb and up to this task) these routes are displayed as lines on the map, and with blocking such lines with a military unit you could either pirate or block all together. This coupled with new units: sea, air, and land caravans, will make trade more powerful with a lot less micromanagement. There is still a maximum number of trade routes your city can support, but as technology progresses you can support more and more routes. (making trade more important in your economy towards the endgame). Also as in SMAC, your amount of trade is proportional to the relationship with that civ. Another thing, the screen could get messy with this idea, but by default, in my opinion, these trade routes would be off, you could toggle them on and off with a hotkey or in preferences (much like city support lines in SMAC/CivII).
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Imran Siddiqui
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The Potterverse
Jan 1970
time: 00:14
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Final Draft
Of all of the great aspects of Civilization 2, the one that was most lacking was a realistic trade function. We feel that trade should be addressed in Civ3 more deeply, and for this, we submit this idea.
The tried and true economic standard berrer of supply and demand should be included in the game. The supply and demand should depend on the terran of the city radius. For example, a coastal city would have a supply of fish (food), and a demand for animal pelts (clothing). This would play into the game, by increased payoffs for supplying a demand. If you sent a shipment of animal pelts to this coastal city, instead of say... meat, then your trade route could be worth 100% more.
Also the supply and demand could change over time. After the invention of the automobile, petroleum should be factored into the model, but not that much before. Supply and Demand should be based on the time period.
Furthurmore, in war time, the supply of goods in your cities should decrease, resulting in less money being garnered in trade routes. There should be a chance in a REALLY long war that supply of one good is totally wasted and cannot be recovered until the era of peace (this last sentance is an optional part of the idea).
We feel that Civ3 should allow trade to be in th forefront. Throughout history trade has played a great part and that should be modeled in this great game designed to simulate history. Thank you.
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Pythagoras
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Charlottesville VA
Jan 1970
time: 00:14
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This is with only reading Imran and my threads, but I'm gonna get on Daves in a sec.
DaveV/Imran/Everyone else-> see how you like this for an overarching trade final draft:
!!PROPOSED!! For Discussion till midnight
Tuesday.
FINAL DRAFT
New Trade Model
Trade routes are automatically set up with cities that supply a comodity and cities that demand a comodity within the explored territory of that caravan's home civilization (similar to Alpha Centauri's system, but with commodities) using autopathfinding (pathfinding in Alpha Centauri was superb and up to this task) these routes are displayed as lines on the map, and with blocking such lines with a military unit you could either pirate or block all together. There is still a maximum number of trade routes your city can support, but as technology progresses and/or your city size increases you can support more and more routes. Also as in Alpha Centauri, your amount of trade is proportional to the relationship with that civilization. The screen could get messy with this idea, but by default these trade routes would be off and viewed only in the city view. You could toggle them on and off with a hotkey or in preferences (much like city support lines in SMAC/CivII), or perhaps just show a city's routes one city at a time.
There is a downside to this that I believe can be solved easily. Implementing this in the game could take up a lot of memory if one stores every map location that every trade route goes through. However, simply invoking the auto pathfinding function each time someone wants to view a route (calculating the path of the caravans instead of loading the positions from memory) not only solves this memory problem, but provides more realism. Auto pathfinding should only work on explored territory, so as you explore more and more, your civ will find ways to shorten the travelling distance between two trading cities.
With this model, trade and diplomacy would be interelated. First of all, the more trade routes one has with a civ, the better each's attitudes towards each other. And vice versa, better diplomatic relations would provide for more lucrative trade. It doesnt matter really which one starts first (economic or diplomatic relations). Perhaps the option to allow players to establish trade routes "the old way" could be included, but by default 'auto trading' is on. Also if autopathfiding fails, or if a civilization wants to define its own path to take, a waypoint trade route path defining system would be included.
Argument
This model is prefered because it requires little to no micromanagement and gives trade importance within your economy without having to deal with cumbersome caravans. International trade also becomes more important as time goes along with this model as more technology and more population allows citys to expand into new trading ventures. The so called ICS (infinite city sprawl) problem can also be averted if trade is linked to city size. Large citys become meccas of trade, their income and attitudes with other civs growing exponentially as there population increases. Many small cities become unpreffered since they would not provide these great benefits. Also, since these larger citys become dependant on lucrative trade, pirating and tarrifing trade routes (by putting a unit over the route) becomes a viable options for poorer civs and barbarians. To sum up, this model provides a way for intercity commodity based trade to highly effect diplomacy, warfare and the 'royal coffers' without the cumbersome usage of caravan units and without the unwanted micromanagement of a game like colonization.
Imran seems to like this idea, let me know DaveV/Imran if you want to modify this idea at all. My ICQ# should be up in my profile.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Pythagoras (edited March 06, 2000).]</font>
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Pythagoras (edited March 06, 2000).]</font>
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Pythagoras (edited March 06, 2000).]</font>
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I really think the Fix should be separated from the New Idea(s). That way we get a measure of how much people want trade to change. As is, it will be a straight up or down vote on a potentially wide range of ideas, so if anyone has a strong dislike for one idea they might decide not to vote it in.
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21-02-2000 01:57
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