ECONOMICS/TRADE ( vers 1.3 ) HOSTED BY: HAREL

[ember]

I didn't say that you can't build inland cities, just that costal/river ones have benifits so that they tend to be larger and build more often. In your examples how large are theose trade cities compared to Rome/Shanghai/Alexandria during the same era?

The vast majority of large cities are still costal or on a major river. A spot where you have both is the best, bonuses get combined.

Your point on not all costal cities getting the bonus:
Trade routes are created be people. By the very fact that you settled a city there, there will be trade. The existence of the city creates the bonus. Not all ocean cities will be huge, lots of other factors can keep them small.

For a pair of otherwise identical cities the costal/river city will always have more trade. External factors can change this, like trade routes, but costal cities do have an advantage.

Having a trade bonus represents the ease of access and implicit trade to smaller population centers around the nearby coast. Inland cities do not have this until RR, but you can still establsih trade routes.

------------------
"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[Diodorus Sicilus]

Theben:
The silver mines at Laureion in Attica were exploited by slave labor starting between 490 and 480 BC, and Themistocles won a famous debate to use the money to build 200 trieres (triremes), the backbone of the fleet that defeated the Persians at Salamis on 23 Sep 480bc. The 'Athenian' League wasn't started until after the Battle of Plataea the next year, when Athens started 'liberating' Greek cities from the Persians and incorporating them (as you said, frequently forcibly) into the League.
Horses and the technology to breed and prepare them for riding was not general in 4000BC. Just using the CivII civilizations, the Aztecs, Souix, Zulus, Egyptians, and Japanese would have no access to them. I agree, however, that historical handicapping makes a lousy game (everybody should read Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs & Steel" for a brilliant exposition on just how bad geographical handicapping has been), That's why I proposed that Chariots would be available as an early mobile unit regardless of access to horses - the first chariots were drawn by onagers or wild asses. Also, the horse would spread fairly quickly to all parts of any connected land mass with the right climate. It was general over Eurasia by 1000BC, but not in central/south Africa ever: couldn't spread through tstse fly country.
Let's not introduce the tstse fly, though: that would handicap someone's starting position 'way too much!
I'm not fanatic on it. Leave horses generally available from the start as you will. I did think it would allow for some more variety in graphic options: units with same factors, but one civ has Light Chariots, another Light Horsemen. Later some (with the right starting geography) have Elephants, while others have Heavy (scyth) Chariots, others Armored Lancers or Horse Archers.
I'm always trying to introduce variety to the game, and items that will differentiate civilizations in wyas other than their names and titles. I figure the more I throw out, the more chance at least a few of them will make the cut...

[Maniac]

"I didn't say that you can't build inland cities"

Did I say that you said that you can't build inland cities?

"just that costal/river ones have benifits so that they tend to be larger and build more often. "

Yes, they have benefits, namely that trade routes are more likely to pass there, certainly before the discovery of the Railroad.
So coastal cities get bonuses cause there pass more trade routes, but an intrinsic bonus to every coastal city is wrong.

"In your examples how large are theose trade cities compared to Rome/Shanghai/Alexandria during the same era?"

I don't know how large they were. But you gave bad examples because the cities you gave were the capitals of civilizations (the Roman and Ptolemaes). And capitals always tend to be larger, even if they are sited on infertile places.

"The vast majority of large cities are still costal or on a major river. A spot where you have both is the best, bonuses get combined."

The same with my 'system'. Cities near an ocean AND a river are likely to receive lots of trade routes.

For the rest of your post, all what you say also counts for my system.

[ember]

Given that they include your specific trade route system, no additional bonus needs to be accounted for. If they do not then my way makes sense.

How about Pompeii? Hamburg? Sparta?

------------------
"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[Maniac]

Indeed if my trade route suggestion isn't used, I agree on your idea.
Err... what about Pompeii, Hamburg and Sparta?

To everyone :

Harel has said on the SE thread, he won't have time to make a new Economy summary. We will have to do it ourselfs. Ideas?
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by M@ni@c (edited August 25, 1999).]</font>

[Theben]

Surely there is someone here who can condense & summarize a mere 35 posts (someone not working on another thread!).

The Tiber would not be large enough to include on a civ tile at almost any map scale generated or designed. I made a 105x95 Eurasia map, but still had to exaggerate the width of the Italian peninsula to make it 3 wide. Including the Po was a stretch at that scale.

Rivers are so scarce on civ maps they must be considered only the truly huge ones like the Amazon, Mississippi, Nile, Indus, Ganges, Danube, Rhine, etc.

I rationalize the civ irrigation system by thinking that there are nearly always rivers flowing into seas, so starting irrigation at the shore isn't completely wacky.

As for trade, civ definitely is short on trade generation: roads in flat terrain, rivers in any terrain, intersections of the two, sea tiles, and special terrains. Trade is generate by all human activity above the subsistence level. Rivers barely considered navigable are more important for trade than the best roads, until the auto.

[Maniac]

In all CivX games, trade was not necessary to survive. It was just nice for some trade bonuses. However in reality trade IS necessary to survive. So I think if you haven't got a certain item in stock, you should have serious penalties.
This would make trade more common since you would HAVE to trade.
Of course the larger your empire, the more of a certain item you need.

Beginning a list of things...
If you haven't got X item in stock, you get Y penalty...

Hides, Wool, Clothes, Dye, Silk : Growth penalty if people have nothing to wear
Salt, Spice : Irrigation and Farms produce 2 less food (using x10 system)
Silver, Gold : Taxes penalty because you have no metals to make coins.
Copper, Iron : Military penalty because you can't make weapons.
Coal, Oil, Uranium : Labor penalty because you have not enough energy sources.
Timber : you can't make boats before the discovery of Steel
Gems, Wine, Beads : Relations penalty?

Those items should be able to be acquired by special resources eg
Hides by Buffalo, Furs, Musk Ox...
Wool by Sheeps (new special resource on Plains or Hills)
Cloth and Silk by a Cotton special resource
etc... Just giving some examples. Special resources like Gold, Iron, Copper, Oil, Uranium should be able to exist on every terrain type.

Harel didn't tell me, and I'm working with him on this! But my part is just Resources and Support aspects (which ties in with the supply aspect of the Movement thread). At least that's how Harel said he wanted to do it.

I'm only about 1/3 done, and it's now… uh… Thursday? Yup, that's it. (I'm studying for certification exams, so I'm goofy right now.)

BTW, it isn't just sumarizing these 35 posts, some reformatting work needs done to lessen the burden on Yin/Shining.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by don Don (edited August 27, 1999).]</font>

[Maniac]

don Don, are you making the summary of this thread?

