ECONOMICS/TRADE (ver1.1): Hosted by Pythagoras

Pythagoras · June 8, 1999, 14:37

Summary will be up tomorrow when I get the time.

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"I think you're all f*cked in the head!"
Chevy Chase-Nat'l Lampoon's Vacation.

Eggman · June 8, 1999, 16:24

This was my post in the last thread. It was there for an hour until the thread was closed. I am reposting it, just because if I had to write it, then SOMEBODY has to read it. ;-)
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Daniel, a way to get around that is to have a certain number of "key" materials that your civ needs on an empire level. The materials would be stuff like copper, iron, uranium, oil, rubber, etc. and what you need and how much of it can vary depending on the timeframe. Your entire empire would need X units of each material a turn. If your empire can't produce the materials on its own, it needs to trade for them or, worse case, perhaps buy them at outrageous prices from the "black market". If the civ cannot get the minimum supply it needs, it takes penalties civilization wide (production and military comes to mind) and/or cannot build certain units and structures. Of course, if you have a surplus, the materials are worth big money to trade.

With just two or three materials per era, this could do a good job of simulating the need for vital materials. If you can't get them (see Japan after the US cut off its oil supply in WWII) you are going to fall behind which forces war. It also allows a civ to capture and/or cut off key materials and devastate a civ economically. Run out of oil - production drops by 50% - OUCH! Stockpiling in case of war is a good idea too. Plus, the demand for those key materials would grow as the civilization gets bigger (more cities) so you would need to make sure that you can secure those resources to expand (death to ICS!).

In addition, you keep the standard group of trade goods which are used solely for money. Stuff like wine, gems, silk, etc. would just be traded (like normal) for cash money. Preferrably in a more automated way (like CTP).

Of course, key to all this is that the key materials don't show up on the map until they are demanded. Hence, no cities setup next to uranium deposits in the Bronze Age thinking several thousand years ahead...

On a somewhat unrelated topic, I think that those material squares should come in "normal" and "rich" (and maybe "very rich") varieties. Yeah, that hill might have grapes (wine) but it also might be the best grapes in whole darn world (lots of wine). You may have gold or the mother load of gold in that mountain. This allows for more trade without cluttering the whole map with special squares (like Imperialism).

Harel · June 9, 1999, 10:46

I posted this idea on the older thread, in a sub-section of three suggestions.
I do belive this is a good idea that can be easily implanted into the game: I don't agree with EnochF that it's better suited the radical idea section. I think this idea is right at home here.

I am talking about: BUDGETING

Let's consider the current budgeting section: between science, goods and Tax variables. Is this really enough?
Let's consider all the gold income shared into a big pool. Like in CIV II, the tax ratio decide how much cash you get.
That is money/unrest.
Here are my proposed sections:

* Health care - Divided between all hospitels on your empire. Higher rates meaning better treatment and health bonus. Health decided your popultion growth.
* Wealthcare - Reduce the effects of negative causes. Unrest is reduce, the effects of famine and other disasters. Parties demand high wealthcare ratios. Keeping it high gurntees your public favouriting ( place increase ).
* Education - decides the bonus to schools, acadmies and universties. Gives a science bonus.
* Science - Very strangely represnted in civ ii. Which company spend 20-80% of it's resources on Tech? Keeping money in science gives a tech bonus and decide the effectfs of labs, and related wonders: the observatory, darwin voyage, etc.
* Religoun - defines the bonus of temples/churtchs/related wonders.
* Military - share between all army units. Up-keep is now abiltive, decides the preformances of the units ( in term of speed and morale bonus/minus ).
* Intelligence - the chance of spy success, the number of spy and counter-intelligence value.
* Transporation - optional. The value defines the movement bonus of roads ( better maintained roads are faster to travel ), and defines the value of highways, mass-transit, etc.

Flavor Dave · June 9, 1999, 11:05

Eggman--that's similar to an idea I had. You have 3 kinds of shields--fuel, building materials, and exotics. And you have higher concentrations in some areas than others. As long as your empire has at least 25% of each, you're OK. But if one of the 3 falls below 25%, you lose a proportionate number of shields.

Something along my or your lines would be good, b/c it would add to strategic options. When at war, do you attack a marginal city that is rich in exotics, where you're running dangerously close to 25%, or a wonder city? Same with you expansion--do you set up a rather isolated city in order to redress your balance, or a more easily defended city?

Colon™ · June 13, 1999, 11:29

I like the way how economy and reseource management is done it imperialism, to explain how it works, I've copied a a part of the review of imperialism1, from the imperialism site in Sidgames.

