24-11-2000 08:13									#1
	Trading Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

Well...I personally think that trading should be changed a little bit in Civ III so that we actually handle the management of resources.

It seems to me that In Civ II, the supply and demand of goods/resources of cities are very random. Also, the suply and demand of resources and goods don't really affect the game play at all. So even if it says on the trade screen that Rome demands clothes, it wouldn't really matter if Rome don't have clothes.

I thought we should complicate this a little to make game play in this game a little more fun.

There should be specific kind of goods, raw materials, and resources that we must handle.

The more an empire can get of each kind fo resources, the better, because resources means raw materials and raw materials means goods.

Right off my head, the only resources I can think of are trees, grassland, rocky mountains. But these are enough to demonstrate the ideas I have in mind.

The raw materials that can be made with trees, grassland and mountains are woods, food, bronze, iron, gold and silver. The goods that can be made from these raw materials are furnitures, houses and weapons.

The landtiles within the city radius are where these resources are obtained. The city itself is where these resources are convereted into raw materials and then goods.

Trading should reflect supply and demand of these resources/raw materials/goods.

A France city, Paris, wants badly steel to make weapon while China wants badly grassland to grow more food for its increasing population. So Paris, who can't trade "grassland" may trade food with China. And China, who needs the steel herself, will instead trade iron ore to Paris so that Paris can convert iron ore into steel, and then into weapon.

Players of civilzation who wants to build a successful empire will, with addition of this feature, be compelled to carefully examine the geography of the land where their cililizations grow up. If players use China, then they are at an advantage because China offers rich resources, while players of Japan may be at an disadvantage because Japan has very little resources. So players of Japan may have to focus on export of goods by importing raw materials needed to produce those goods. In essence, Japan may have to develop an economy based on trading.

The implication of having to build an economy based on trading is important because any war may disrupt the Japanese economy. Therefore dimplomacy is very important because a bad relationship between Japan and the rest of the world will destroy Japan. That is how, as I have proposed in some other threads, economy, warfare and diplomacy interelated to each other.