[Maniac]

Some points in the summary I would like to see edited...

A.2. says that every citizen = 1 labor.
In my large post here I suggested that the first citizen should produce 10 labor (certainly don't forget to mention the x10 system!), the second 20, the thirth 30..., so that a size 3 city would produce 60 labor. This to reflect that the second citizen is 20000 people, so should generate a double amount of labor than the first citizen (= only 10000 people). Note this also solves the ICS problem since a few large cities are much more profitable than some small ones.

A.8. Not only should some increase happiness or economy, but lack of resources would seriously hurt some aspects of your production. Examples in my post of 'August 26, 09:15'.

A.13. Units should besides resources also need a (very) small amount of gold and food as support.

B.2. I think mercenaries should only need gold as support, not food or resources. However the gold support should be 5 to 10 times as big as a normal unit.

B.4. I think Harel is the only that wants that, I have learned from my discussions with him on the SE thread (I can't help but notice that the ideas he agrees with are well represented and others not). I simulate the burden of war with two Values : Survival and Power. Survival has -2 Economy and Power -2 Production. I think this is enough to simulate the burden. BTW, how determines the AI that you are in a full war? In Civ2 I was constantly at war. But I was rarely in real combat because my enemies were too far away or I just didn't feel like mobilizing my army. So I strongly oppose to this idea.

B.7. I suggested that again with increasing city size, the trade generated in the city square increased also.
Eg size one produces 5 trade (x10!), size 2 15, size 3 30, size 4 50...
Again a solution for ICS.

B.8. I think it should be mentioned that many people like Public Works. Harel has stressed it too less. (he doesn't like CtP)

B.14. The factors Taxes, Research and Happiness of my SE model determine how high you can set your taxes, science and luxuries rate.

C. My trade system I said in 'August 24, 20:26'. Perhaps you could also mention the reasons why this system is the most realistic.
BTW to make trade over ocean ever faster than over land (as in reality in history) in the game, I think moving over ocean should go faster. Movement tripled or something like that.

C.3. You should be able to trade with barbarian and nomad cities/tribes.

C.17. It's not because the people didn't have currency that they didn't know that iron is more worth than wood.

D. In general I think it should be stressed that many people hate walking around with caravans. A more automatic system is wished.

[Harel]

Maniac, I was under the imperssion of Yin that this sunday, the 29, was the absloute deadline.
I got a suprise drop from my commander that I had to stay the weekend at the base: I didn't have time to notifiy Don don, just wanted to finish the darn model: it took my hours over hours.
Now that Yin says the 1 sept is the dead-line, all buisness is okly dokly.
Me AND don don are working on this thread: we divided the work between us.

I was deeply offended by your implamention that I only put ideas that I support: I absloutly add EVERY idea suggested over this thread, no acceptions. I chalange you to find a single idea I ommited.

[Foobar]

M@ni@c: I think you left out a very importend point with respect to trade, rivers and oceans.

Before railroads rivers and oceans were the only way for bulk trade. Goods like timber, food and stone was never traded on land.

Land trade was mostly of goods that had a high value compared to their weight. E.g. silk, clothes, gold, metals etc.

E.g. there was not very much good farmland around Athens so they had to import lots of grain. If Athens had not been close to the sea it would never have been such a large city.

So I think you could say that in ancient times large inland cities were a rarity.

Erik Engheim

[Maniac]

Sigh... Foobar, Bokhara certainly, Palmyra probably and Petra, I don't know WERE on the silk route.

And I know trade over water is preferred. That's why I would decrease the movement points needed to cross water. So until Railroad most trade routes will go over sea.

But silk was much wanted. And a sea route to China wasn't known. So in high need people would even trade over land. And then there can exist big inland cities.
Of course, in game terms, the player should have a reason to trade over land when sea is easier. That's why certain trade items should actually be necessary to have a good functioning empire. Examples in my post of August 26, 9:15.

I totally agree that in ancient times large inland cities were a rarity. But they existed. So they should be possible in Civ3. We all want to make Civ3 as realistic as possible, don't we? And my trade system allows that while Ember's automatic bonus for coastal cities doesn't.
(Note for Ember. That's just why Oceans have 2 trade. To represent the extra trade. So if you give another bonus, coastal cities would have a double bonus.)

And Harel. I don't mean you have omitted an idea. You have done a very good job in representing every idea more or less.

BTW, has your commander got something against you? First your room is searched by 'surprise pick' and now he orders you to stay in the weekend.

[Harel]

My room? Why should anyone care about my room? I don't even have a fixed room at my base... never mind.

About the summary. I am starting now, and I am working on making anything more "complete". This means, uniting similar ideas and making each suggestion bigger and fuller. If it looks like I boost ideas I support: I am sorry. I try to add a touch to each idea, what ever I support it or not. For example, in the summary I list all the trade treaties from my diplomacy post. It's not because I only post my own ideas, but because I covered all the suggested treaties myself.
As you know, I have an orginized mind: I love posting big, elborate posts that detail many ideas then just posting a lot of small posts.
Never the less, I hope you will like the new summary.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Harel (edited August 29, 1999).]</font>

[Maniac]

"They just dropped a pick inspection on me"
-Harel

Heck, How can I know who "they" are and what of you they inspected?

And I will certainly love the summary if it unites similar ideas etc!

And if I will also be included in the summary, that Population also x10 of my August 21 doesn't have to be included.
Of course neither Recruitment, Settlers/Unit Workshop and Upgrading units. That was meant for the Combat and Civilizations thread where I also posted the message.

[ember]

M@ni@c:
Under my village system, labour and trade are produced ONLY in cities. Villages, which occupy most squares, do not produce trade, this is why I want a trade bonus for costal cities.

Good luck with the summary. Remeber that different people use the same words in different contexts, Labour and resources are particularly hard to pin down, you may want to explain what different people have in mind for them...

------------------
"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

As I have reviewed this and previous threads, I remembered that I wanted to respond to one of M@ni@c's suggestions:

"For every trade route that passes a city square of you, you get one (or ten if x10 used) extra trade."

Every tile with a trade route through it getting +1 trade might be possible under the x10 system. Otherwise, in many cases being a city on somebody else's trade route would be better than making your own trade routes! Trading partner cities generally have to be size 8+ in order to give +5 trade bonus. But with this, even a size 4 city could generate +5 for just one trade route passing through (assuming your workers are stationed on the route)!