Quote:

Resource Development: In order to develop your resources, you use special units similar to the settler units of Civilization. You start out with a prospector and an engineer. The prospector searches for various minerals that can be found in the hills and mountains, and the the engineer builds railroads and ports that are necessary to transfer those goods to the capital. Unlike Civilization, virtually all your production is centralized at the capital. Thus, in order for those resources to be of any use to you, you must have a path, either by sea or by railroad, to your capital. Later in the game, as your technology advances, you gain the ability to build additional units which can further improve on your resource squares.

Industry: Your industrial production is handled through a view of your various factories. By clicking on factories of each type, your can find out what you are producing, what your factories' capacity is, and how much of each completed product you produce. At this screen you can also control training and recruitment of new workers, creation of military units and special units, building of ships, and expansion of factory capacity. Production of finished products (which bring the highest prices) is handled in a fairly simple manner...4 timber = 2 lumber = 1 furniture. The interface is slightly awkward at first but once you figure it out it isn't too difficult. You can produce as much of each finished product as you have factory capacity, providing you have enough raw materials and labor.

Trade: The trade screen lists the different types of goods available. You can buy or sell any raw materials or finished products. However, you can only bid on up to four different products at a time, so choose wisely. Also, you are limited by your merchant ship capacity...run out of room in your ships, and you can't buy or sell anymore. Generally, you will want to buy raw materials from minor powers, and sell finished products. Whether you are actually able to buy or sell, and the prices you get, depend on your relations with the other nations, whether you have any subsidies in effect, what other nations are competing with you to buy or sell those products, and whether any boycotts are in place. Again, trade is vital for your industry to develop, especially early in the game, when your own resources are not available. But beware of spending beyond your means. You can buy on credit, but fail to pay back what you owe, and you will quickly go bankrupt.

Basicly the idea is that you exploit mines and farms, produce resources and afterwards make goods from it that you can either sell or use.

What do you think ?

Eggman · June 13, 1999, 13:29

While I personally like Imperialism a great deal (I am playing a game right now - have to get more coal!), its economic model is too complicated for a game like Civilization. Civ is pretty complex already with city management, military, science, tile improvements, etc. While I and many others here would like to see Civ with a more complex economic model than caravans (which can be utterly ignored for trade and still win), an Imp1 style economy would greatly increase the amount of work that the player would have to put in and probably become the main focus of play instead of empire expansion, empire development and war. On top of that, the game would probably have to be redesigned to handle the new economy, which would effectively make Civ3 into Imp3, which is pointless.

Also remember that the economic model shown in Imp1 is based on the typical economy of the 1800s. However, that form of economy is relatively new. If you look at Imperialism II (which reflects the economy from the 1500s to the 1700s), they realized this and simplifed the economic system to reflect the less sophisticated economic structure. And the economics of the Middle Ages or Ancient Times are even simpler. There would have to be at least 4 different economic models, each kicking in at a different time. It would be a programming bear.

In my opinion, Civ3 has to make the economy matter more than Civ2. If your economy goes in the gutter, so should the country. If you can't get key resources through internal production or trade, you either use war or diplomacy to get them fall behind. Large armies become impotent when there is no money to finance wars. Trade should be a whole lot easier (no more camel crap) and more important. Spontaneous trade should be considered (trade starts up between cities that have and those that need based on the highest prices without the human having to do anything beyond a trade treaty). Economic powerhouses should be just as important powers as military juggernauts. But it also has to be simple enough that it doesn't require a large chunk of time to do.

Bubba · June 14, 1999, 07:35

1) I like Eggmanns idea of three or four key resources for each Age that are necessary to build the units of that type. The resources would be automatically collected by the workers on the square and would only become visible when X technology was discovered. Thus, a Galleon might cost X production plus 100 wood and 100 cloth, a Dreadnought 100 ore and 100 oil etc. The goods should be stored at a civilization wide level (like CTP). As long as this system as not too complicated, it would help simulate history and spur expansion and trade. These goods might be traded for from other civs and bought in an international market that would reflect supply and demand (like Colonization).

2) In many ways, I like the trading system of CTP in that you don't have to move Caravans all over the map but I would like to see it altered in several ways:

a) give a first time bonus and distance bonus as in Civ II;

b) make their be some element of supply and demand as in Colonization (the more you dump the less you get) & related to this,

c) allow the creation of 'second' order goods once certain techs have been reached. Their would then be two trade units a cheap CARAVAN that would allow you to sell and trade trade primary products like spice, cotton, wood & fish that were within your radius and also a TRADE GOOD icon (perhaps 5 times more expensive) that would allow you to trade finished products like wine, cloth, & furniture that could be created with goods that were within your radius or traded to that city. This TRADE GOOD would be the same as the caravan in Civ II in that you would choose which product you wanted it to be after it was built. This would be a FUN and simplified version of Colonization which in its original form was overly intensive in micromanagement.