Extending that for the length of a transcontinental route, with the typical sinuous Civ2 continent, there could well be 8 or ten cites along the way, each benefitting individually as much or more than the trading partners, the whole totalling to many times the actual trading partners' total!

First, domestic trade routes on the same continent (you control source & destination) shorter than some threshhold distance (tech dependent?) would not generate trade for intervening cities. It's already included in the trade generated by roads and rivers.

Second, trade routes on RR and after Auto should get less than trade on roads. The trains/trucks move through the city radius in less than a day in most cases. Sea routes only have to stop is they need provisions, so they would not generate much trade en route.

Maybe a city could get, say ½ trade total for a land route that passes through the city tile or any tile(s) touching the city tile (not the outermost tiles). A sea route, if you have a harbor, passing through any tile(s) touching your city tile would yield ¼ trade. A really good location would still get lots from other civ's trade routes.

The x10 could be more flexible, 2 trade + 1 trade per tile passed through (except outermost tiles) for land routes, 1 trade + ½ trade per tile passed through for sea routes.

A Caravansary CI would generate trade from land routes passing through occupied tiles in the whole city radius, and maybe some slight bonus on top of that. Expires with RR.

[Shining1]

An addendum to the tech system, but very useful for overall game balance and diplomacy issues:

Make technology dependant upon trade and infrastructure to a large degree. This makes the explore aspect greatly more important than before, and adds to the builders game. I'm not 100% sure how to work this - perhaps give a sizable tech bonus to economy units earned by trade as opposed to home made economy units.

If possible, eliminate the sliding bar system altogether, replacing it with the social engineering and actual infrastructure. Having to adjust the bar is a pain, but SE changes and building aren't, at least early on. It's also more realistic, as an economy does not shift from economic output to tech output overnight, as the game currently suggests.

This would mean that you have two forms of trade, possibly titled trade units and economy units, earning different values for each. For instance, a single trade unit might be worth twice as much as an economy unit, providing 2 science, 2 cash, and 2 luxuries. Or the science and luxury values might be increased, so a economy unit earns 1 2 1, while a trade unit earns 3 2 1, for instance.

This can be further adjusted by social engineering.

[Harel]

<u>Economy and Trade</u> - By Harel Eilam ( harel@isdn.net.il )

Index:

1. Pirates and black markets
2. Budgets
3. Diplomacy
4. War and peace
5. Free-mind companies
6. Trade model options
7. All about caravans
8. Trade routes
9. Inertial trade
10. Tile improvements
11. Trade buildings & wonders
12. Effects of trade
13. ICS solutions
14. City management
15. Regions

1. Pirates and black markets

The element of crime should be more developed then civ II generic "corruption" rating. All money lost from corruption is not just "gone", it is transfered to a pirate AI player. When it reach a certain trasehold, the AI gains a few pirate units. Even if the corruption would be taken care of by then, the pirate would not disappear: only military action is required. Once the pirate units are in place, they will start raiding trade routes, attacking caravans and villages ( see idea 11 ). If a city is un-guarded enough, they could even raid a city. All this time, they still gain the money from corruption. They will use the money they get to buy more units, train them, and build fortresses. Once they are firmly in place, they will starting using spys that will bribe cities. A bribed city by the pirates has more corruption ( generating even more money to the pirates ), all money gotten directly from the banks and market places go to the pirates ( the extra credit gotten from the bonus ), and pirate units are invisible in the city vision radius. All this time, the pirates will save enough money for thier big task: bribing a city into thier hands. Once pirates own a city, they form a new civ. They can not build a new city, however.
Pirates also have a good use to the smart emperor: a high presence of pirates creates black markets. You can buy your military units from the black market with a reduced cost, but it will enrichen the pirates even more. More, you can even bribe and manipulte your local pirates ( or the ones the other civ have ), and make them raid/steal/spy for you. Pirates are also a good source for exprienced mercenries for hire.
2. Budgets


2. Budgets

Budgets, like in real life. The bonus gotten from libaries, for example would be decided by how much you put in Eductation. That money is divided between all libaries and universties. The higher the gold per institue, the bigger bonus they give. Hospitels bonus by health, wealthfare gives happiness ( divided by all the populs, like Luxary ), military would be divided between the support cost of all units and dedice what morale bonus/minus you get, etc. ( In democracy/republic, the senate should demand a minimum portion to some section. The different budget sections:<list>
[*]Science ( labs and science rate )[*]Eduction ( libaries, universties )[*]Health ( hospitels )[*]Military ( military infra-structre and units )[*]Internal affairds ( Police, intelligence and reducing un-rest )[*]Wealthfare ( happiness bonus, like luxary )[*]Transportion ( Support of road tiles and Mans transpot building )[*]Construction ( reserve money to buy city building and wonders )[*]Arts ( support for wonder )[*]Argiculture ( support for farms )[*]Religon ( the bonus for temples )[*]Trade ( caravans are bought of a pool created here )</list>

3. Diplomacy

Via the diplomatic screen, you can sign several trade treaties and agreements. The first thing is the creation of trade pacts, or alliances, between three or more nations. In this trade alliance, you all automaticly trade between you ( with a nice big bonus ). Also, all of the below treaties suggested are done with a bigger profit and effiecncy then before.
Active trade improve the realtions between two nations. The more treaties you sign, the better the level of diplomatic relations will exist between the two nations.
The suggested treaties have been posted on the various threads:

3.1 Single trade: exchange cities/tech/units/money/resources/land between two nations.
3.2 Fixed trade/tribute treaty: exchange/give money/food/resources every turn until canceled.
3.3 Consturction: side A pays side B to build for him X units.
3.4 Shared wonder: both sides build a wonder toghter ( cheap in a labor/money pool ), and get the effects toghter ( all possible in wonders that effect the entire civ, not just a single city ).
3.5 Hired workers: side A pays side B for an agreed labor level ( moves from side B city to side A city ).
3,6 Monopoly: side A may demand side B to only buy his commodities only from him.
3.7 Lending money to a section side.
3.8 Port contract: side A builds side B to buy ( or build ) a port/airport on his land.
3.9 Trade passage: side A allows side B to pass caravans ( or trade with nations only his is connected with ), but gets a cut of the profit from the trade.
3.10 Embargo: side A demands side B to cancel all trade with side C.
3.11 Funded trade: side A pays side B to establish a trade route with a new nation ( buying caravans, etc ). They split the profit gotten.