3) Keep the pirating of CTP but only allow trade routes to be destroyed when someone is at war with you. In other cases, pirating should occur when a ship sits on a trade route and should only siphon say 20% of the value of the route rather than destroy it.

Colon™ · June 14, 1999, 08:07

Bubba about 1, that would make a country that has a lot of resources the strongest country right ?
But if you look at reality is that automaticly the case ? Does a country would a lot of resources automticly becomes a strong country ?
No that's not the case, it certainly helps but there are many examples of countries that have few resources but are rich and therefore strong and vive versa.
They are rich because they have a large and advanced industry.

I think it's an obsolute necessity for realism that an industry (manufacturing) level is implemented.
That's the great thing about imperialism, you can have strong economy without masses of resources, by buying them, making goods of them and selling those.

It does not ha sto happen the way it happens in Imperialism, but I find that something like that should be there.
Striving for an advanced industry should be a part of the game.

NotLikeTea · June 14, 1999, 09:05

Although an industry should never be necessary.

China is a superpower in the world now, but they are not very industrailized. At one point Mao said that it was not his goal to have China be the most advanced nation in the world, but to be a superpower among the unindustralised nations, and never looked at this is a failure. He also said that wars are won with people, not bombs... often diplomatic power can be much more important that industry.

Colon™ · June 15, 1999, 00:46

What's the point of resources if you don't have industry to process them ?
Japan lost WW2 because their industry was weaker then US', Britain became world power because they had the facilities to process resources, China is weaker than US today because they have a smaller and less advanced industry, Congo isn't the supreme power of Africa despite the fact they have large amounts of resources, ...

An economic engine based upon resources while the processing of it is ignored is unrealistic.

yin26 · June 16, 1999, 05:40

-=*MOVING THREAD UP*=-

Eggman · June 16, 1999, 09:51

Having industry treated like it is in Imperialism is a VERY BAD IDEA. I like Imperialism but in that game the economics are the main focus. Not so in Civ. Considering that in my experience Imp1 games tend to last a whole lot longer than Civ2 games, having a complex economic model in Civ3 will make the game unplayable. You know that joke that if you want realism in Civ, you should play two turns and then die of old age? Well, that wouldn't be too far from the truth.

On the other hand, the Civ2 economic model is a joke. You can ignore trade altogether and it barely hurts you. So we need something more complex than Civ2 but less complex than Imp1/Imp2.

So none of this 100 iron and 100 lumber makes a frigate stuff. No micromanaging factories and workforces. I will shoot the first person that recommends a trade screen where you OK or reject each trade deal. Keep it relatively simple.

The key here is to make trade and industry as automatic as possible. At most, you should be setting percentages of surplus materials to be processed, traded and hoarded (like the Tax/Science/Luxury bar). Maybe making some priorities on what to trade for, who to trade to and what/who you won't trade. Stuff like that is fairly simple (you don't have to look at it every turn).

Also remember that economics has not always been as complex as the Imperialism system. Earlier ages should have trade (and lots of it) but very limited or no industry stuff.

Personally, I think that the introduction of key materials would be the most valuable addition to the game. If you can't get all the resources you need (through internal production and trade) to run your country, you start going down the tubes. Either find and exploit new sources, find a new trading partner or go conquer some key cities. Or die. Sounds like fun to me. And it may even be able to kill ICS as larger empires need more resources...

Diodorus Sicilus · June 16, 1999, 18:54

Actually, from the beginning civilizations had to trade for critical materials: copper and tin are relatively rare as recoverable deposits, but they are both required for Bronze. The bronze age in Europe was marked by long-range trade in tin, all the way from Cornwall in England to the Mediterranean.
The trick is that most of this early trade was not with other (rival) civilizations, but with what, in game terms, are 'barbarians'. Give us more flexibile barbarians, who sometimes trade because (for instance) they've got the tin you need and you've got civilized goods like wine that they want, and you can put critical resources into the Trade System and realisticaly spread over the map and still not cripple some resource-deprived civ from the start. Also, in most of those early trades, the civ got the better of it, in that they also made money in the trading (a jar of wine for 100 lbs of tin is a Good Deal when the tin gives you the making of 1000 lbs of bronze!)
I second the motion, that Trade should be THE major money-maker in a civ economy: Athens, Byzantium, Holland, England: history is full of empires and states that had gobs of income from trade and dominated the "world" economy of their time with that income, and you can't get anything like the same effect with the Trade systems in either CivII or CtP.
At least, manufactured goods when traded should bring major bucks into the manufacturing civ: Holland and later, England, financed every war in Europe from 1680 to 1815 almost entirely from Trade income derived from converting raw materials like wool and cotton into manufactured goods cheaper (and selling them cheaper) and better than anyone else: the Industrial Revolution or Factory System of however CivIII defines it in game terms should give a huge boost to Trade Income for the civ involved.
Balancing that, changing the economy into a Factory Economy also leads to major unrest/unhappiness in the civ - the Luddite riots in England in the early 19th century being a good example.
My personal preference is for specific 'critical' goods to trade, just because I think it adds to the Atmosphere of the game. I like the idea of playing a Greek civ whose trade is built around (olive) Oil and Wine, or cornering the Silk Trade or Cloth, Tea, Coffee, Coal, Oil or any of the other big bucks (for their time) monopoly trades. Many of the critical trade goods are also directly related to other threads in the game, such as the link between tin and copper and Bronze, coal and early steam Industrial Power, or oil and a modern military. I don't see how you can model the problems civs had in developing what they wanted and how without also modeling at least some of the (named) critical materials as Terrain Icons and Trade Goods.