4. War and peace

The diplomatic relations between two nations should give you some specific bonus/minus. A state of war should give a boost to military production, but should drain civilian resources for a prolonged war. This could be viewed at increased support cost for units after long periods out of the city, increasing the minus to production in the SE screen, or simply reducing the bulk income. Unity, a high form of alliance, vastly increase trade porfit, but makes you more vunrable to spies.

5. Free-mind companies

5.1 Companies, and free trade, should hold a much bigger and obivious power in the game. Dictates by your market option, some of your economy ( all, parts or none ) should belong to privite companies. You will stay gain the credits ( via tax ). It's more to show a real-life view and increase the realism of the game. The company could be a coporation ( in transnational ), a bank, a guild, a labor union... a single merchent or a group of merchent. The type ( and size/limition/behviour ) of the compnay depands, as said before, on your market option. The companies control parts ( or all ) of your caravans ( or trade routes ), and use those credits. They will build thier own caravans. If in their interst, they will even build buildings in your cities ( such as market places ). But the profit from those will only go to the company: you only get a share via taxs. They could even build wonders if it will be profitable for them! The company will also build ports and airports, and road/railroads to expand thier trade sphere. You can sign consturction treaties with companies, and cast "Embargo" and "Monopoly" treaties.
You can also have "food" companies, that will own part of your farmers and farms. They will even produce more food then you can ( per tile ), and give you a part of the profits. If needed, they themselfs will build thierp privtly owned farms, granneries, food markets, etc.
Switching market option from one with companies to one without ( for example, from transnational to planned ), will cause several things: all company building and units are moved to your hands, and you gain the full profit from those, but you will receive a large minus to all economy for several turns.

5.2 People have exprieced wishs to be able to actuly "play" for themselfs the "free-mind" companies. You should have the option either to "zoom in" and take control over one of your nation companies for several turns, or to start the game as a company and play it over along the game ( maybe one player can build the empire, and his friend managing the company at the same time, at multiplayer. Maybe even several players playing several companies over a single, or multiple, civ players. A possible future add-on? ). In addition, some suggested the option to play the pirates ( see idea 1 ), and play them!

5.3 Beyond companies, you should the more "generic" private sector. The doing of the private sector are competly autonomus and unknown to you ( not hidden, just not reported ). As a general thing, the private sector will deal with building his own key city improvements alone. Like libaries, churchs, market places. Those will be builded by the public expense, not the goverement. The extent of power the privte sector posses relies on your SE choises in goverement, market and structure. If Budgeting would be used ( see idea 2 ), then some of the cost will be collected from the appriopite branch. For example, the goverement will finance some of the cost of building new churchs out of the religous section in the royal budgets. The maintance cost will also partily drop on the shoulders of the goverement.

5.4 Once transnational market option has been discovered by any nation, the central banks are created. It's yet another AI company, that you may converese and sign several treaties with. The world global bank will invest in civ, buy off city improvements, lend money, and if holding enough power might even posses a small army of it's own ( for the sake of guarding the economical stabilty, ofcourse ). Or maybe it could be created when a specific wonder has been created?

6. Trade-model options

6.1 Considering how faulty the trade system was in civ II, a new system must be used. Trade was very ignored on civ II, and no one can deny the absloute great importance of trade along history. This section list all of the new trade methods proposed:

6.1.1 Use the caravan system in civ II ( in this case, make sure you use some modifcation to the system, see idea 7 ).
6.1.2 Internal trade is automaticly, like SMAC. All cities generate a small trade bonus, regarding the size of the city, size of empire, location of cities and eco bonus. External trade is done with caravans ( see idea 7 to further increase this ).
6.1.3 All trade is totatly automatic, just like SMAC. The income generate also relies on the size of your allies and thier numbers.
6.1.4 All trade income is generate by signing "commerce treaties", like master of orion series. It is signed via the diplomacy screen, and generate a fix amount of cash every turn. The size of profit relies on the popultion size of the two nations and any commerce bonus/minus either of you have. The size of the profit is negative at the start, and is increasing steadly over time.
6.1.5 Every big city can support several trade routes. The number of routes is decided by your SE options, tech level and city size. Each route is connected to a city of a friendly nation ( beside yours ). Every friendly city can be connected to just one city ( meaning, you can't have two of your cities connect to the same city twice ).
6.1.6 Trade is done with buildings, not units at all. You build a "depot" in your city. You automaticly gain a profit, considering how many cities you have near you, the size of your city and the size of the city you are connected with. The size of the city decide how many bonus you can maximuly get, and how many other cities can gain bonus from this city. For example, if a forgien nation has a city which can support 3 connections, it gains up to 3 connection bonus, and only three other cities can get a bonus from her.
6.1.7 Just like 6.1.5, your city gain trade routes. However, when you create a trade route it will automaticly call for the nearest available caravan and send it to create the trade route.
6.1.8 ( requires a commodity system ) Trade won't generally produce any credit: no tiles producing trade arrows. Nations only trade resource/commodities between themselfs. However, every trade gives both side a few credits upon completion of the trade contract. The bigger the trade is, the more profit both sides will get. Another option is when a trade agreement has been made, an available caravan automaticly is sent to the other nation land.

6.2. Civ II didn't allow you to trade with barbarians: a very false idea. Barbrains should have a bigger role: like pirates they could have a diverse options, and can also build cities, if they obtain the cash to buy a settler. In a nutshell, people would really like the option to trade with barbarians, primitive and nomadic tribes.

6.3 The economy, and income from trade, needs to shift up and down, like in real life economics. The more free your society is ( democracy/free market ), the more the numbers will shift for better or for worse. In social or controled markts however, the market will hardly shift at all. Shifting can cause up to +/- 50% of income in a single turn, and move up or down by an additional -/+ 5% every turn.

7. All about caravans

7.1 If the caravan system will still be used ( see idea 7 ), that some modifaction to the system need to be made. The micro-managment of each caravan in civ II made trade so very bothersome, that some players choose to ignore it completly. The caravan system could be change the following:

7.1.1 Keep it like civ II: you build them, move them around and create trade routes ( which a creation bonus when first creating the path ).
7.1.2. You build the caravans yourselfs, but they automaticly move to the most profitable location ( decided by distance, ETA, merchandise carrying, nationality of the city, etc. ). To increase procession speed, you could make the caravan invisible ( totaly automatic ).
7.1.3 Caravans are generated automaticly at large cities ( depending on city size and location, like rivers and coastal connection ). They are replaced after X turns if they are killed. You then direct them to thier destination.
7.1.4. A trade advisor govern all trade for you: he builds the caravans, move them about, and choose the best merchenside for maximum profit. You also can toggle "caravan viewing" for extra speed: without seeing the caravans the game will run swiftier. He will also manage building roads and ports for you. The advisor could be mandatory, or could be optionale, and be switched off/on.