Ecce Homo · June 16, 1999, 19:43

One important factor of happiness should be the availability of luxury goods - not quantity, but diversity. For instance, each commodity supplied would make one citizen happy. Searching the world for new luxury goods should be a decisive part of the game.

Matthew · June 16, 1999, 19:48

I disagree that trade is not important in civ 2. If you are playing against someone who is getting 500 to 3000 gold and science or more per caravan, and doing this once every turn or two, you had darn well start looking at ways to do the same thing yourself. I don't know about CtP, but from what I have read they have pretty well adulterated the whole thing. It's easy to see why trade isn't as important in CtP.
Whatever is done to trade in Civ 3, I hope it isn't violated so.

Flavor Dave · June 17, 1999, 00:16

Eggman--yeah, that's a great joke. Wait, it's my joke;-)

What do you think of putting these materials into a generic form--fuel, metals, maybe two more?

Also, in every "age", where each of these generic goods are concentrated would change, to reflect the evolution from wood to coal to oil to nuclear power.

Realistically, and for gameplay, early on your civ should be self sufficient. But as time goes by, you either have to grow and cover more area, or make contact with the world. That's b/c the stuff needed will become more specialized, and more concentrated in certain areas, rather than available in somewhat limited amounts all over the place.

Anything that gets us out of the strategy funnel of "rolling over" a civ when attacking is good. What if you could cripple the Germans by taking two cities that provide it with most of its oil or metal? Then you have the choice of either going for trashing most or all of the German empire, or taking those two cities, defending them well, preparing a blockade, and waiting for German prodcution to wither.

Colon™ · June 17, 1999, 06:13

Hey I know very well that the economy engine of Imperialism is unlikely to work in Civ2, but I aslo know very well that the Civ2 engine is completely unrealistic.
I just believe that there should be somesort of industry/processing level, resources are 90% of the time useless if they aren't used to make a product.
Iron ore is useless if no iron is made of it.

But don't ask me how it should be done, I don't know either.

korn469 · June 17, 1999, 07:55

here are some ideas

Proposals to revolutionize the civ economic system:

1.cities should be capable of building more than one thing at the same time

i dont mean for them to be able to build 100 tank at the same time in the same city but each city should at least be able to build a unit and a city improvment at the same time

maybe cities should just have a certain amount of builders, larger cities have more builders each builder could work on one thing or if you wanted more than one builder could work on the same thing. maybe each time your city gets a certain population you get a builder for example if you get a new builder at size five then a size 25 city would have five builders while a size one city would only have one builder

2.instead of shields being collected there would be four critical resources

that's right in stead of shields being collected there would be four critical resources buildings and units would cost a variable amount of these resources some might not cost anything in one or two resources but might be extreamly expensive in the other two resources

expanding on the my idea above the industrial capacity should be represented as how much of the resources you take in can actually be used by a builder. whether it's dependent upon factories or tech level, their should be a limit as to how much raw good can actually be processed in some well developed cities you might never get close to exceeding the industrial capasity limit...but in some cities that were founded specifically to exploit resourcs you might not build factories and have a low industrial capasity but instead just ship all the resources back to well developed cities

and you should be able to trade your resources for whatever with other civs

3.trade goods should be seperate from gold and all cities should require them

for example lets have four trade items which are collected off of the land continuing with my industrial capasity in idea 2 the exact amount amout of each items you can collect off the land depends on tech or factory/artisan shop. each city generates a demand for all trade goods (including zero demand).

there would be a minimum and a maximum value in the demand numbers. the minimum would represent would be the break even point between happiness/unrest don't meet the mimimum then people will have a unhappy modifier if you exceed the minimum then people will have a happiness modifier because of it until you get to the maximum number. the maximum number is the point where even if you do provide your city with more of that trade good it doesn't increase the happiness. if the civ2 model is kept then governments would modify how the minimum/maximum numbers of the trade goods. if the SMAC system of social engineering is kept then that would modify the minimum/maximum numbers of trade goods.

naturally you could trade your trade goods. there could be trade within your empire like sending trade goods from an area with a surplus to an to areas of your civ that had a shortage and you could send them abroad to make money with other civs or maybe get resources or buy units or whatever

4.base squares don't directly produce any food/resources/energy

instead of the base square producing a certain amount of food/resources/enerergy it would instead provide a percent bonus to the food/resources/energy taken in by the outlying squares. you could have the base square only have a modifier according to factories refineries and such built in the city

or perhaps you could have your citizens actually work the base square and each citizen working the square would provide some kind of fixed percentage increase representing the labor force working in factories, mills, and such

for example if the base square provided a +50% bonus to food and your city took in five food from the outlying squares then the base square would produce 5 food

well those are some ideas that i think would really change the civ economic system so what do you think? feedback is good

korn469

[This message has been edited by korn469 (edited June 17, 1999).]

Diodorus Sicilus · June 17, 1999, 15:29

Been wasting my time lately with "Birth of the Federation" game (henceforth: BotF) and it has some ideas that could be useful here...
Each solar system in BotF can have multiples of Production/Energy elements. They only add to the amount of Production Potential, so that you can build things faster, and the total number of everything you can have is based on the population of the system. Let's take a variation of that and apply it in CivIII. Here's the idea:
Each city can build as many Improvements as it has Population, with perhaps a bonus at the start so you aren't stuck with only one or two improvements for umpteen early turns - each city could start with a Base Number of improvements you can build.
If you have several Production Improvements (Barracks, Armories, or Logistics Depots for military units, Mills, Factories, Robotic Plants for equipment, Shipyards for ships, etc) you can build one New Thing for each such improvement OR you can combine several such to build one thing faster. Each Improvement would add to the cities total Manufacturing Points, which could be divided or applied as wished.
This would also allow/cause you to concentrate the production of certain cities: you would tend to have, as countries' did historically, a Steel City that cranked out all the heavy stuff (artillery, tanks, etc), a University Town whose points all went into Schools, Science Parks, Universities - Research, and perhaps an Artistic City (Athens?) in which the points went into Happiness/Cultural improvements that affect the entire civilization's Happiness/Contenment ratings.

Flavor Dave · June 17, 1999, 16:17

Korn, there's obviously something I'm missing in your idea to build more than one thing at a time. Even if you change from shields to "builders," you'll have the same situation. You can either build a city improvement and a unit in 5 turns each, or you can spend 10 turns building both of them at the same time. You'd have to be an idiot to use the 2nd option. B/c you'd be missing 5 turns of use for whichever you build first, under the 1st option.

So, what am I missing?

Eggman · June 17, 1999, 21:14

Diodorus: Not sure I like the idea of having the number of improvements limited by the population. There is already a mechanism to control the number of improvements - maintenance cost. Extra buildings cost more money and come directly out of the treasury. If you want more buildings, eventually you will have to change the tax rate or change government to something that makes more money.

However, having a MINIMUM population requirement to build certain improvements might work (they used it in Colonization). Any city can build a Temple, but for a Cathedral, you need a bigger population. Plus, if your population drops below the minimum, you cannot use the building. That avoids the "temporarily increase the population, start building and then move that population elsewhere" cheat common in Colonization.

EnochF · June 18, 1999, 00:03

Someone needs to summarize this thread for Firaxis! Any volunteers? Diodorus, Ecce Homo? Just use the last summary as a jumping-off point and update it to include the latest round of suggestions as best you can, and submit it to Yin at namk26@hotmail.com!

korn469 · June 18, 1999, 07:48

Flavor Dave

you are making a false assumption, you are assuming that the two things you are building cost the same amount. however that is not the case. take for instance building a fusion infantry unit which cost about 40 minerals and building a hybrid forest which cost 240 minerals. if your city is making 40 minerals a turn then it would take 2 turns to build the infantry and 12 turns to build the hybrid forest. and it'd be most useful in large highly productive cities. as it is now i've have super cities that could build the assent to transendence in 5 turns. and can pretty much build any combat unit in one turn. i think it'd be more incentive to build robotic factories, genejack factories, nano factories, and quantum converters

korn469

Harel · June 18, 1999, 10:29

Hello everyone. I have a talk with Yin, and I was to make the summary instead of the now-aloft Pythagoras ( wanted dead or alive, preferable the first option

).
I tried to do three things: sum up this thread, the 1.0 thread WITH the old summary list Pythagoras put on the start of 1.0.
So, something might have slipped.
If I miss quoted, forgot to mention someone's name or explain his idea as it should be, my regrests. Please inform me, and i'll fix it swiftly.
Therefor, here is the list.