7.2 To further increase the depth of the caravan system, new caravan types were suggested. Those specific-task units will further enhance the depth of trade. They will can be used with automatic trade ( trade advisor ): he would build armored convoys when sending them into "hot-regions", use "double-capaicty", or "finished goods", if it's more profitable, etc.

7.2.1 Special movement: a trade plane and ships. Trade ships are critical for realism.
7.2.2 Double capacity: costier, slower caravans, that carry a double cargo that offers a bigger income.
7.2.3 Armored convoy: a costier caravan that has some defenisive capacity and can protect himself for pirates.
7.2.4 Finished goods: a costier caravan version, but one that offers a much bigger profit.
7.2.5 Tourist caravan: carry no resouce. The profit is purelly set on the size of the two cities, with no connection to request and demand. Losing a tourist caravan, however, cause grave diplomatic strains and morale drop.

7.3 New ways to get caravans: hire them! Hiring caravans can come at two options. One, is hiring privateers. Privateers are controled by the AI, and automaticly seek the most profitable location. Hiring privateers reduce the time and cost to takes you to make a new caravan: but you only get a cut from the profit, and you can't control or direct your units. Full hired caravans are under your control, just like any unit. You don't built them however, or buy then: you rent them for a fixed prize. Like privateers, you don't get the full cut of the profit from the trade route.

7.4 Convoys may help a be-sieged city ( under artliery fire, or an enemy unit is in the city radii, or both ). If armored convoies exists, that only them may do it. If not, then any sort of caravans. Helping caravans generate food for the helped nation, and reduce money ( at a reduced cost ) for the owner of the caravan. However, it extreamly boost the diplomatic relations.

7.5 Caravans can assist cities that were harmed by a random event ( earthquakes, torando, etc. ). The caravan help fix the damage to the infrastructure and boost the food supply for several turns. You gain no money by this interaction, but you do greatly help the diplomatic relations between the two nations.

7.6 Caravans can't simply "help" wonders. They only reduce the mineral cost of the wonder, not increase the labor rating ( by offering new means of construction and rare items ). If the caravan is carrying construction goods ( timber, concrete, steel, etc. ), the the bonus to resource is doubled.

7.7 Caravans "know" how to use boats, and will "call" for one automaticly when it needs to pass over the seas. In other case, a caravan unit can be "glued" to a ship which will move the caravan all the time. In yet another option, you can set ships into "trade mode", where those ships, and only those ships, will be "called" by the caravans to move them back and forth.

7.8 Instead of when a caravan create a trade route you get a fixed profit, the caravans will move back and forth, and instead of generating a fixed amount every turn, the caravan will produce a sum of money when ever he re-reach one of the cities in the route.

8. Trade routes

Trade routes are the path where trade is passed between cities or nations. It could be caravans moving back and forth, or a genertic "trade route" which is generated automaticly. The following things can be added into trade routes to make them more realistic:

8.1 Once you create trade routes with another nation, you can't cancel it alone. Your only option is to cancel all trade with that nation, which means breaking ALL trade routes and all profit gotten from them.

8.2 Once you create a trade route ( with a caravan or not ), then you can further expand the level of trade that pass by the path automaticly, by signing extra "contracts" that can further increase the profit and resource swaping that go along the path.

8.3 Trade routes can't never pass over enemy land, or any nation that didn't sign a "right of passage" treaty with you ( or you are in a high state of alliance with them ). The route will go around the land, and it it's impossible, the trade route will be canceled.

8.4 You should be allowed to toggle "economy map", and view all the trade routes displaied over the land, with statistics over the city names showing the level of profit.

8.5 A city that sits on a river or on a shore ( or both ) get's an extra trade route credit ( or extra income from trade, if that system is not used ).

8.6 Trade routes automaticly adapt themselfs over roads/rail roads over ground, and into the "commerece winds" along the ocean ( fixed paths in which movement cost is 1/2 ).

8.7 All tiles that belong to a highly active ( several caravans using it ), trade route generate +1 trade. All cities that are in the path of the trade routes ( or some of thier radii is ) benefit from the trade route in this manner. This is cumaltive: if several trade routes pass by the same tile, then that tile can get a larger bonus. However, the tile is last to receive this bonus ( see below ). However, the maximum income that can be gained ( the number of tiles that get the +1 bonus ), depends on the number of caravans, thier profit, and thier type. Important! A land trade routes that links two of your own cities ( a domestic trade route ), would get no such bonus at all. It has to be linked to another nation city.
For every land caravan, you gain up to half the profit they generate. Boats give of 1/4, and planes nothing. For example, a land route with 2 caravan that each generate 20 trade icons per turn, can give up to 20 tiles a +1 bonus. If they were sea crafts, the bonus would have applied to 10. If one caravan is land, and the other is air-borne, the profit will be 10 since airplanes generate nothing.
This bonus is received by all friendly nations of the trade route owner: not just him.
If the number of tiles is smaller then the bonus ( a 50 tiles trade route with only a bonus to 10 ), then only those that belong to a city would get the bonus. After that, railroad tiles are last to get a bonus, since when a train speed past a city it's less likely to give any profit. If still in need, large cities collect the bonus before smaller ones. Therefor, in order of importance, this is the tiles that get the bonus:

City tile ( center )
Village ( see idea 11.3, on the village itself )
Inside large city radii + road/river
Inside large city radii
Inside large city radii + railroad
Inside small city radii + road/river
Inside small city radii
Inside small city radii + railroad
A city tile that allready has a bonus ( for extra, cumalative bonus from several trade routes )
Outside city radii ( doesn't really matter, does it? Since no one does get it anyway... )

8.8 If a trade routes pass over a road, and several caravans move on the road, it is automaticly upgraded into "king high-way", which will give a slightly better increase in speed ( 1/4 instead of 1/3 ).

8.9 If you create a trade route between two of your nations over sea, you can assign a transport ship to the trade route. That ship will automaticly ferry units from one side to the other. Your units ( caravans or any other unit ) that where directed over seas will automaticly move to the habor on thier side and wait for the ferry. Several ships can be assigned this way to the trade route.

8.10 Trade routes can used accepted way points.

8.11 You may position a military unit along a trade routes and order it to "raid" it, diverting all income to you. Consider a hostile act. Pirates ( see idea 1 ), use it all the time to generate more cash. Spys can destory the trade route totaly.