ECONMICS/THREAD SUMMARY

A. Economical concepts
B. Carvan issue.
C. People quotes.
D. List of thanks.

A. Economical concepts

1. Having a number of key materials per Era ( copper, oil, etc. ). If you
lack enough of those materials you gain minuses to production. Only the
used materials for the Era are showen up on the map. You may trade resources
with other civ's. ( Eggman, Korn469 )
2. Having a budget screen. The usefulness of city improvements are decided
by a Tax slide: how much money you put in Eduction dictates the bonus gain
per schools, etc. Military is divided between the upkeep of the units, and
give minus/bonus to morale. Wealthfare money gives extra happiness. In
democracy/Rebpulic, the Sanete may demend minimum budgets to some parts.
Harel ).
3. Having 3 global types of resources: Fuel, building matertials and exotic,
instead of shields. Works in other ways like idea number 1. ( Flavor Dave ).
4. Economy model should be like Imperlism, you find the resources with a
Geologist unit, then build roads to the patch and build "mining buiding" on
the patch and move the resource to the closest city ( Colon ).
5. Besides resources, a consideration to the processing ( industry ) has to
be notice as it's the main issue in economy ( Colon ).
6. You should be able to trade with barbains ( Diodorus Sicilus )
7. Some nations based soley on trade. It should get much bigger economical
bonus from trade routes ( Diodorus Sicilus )
8. The more types of luxury goods you have, the happier the people are.
Trade goods should be seperated from gold and have four main type of luxury
items. Also, combing many food sorts will give a happiness bonus. ( Ecce
Homo, Korn469, Stefu ).
9. You should be able to be a third-side trader contractor: be able to ship
resources for some civ to another civ, gaining a small percentile of the
money yourself ( Holland traded for most of eastern europe in the past
Harel, Mindlace, Diodoros Sicilus ).
10. City should be able to build several things at the same time ( with
sliders to refelt percents of labor ). ( Korn469 ).
11. Have a new type of civlian: builder ( Korn469 ).
12. Base/City squres don't produce anything, they give a bonus to outlaying
squares ( Korn469 ).
13. Each city can build as many Improvements as it has Population, with
perhaps a bonus at the start so you aren't stuck with only one or two
improvements for umpteen early turns - each city could start with a Base
Number of improvements you can build. ( Diodorus Sicilus )
14. The number of tile used should be as the city size, not size+1 ( Isle ).
15. City should be depended on one another, like in modern economy. Be able
to group cities to a shared pool of resource and support. ( Druid, Hans2 )
16. Having "contracts" to reduce micro-manage ( Don don ).
17. Have commodities, like in Colonization. Have around 10 resources and 10
finished goods and revolve the economy around them. They are replaced with
more fitting ones along history and deplet over time. ( Don don, Bulrathi,
Diodorus Sicilus, Zorloc )
18. Be able to build docks, airports and the like in other country area by
being a sum of money ( Trachymr )
19. Have "two" level of trade - internal and forgien. Forgien will be
automatic, ala MOO and internal economy will be based on commodities ( Fugi
the Great )
20. Trade advisors, like SMAC governors will automaticly control all trade
Fugi the great )
21. Trade will also generate shields ( production ), not only trade arrows
CapTVK )
22. If you have commodites, controling most of the world supply of a certain
item allows you to get more money for it, Monopol of the market
( Pythagoras )
23. The type of Goverment and Market status dictate the control on your
trade, and the income gotten from it ( Pythagoras )
24. Black market: automatic caravans created in cities with a high
criminality, or to trade goods which are greatly lack, or trade routes wtih
enemies. You gain no income, and it's a drain on your trade cause it lower
the income of your trade. Needs military units to destroy. ( Pythagoras )
25. You can build trading posts, which act as airports and fortress ( maybe
give a small bonus to trade in near by cities? ). built by explorers.
Flavor dave )
26. Spys can destory trade routes ( Flavor dave )

B. Carvan ( only trade ) issues:

1. Have the trading bonus relate to supply and demand ( Bubba ).
2. Have an more expensive sort of caravan which delivers finished goods, not
materials, and give a bigger bonus ( Bubba ).
3. Having pirating and pillaging the trade routes, ala CtP ( Bubba, DanS ).
4. Caravans automaticly move back and forth, not just trade routes
Pythagoras )
5. Carvans need to evolve along history, with sea and air types
( Pythagoras )
6. Trade should be a part of diplomacy, automaticly created a "carvan"
building contract. Good trade will increase the level of diplomatic
connections ( Pythagoras, Hans2 )
7. War should cancel all trade bonues ( Jele2 )
8. Be able to give military protection to carvans by arming them (bab5tm )
9. Have air-lift carvan which can help besieged cities ( give them less
damage from artilery, you get a trade bonus, civ attitude to you is
better ). ( EnochF, Harel ).
10. Have SMAC-type way-points for carvans ( Trachmyr )
11. Have a MOOII trade, gaining an automatic money&Science bonus, no
caravans ( Prefect )
12. Once a caravan is built, he is automaticly sent to the most profitable
town, and gives and automatic bonus ( no actul movement ). ( Harel )
13. Caravans act like spies and show parts of the other-side maps
( Utrecht )
14. Caravans are automaticly built by the AI, and sent. The entire trade
process is done by the computer for you, a bit like SMAC ( Lancer,
Pythagoras )
15. Be able to hire caravans, and get a percent of the income ( Trachymr )
16. If you enable free-market SE, some of the caravans will belong to a
private company, and you get a percent of the income by tax ( Ecce home,
Harel )
17. A new wonder that will increase the movement rate of caravans ( Flavor
Dave )
18. A new city improvement to increase the output of caravans ( Diodoros
Sicilus )

C. People quotes:

"With just two or three materials per era, this could do a good job of
simulating the need for vital materials. If you can't get them (see Japan
after the US cut off its oil supply in WWII) you are going to fall behind
which forces war. It also allows a civ to capture and/or cut off key
materials and devastate a civ economically. Run out of oil - production
drops by 50% - OUCH! Stockpiling in case of war is a good idea too. Plus,
the demand for those key materials would grow as the civilization gets
bigger (more cities) so you would need to make sure that you can secure
those resources to expand" ( Eggman )
"Actually, from the beginning civilizations had to trade for critical
materials: copper and tin are relatively rare as recoverable deposits, but
they are both required for Bronze. The bronze age in Europe was marked by
long-range trade in tin, all the way from Cornwall in England to the
Mediterranean. The trick is that most of this early trade was not with other
(rival) civilizations, but with what, in game terms, are 'barbarians'. Give
us more flexibile barbarians, who sometimes trade because (for instance)
they've got the tin you need and you've got civilized goods like wine that
they want, and you can put critical resources into the Trade System and
realisticaly spread over the map and still not cripple some
resource-deprived civ from the start. Also, in most of those early trades,
the civ got the better of it, in that they also made money in the trading "
( Diodoros Sicilus )
"Resource Development: In order to develop your resources, you use special
units similar to the settler units of Civilization. You start out with a
prospector and an engineer. The prospector searches for various minerals
that can be found in the hills and mountains, and the the engineer builds
railroads and ports that are necessary to transfer those goods to the
capital. Unlike Civilization, virtually all your production is centralized
at the capital. Thus, in order for those resources to be of any use to you,
you must have a path, either by sea or by railroad, to your capital. Later
in the game, as your technology advances, you gain the ability to build
additional units which can further improve on your resource squares."
Colon )
"For Civ this could work by having 10 raw materials, and 10 manufactured
goods. All of these will be shared between all of your cities. Then to
trade, you make an agreement with another Civ (similar to CTP) and a caravan
creates a trade route from your closest city to their closest city. Then
your caravan (or whatever) will travel this path continuously - and can be
prirated." ( Zorloc )
"Why not have a real budget in civ III? For example, let's take hospitel.
Each one, takes lets say 2 gold per turn? Why not have an advanced budget
section, when you have "Health care". Here you allocate a budget that is
shared between ALL hospitels in the empire. The more money is per hospitel,
the more useful it will be. The more useful is will be, the happier people
will be and will live longer. Same thing with schools ( "Education"
section ), that will decide how much +% to research it gives, army which
decided how useful the units will be ( a minus if support per-unit is below
standard, a plus if above, etc ). You can even have the council fight for
different increase in sections. In the realigon section, someone said that
the popes ( or other big-shots ) of the religon would be like civ's inside
your civ, you will need to debate with them. Let's show up how terrible are
the democartical struggle for budgeting in civ III. Each party would demand
something else... This could be fun... ( Harel )
"I think the trading from both SMAC and Imperialism should be used. The
basic average everyday items that get traded if you are a friend of another
nation should be automatic like in SMAC. Then there are certain commodities
like wheat - bread, oil - petroleam, iron ore-steel-guns, uranium -
plutonium ... that should be traded on the market like in Imperialism (the
important things you need to grow a nation/empire). You could then do what
the US does with Russia now with the selling of wheat to them when they have
a surplus. Could also get food if there is a major famine in your country.
Trading for oil like the world does with OPEC. If you don't have oil, tanks
don't move and planes don't fly; so make sure you have enough to get you
through a war - don't be stuck like Germany or Japan in WWII. Iron ore/steel
production with different nations trying to corner the market or dumping it
on other countries to kill their industries (Japan was accused of this). If
you don't have steel, then you don't make tanks or factories. If you don't
have uranium to make plutonium, then you don't make nukes, try getting it in
trade or on the black market. Not every nation on this planet is blessed
with an abundance of goods. Countries like Japan have to rely on the exports
of other countries to stay alive." ( Fugi the great )
"Please, please, Please no comodities as in Colonization. This system is ok
with a very few "centers", but putting a system with detailed commodities in
a many-centers (cities here) game like civ produces mind-numbing amounts of
micromanagement. I intentionally would stop expanding in Colonization (even
though I would have liked to strategically) because the micromanagement
burden became rapidly intolerable after about 10 cities." ( Mark_everson )
"Having industry treated like it is in Imperialism is a VERY BAD IDEA. I
like Imperialism but in that game the economics are the main focus. Not so
in Civ. Considering that in my experience Imp1 games tend to last a whole
lot longer than Civ2 games, having a complex economic model in Civ3 will
make the game unplayable. You know that joke that if you want realism in
Civ, you should play two turns and then die of old age? Well, that wouldn't
be too far from the truth." ( Eggman )
"If you have several Production Improvements (Barracks, Armories, or
Logistics Depots for military units, Mills, Factories, Robotic Plants for
equipment, Shipyards for ships, etc) you can build one New Thing for each
such improvement OR you can combine several such to build one thing faster.
Each Improvement would add to the cities total Manufacturing Points, which
could be divided or applied as wished.This would also allow/cause you to
concentrate the production of certain cities: you would tend to have, as
countries' did historically, a Steel City that cranked out all the heavy
stuff (artillery, tanks, etc), a University Town whose points all went into
Schools, Science Parks, Universities - Research, and perhaps an Artistic
City (Athens?) in which the points went into Happiness/Cultural improvements
that affect the entire civilization's Happiness/Contenment ratings."
Diodorus Sicilus )
"What do you think of putting these materials into a generic form--fuel,
metals, maybe two more? Also, in every "age", where each of these generic
goods are concentrated would change, to reflect the evolution from wood to
coal to oil to nuclear power." ( Flavor Dave )