8.12 Trade route profit relays only of supply and demand of both the cities in the trade route. The bonus for distance ( like in civ I/II ), is better represented by the +1 trade per tile idea ( see idea 8.7 ).

8.13 Trade routes take a small amount of cash to maintain. The cost is decided by the route length.

9. Inertial trade

Inertial trade is a radical idea, that states that you can "center" your nation-wide trade power on several cities. For example, frontier cities always support the bulk, if not all, the trade routes ( caravans, automatic, whatever the system is ). In intertial trade, you can transfer the "option" for trade routes to a near-by city. So, a single city could get 5,10,15 extra trade routes when several inner land cities pass thier "Trade power" to her. Ofcourse, for play-balancing, they is some lost which increase the more trade routes you pass. You can pass 1-2 with no loss, but try to pass 20 and you only get an extra, lets say 10, for the destintion city. This represent trade cities that dealth with trade for most of the empirs. With contracts, you can even grant the other nation trade routes credit for him to you ( when you are getting some back, ofcourse ).

10. Tile improvments

10.1 The current system used to create tile improvements ( such as farms, roads, etc. ) is very bulky and require a great deal of micro-management.

10.1.1 ]Keep the current system ( settlers ), but further develop the automatation option that was introduced in SMAC.
10.1.2 Use the public work option like in CtP: you earn work points, which you can spend to construct public works.
10.1.3 Combine public works with settlers: build them in the public work menu, which will automaticly send a settler to construct them ( for the public work points ), automaticly.
10.1.4 If comapnies or private sectors are used ( see idea 5 ), then many tile improvements will pop up with the support of the public himself ( farms and roads, mainly ). If budgeting is used ( see idea 2 ), then increasing the development section will make more tiles produce themselfs. You can also hire the company to build tiles for you.

10.2 Regardless of what system, tiles should cost maintence, mainly the roads and rail-roads. Roads that are not properly maintened decay over time. If not using budgeting ( idea 2 ) to support tiles improvements, they could cost gold, or just deplet if not used for some times, requiring a settler to fix it ( takes half the time ). Roads that are not traveled, mines that are left alone, farms that are not titled, etc.

11. Trade buildings & wonders

11.1 To further show and increase the importance of trade, you should have several buildings, and even wonders, that increase the usefullness of trade. The effects of those buildings/wonders can be:

11.1.1 city can support extra trade routes ( one or more ). Wonder can give an extra trade route for all your cities, world wide.
11.1.2 Extra profit from trade routes: a fixed amount of an added percentile.
11.1.3 Free caravans upon completion of structure. A building can give you an instant caravan for the city, and a wonder can give you one free caravan in every city you have. Another option is a wonder that generate you a free caravan every few turns.
11.1.4 Reduce the number of popultion you need to support one extra caravan ( see idea 8, third option ). For example, instead of a caravan every 5 pop, you get one every 4. Local effects for buildings, world wide effects for wonders.
11.1.5 Increase movement of all caravans ( wonder only ).
11.1.6 Reduce support cost of all caravans ( wonder only ).
11.1.7 Increase carrying capacity of all caravans ( wonder only ).

11.2 Settlers can build a new type of building in the out-lands: a trade depot. The trade depot can do one, some, or all of the following options:

11.2.1 Give a bonus to trade in the range of operation.
11.2.2 Act like a fortress.
11.2.3 Heal all caravans resting on turn on it.
11.2.4 Building, or generating caravans.
11.2.5 Defend all caravans in range of operations from raiding.
11.2.6 Resupply all fueled units.
11.2.7 Store cargo.
11.2.8 Act like a waypoint: you can send units to it by the command "go to".

Sea ports are builded on shore hexs, and act just like a trade depot: only they relay on ships ( protecting/building/reparing ships ). You can also ask via the diplomacy screen for your friend to build a port/trade depot for you ( see idea 3 ).

11.3 Villages are construced by a settler, which force the settler to dis-band ( like building a city ). Villages are a bit like supply crawlers from SMAC: they generate some food/resources which they send to the home city ( the original city of the settler ). If that city is destryoied, the bonus can be directed to any city of your choise. You can't build a village with your first settler: only after you have at list one city. While a village is infact a one pop unit city, the pop unit does not count toward your city total ( it does however on your nation scale ), and requires no food. They are several types of villages:

11.3.1 Farm village: produce food + resources + trade in equalent of the tile the village sits upon. The tile automaticly has food improvement on it ( irrigation, fields, farms, farmland ). Must be built on flat, fertile land.
11.3.2 Mine village: Just like 11.3.1 in all cases, excpet you have a mine on the tile, and must be built on a mountain/hill.
11.3.3 Fishing villages: Only produce food and trade ( no resources ), but you automaticly generate food like you are using a fish-improved ocean tile. Must be built on a shore.

12. Effects of trade

While one nation trades with the other one, they effect each other. Specific events can also boost, or hamper the profit generated from trade. The suggested effects of trade are:

12.1 The most basical one: the more trade you generate, the better the diplomatic relations between your nations.

12.2 Trade slowly generate the enemy map: the area around the cities you trade with, and all cities that are inter-linked via trade routes with those cities.

12.3 If one side posses some technology the other one hasn't, the other side can easier acquire it ( less research points needed ).

12.4 If one side posses trade tech and the other size doesn't, after one single trade the other side acquire it too.

12.5 The side that posses a clear technological advantage gets a bonus to trade.

12.6 Trade as general greatly increase technology output ( more scientificic realtions, diverse cultures originte more ideas, etc. ). Maybe make trade routes produce a small science bonus?

12.7 Cities with large popultion and food production obtain a small trade bonus: cuisense is a key industry in trade and tourism.

13. ICS solutions

The problem of ICS, meaning one city size, has been discussed heavly over the forums. Mainly, the problem relies on the fact that small cities, usally one pop size, are more profitable then large cities, making it un-profitable to spend money on expanding, beyond hampering realism. One, or a few, of the following soultuons could be used:

13.1 ]Increasing the production ratio of workers at a geomatarical rate. For example, the first pop gives 10 labor, second 20, third 30, etc. So, a 3 pop size city would produce 60 labor, instead of 30. This is fitting to the fact that the level of popultion in real numbers also increase geomatricly. If this incremental increase seems to steep, maybe 10-15-20-25 system is better used.
Like the above idea, hower increasing trade profit. 1 pop city produce 10 trade, 2 pop city produce 30, etc, etc, etc...

13.2 The city center tile won't produce anything, just give a +1 food/+1 prod/+1 trade to all surrounding hexes.

13.3 The effects of specialist ( which are usally only used on large cities ) should be much bigger.

13.4 You can put several workers on the same tile, but it with reduced effiency ( up to a max of 3 workers per tile ). This will allow big cities to put more people to work, and further increase thier power.

13.5 The number of popultion that can be put on tiles is city size -1. Meaning, a size 1 city would just work on the city center tile production, size 2 city would only have 1 worker, not 2, etc.

13.6 The maximum number of production increasing buildings that can be builded is the size of the popultion. So, a size 1 city could only support 1 market/facotry/bank, making bigger cities more profitable.

13.7 World-wide wonders that give "+1 happy citizen per city" unbalance things in favor or the smaller nations. Maybe it could be replaced by "+10% happy citizens in city".

14. City management

This section list all of the changes suggested to the "building" menu in cities, to further increase the ease of control of the player over his empire.

14.1 Having build queue: up to 5 buildings, one after another.

14.2 Allow multiple construction at the same time: slider bars share the labor power between various constructions. The maximum amount of items that can be constructed at the same time is either fixed ( 4-5? ), or decided by your city size/tech level/city improvements.

14.3 Making the goverenor more inteligent, and allow world-wide control over goverenors ( and regions ). Also, allow more fine-controling the goverenors.

14.4 All production values related to cities should be increased by a factor of 10. Meaning, a farmer produe 20 food instead of 2, and every citizen consume 20 food instead of 2. By increasing the numbers, you allow small bonus to be used ( +10% to food, for example, almost never has any effect in the current system ).

14.5 The popultion logeritmic scale used in civ II isn't very realistic. For starters, 10 thousand citizens for a starting village/hemlet, mainly in the old days, is way too much. One thousand sounds more reasonable. On the other extream, even the largest cities never tend to reach the size of truly huge cities on modern Earth. Fixing the scale is very needed.

14.6 Instead of using pop size units in a logertmical scale, use real-life numbers. You then divide the citizens by percentile among the works ( for example, a city has 120,000 people, and 12.1% are working in farming, meaning food production per farmer * 14520 ).

14.7 Totaly change the way you manage your cities and workers. You build generic buildings like farms, factories, libaries. You then assign work force ( they size of your city ) to the various building in a sort of a slider bar menu. You can then upgrade the buildings as technology increase. The basic output of farms and mines is decided by the surround lands around the city. This system was introduced in Birth of the federation. It's far more realistic: farmers should hardly give any labor or mine output.

14.8 Trade goods should be a conversion of minerals to goods ( by labor ) and sold automaticly for profit

14.9 Citizens can either be assigned in tiles, which produce food + resources, on inside the city, which produce labor. One labor + one resource equals one civ I/II build shield. The concept of labor is based by many of the ideas included in the summary. However, it means starting cities would need several workers ( since one would not be able to both mine and build ). Another option is that all workers tend tiles, and automaticly produce X amount of labors ( in this case, make sure you see idea 13.1 ).

14.10 When building military units, and if your social options allow ( free market ), you may hire them as mercenaries. They require no construction or buying, and they start as veteran, but they cost twice as much to support and are less loyal to you ( easier to bribe them ). Another, more realistic option, that you can't just hire any unit, you have a few offers that will vary along the time.

14.11 Since shipping items from the frinages of the city in early days was very hard, the external radii of the city ( the outer one ) has a "maximum output" setting that will improve along the years when new city improvements are allowed. For example, a farm can produce 5 food, but since it's the outer frinage it can only produce 3 ( the rest are lost ). Build a warhouse, and it will increase to 4. A highway will raise it once more to 5. Tiles that are conncted by road or river have a +1 to thier maxima. Connection by railroad offer +2.

14.12 "Rush-buying", meaning buying the rest of the product in a city in a single turn must be limited due to vast un realism. In a resource system, you can only buy the resources and still need to build them by labor. In civ II old system, limiting the buying to only doubling the speed would do it ( produce twice as fast, and buy the difference in shield * 2 every turn ).

14.13 Citizens that are not assigned into any tile, any have not been yet "specialized", are considered "un-employed" and increase the city unhappiness. Certain key technologies would increase un-employment for a few turns ( like industralazation, robotics, and other economy-changing techs ).

14.14 Lack of communication for a long period of time can result in a city breaking down and delcaring independance. The further away the city is, the more likely the city will revolt. The following things can decreese the chance: soldier inside the city, trade route connection with your empire, roads that are connected ( by some way ) to your capitol, key buildings and wonders ( like torch-lines ), and technologies ( radio, TV, etc ).

15. Regions

The concept of regions it that you are able to "group" several close cities into one shared pool. The amount of cities in the region, and it's maximum size depend on your SE options and your technological level. All the "grouped" cities pool toghter all thier food, resource and labor rating. The food pool first take care of the need of all the cities: any surpless are shared equally by all cities to produce pop growth. The "home" city, either selected or the bigget one, is effecting all the others. All wonders that exist on this city, or buildings, give thier effects to ALL cities in the group. A temple, for example, would reduce 1 unhappy drone in every city, not just his home town. A wonder that only effect him home town will effect all the grouped ones. However, buildings that only exist in the other cities won't effect ANY city, incudling the one with the buildings. Wonders that only effect the home city, and exist on another city then the central one, won't give a bonus to ANY city. However, the support cost of all buildings/wonders in the center city is doubled by the square root of the number of cities. For example, a temple in a 9 city pool would cost 3 times more, while effecting all the cities. Once the grouping is canceled, the support cost returns to normal.
For limiting the power of regions, it was suggested that only a specific set of buildings give an effect to all cities ( like highways, or stock exchange ), and the other needs to be builded several times ( maybe a nice menu that tells you the number of temples you have, and how many cities you support ). Maybe the buildings that don't effect all the cities generate a bonus regarding on the comparsion of amount/city size. For example, if you have 10 cities and 5 temples, maybe all cities will get a temple bonus, but only 50% of it ( 5/10 ).
Extra! Another way to implamnt this is by creating "regional command" in the home city. Since "Grouping" can be very powerful, the support cost for the command building should be very big.

Posters:

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<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Harel (edited September 01, 1999).]</font>

[Maniac]

Before you edited the post, I thought you invited the people to post any new ideas they would still have.

New option for Pirates.

With the money they gain from production they may also bribe a city. Then they form a new civ. That could be a solution for those who say that ruling and keeping a large empire with a lot of corruption and faraway cities intact is very hard.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by M@ni@c (edited August 30, 1999).]</font>

[ember]

Regions:
IMPORTANT
Regions do not function as a city the size of the sum off all teh little ones in it. This would lead to extreeme happyness problems.