D. List of thanks:

Special thanks: Pythagoras

Eggman, Ecce Homo, Harel, Bulrathi, Bab5tm, Korn469, Lancer, Matthew, Don don, Mark_everson, Trachymr, Mindlace, CapTVK, Stefu, Fugi the Great, Itokugawa, JamesJKirk, VaderTwo, EnochF, Croxis, Delcuze, Kerris, DanS, Didorus Sicilus, NotLikeTea, Flavor Dave, Hans2, Colon, Bubba, Druid, Prefect, Isle, Utrecht, Jele2

[This message has been edited by Harel (edited June 20, 1999).]

Flavor Dave · June 18, 1999, 13:17

Korn--what I was missing is that you're talking about late in the game, when your city is producing 62 shields or whatever. Yes, that's a *good* idea, but it should only be enabled with the development of a tech like refining (power plants.) Till then, micromanage.

You left out the best quote--"If you want realism, play two turns and then die of old age."

Diodorus Sicilus · June 18, 1999, 14:26

Eggman: thanx for the suggestion on Minimum Pop to use an Improvement; that works much better in a Civ context than a minimum pop to build it,
Colonization being one of the myriad games I've never had time to play, I missed the pop limit solution in it.

Bigcivfan · June 18, 1999, 22:51

A possibility would be to use the model like COLONIZATION for the city menu on CivIII. You could build a ship if you have a citizen in the shipyards building one. You could build a unit, if you have a citizen in the barracks training and the approriate resources. A size 10 city would have 10 available workers, to be allocated where ever you see fit.

NotLikeTea · June 19, 1999, 09:50

nah.. I don't want to see this.

I've always assumed that the workers in the fields are population that is not otherwise occupied. Afterall, you can have all your pop working on farms, but still support Barracks, a Temple, and a Library. I think it's safe to assume that all these buildings are always fully occupied.

Though, I do like the idea of buildings going idle when the pop drope. I just don't want to have to manage workers manually.

Pythagoras · June 20, 1999, 00:57

Please forgive me

I work 60 hour work weeks, and I aid MarkG on the SMAC site. PITY ME!! I jumped into something that took more time than I expected, and I wanted the Civ community to get someone's best job than my half ass job.

------------------
"I think you're all f*cked in the head!"
Chevy Chase-Nat'l Lampoon's Vacation.

Harel · June 22, 1999, 10:15

Hello everyone. I am the new thread master of Economics/Trade section.

I am now closing this thread. See you all in the next thread!

THREAD CLOSED, THREAD CLOSED, THREAD CLOSED.