Most structures have to be built for each city in the region (a few exceptions) Using a common build list were all labour is pooled
The build list includes the destination of each item. It is important to keep track of where everything is, for when cities are captured or regional boundaries change.

What about the village system and the split between labour and resources?


------------------
"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[yin26]

Harel,

Great job! Your enthusiasm is contagious. As you do the touch up work, could you please add numbers to each section: "12" should be followed by 12.1, 12.2, etc., next to each idea so Firaxis can refer to each point by number.

Other than that, it looks great.

Yin

[The Joker]

Hello there! Here are my ideas for a major change in city management:

1) I think the cities should have a population in them i stead of those heads. It would start at 10,000, the next turn it could grow to 12,000 etc.

2) I say: Trash the grid system! Therefor, the city radius would be in a circle around the city. The computer would calculate how much land you have of each terrain type. The city radius should be decided by the size of the city. A size 10,000 city could have a radius with an area of, say, 2500 square kilometres. 1000 inhapitants could work on e.g. 50 sq. kms. A 10,000 city could then work on 1 5th of its radius. A city with 1,000,000 would have an area of 10,000 sq. kms, and a 10,000,000 city would have an area of 50,000 sq. kms. If a land area is irrigated, mined etc. it would need more people working in it, so 50 irrigated sq. kms would need 2000 people or something. In the large cities, only a small part of the pop would be working outside the city. Then what would the rest of then do? The answer needs a little explanation: i think it is a mistake, that production in civ games has always been produced outside the cities. That isn't so in real life. Things are being made inside the cities. Therefor, i think an area worked outside the city would make no or little production. It would make food and/or raw materials (both vital ones like iron, coal and oil, and goods like cotton and wine wich could generate money if sent to your cities, or you could export it). I think production should be made by workers inside the city. They would produce a certain amount, say 1 prod per 1000 people. This could be raised by building improvements, so a factory would raise it from 1 to 2. However, for the factory to do this, it would require one unit of coal - or it wouldn't give any bonus. Likewise would nuklear plants need uranium etc. This would make coal very important in the imdustrial age, which would make worthwile to go exploring again. It could also give countries actual reasons to go to war. This, i think, would be a great addition to the gameplay.

3) Gunpowder revolutionized war, as it made walls useless. Therefor i think that traditional city walls would give no bonus versus ballistic units using gunpowder (cannons, artillery, tanks etc). There should also be an advance a bit after gunpowder wich would let you make a "defence line" improvement in a city, wich would give defence bonus versus those units.

4) If there is no map grid, then how about letting the cities really grow - filling more in the landscape.

[Maniac]

don Don :

I still have to respond to your post.

You're right. 10 trade is too much. But 1 is perhaps too little. Only playtesting can prove that.

"Otherwise, in many cases being a city on somebody else's trade route would be better than making your own trade routes!"

Now don't underestimate the importance of lying on a trade route.
1) the only reason for some cities to exist was simply the fact they lay on a trade route. Again I can use the example of the cities on the trade routes to China (and to Arabia, Petra?).
2) Now I can use as an example the cities of Rotterdam and Antwerpen. They are within the top ten I think of the world's biggest ports.
It's not like Belgium and Netherlands have that much trade routes on their own that they need super ports. No, a big part of the cargo that arrives in the cities is meant to go to Germany and further to Central Europe along the Rhine etc. So they (and many other countries) depend on foreign trade routes for their success.
(BTW this is what can make small countries important in the world, Harel. It doesn't matter how harmonious a country may be, without trade or passing trade routes the countries will still suck.)
So don't make the bonus too small or it won't make much difference to the Civ3 trade system.

"First, domestic trade routes on the same continent (you control source & destination) shorter than some threshhold distance (tech dependent?) would not generate trade for intervening cities. It's already included in the trade generated by roads and rivers."

I fully agree. The bonuses I suggested in that trade system are only meant for foreign trade routes.
I also think all CivX games represent internal trade with roads and rivers. So I totally disagree with an automatic internal trade bonus to all your cities as someone suggested in the summary.

"Second, trade routes on RR and after Auto should get less than trade on roads. The trains/trucks move through the city radius in less than a day in most cases."

I fully agree!
But then perhaps in the modern time port cities should gain more profit?

"Sea routes only have to stop is they need provisions, so they would not generate much trade en route."

Again I agree (actually I agree with everything you've said in your post until now).
Perhaps there should be contrary to a land route a fix bonus for a sea trade route passing, representing buying provisions in the city. So NOT this :

"A sea route, if you have a harbor, passing through any tile(s) touching your city tile would yield ¼ trade."


Expires with RR.

Agreed.

Harel :

I think this is my trade idea with some don Don ideas in it. I'm not sure of it.
So if it isn't, sorry. But I don't agree with it if this represents my trade system.

"All tiles that belong to a highly active ( several caravans using it ), trade route generate +1 trade. All cities that are in the path of the trade routes ( or some of thier radii is ) benefit from the trade route in this manner. This is not cumalitve: you can't get +4 trade in a hex if four trade routes somehow pass over the same region."

Of course it has to be cumulative! I think it's kind of logic that four trade routes would generate four times the profit of one trade route.
Of course if there are 4 trade routes on the same tiles, it must be a very strategic placed city.
Rare, but it is possible (again as real-life historical example Syria).

Edited this post to say this.
With the trade system I suggested, trade routes wouldn't get an intrinsic increased bonus for far away routes as in Civ1/2.
The profit from trade routes should depend entirely on Supply and Demand and on your trade treaty status (see Harel's proposals).
The bonus that faraway routes get is now more realisticly presented with "+1 trade on every tile a trade route passes".
So as don Don says if you have a trade route with a foreign city on the other side of the sineous continent, all cities between would get a bonus. So if the trade route would pass through foreign cities, your own gain of the route is less. More realistic.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by M@ni@c (edited August 31, 1999).]</font>

[Harel]

To maniac and everyone else:

I knew when I decided to unite ideas that some things will get either lost or mis-quoted. This is why I posted the temp summary a few days before the formal summary. Therefor, please, any comment or new ideas will be welcome. Feel free to tell me of any error to the suggestions here and I will swiftly solve them before I will finish with the summary.

I have re-edited the summary. You can find it on the first page, last post ( I re-edited it ).

The final one will be out tommorow, or more likely the 2 to septmeber.

M@ni@c,
You are correct, but the silk road was an anomoly. Imagine a solid continent half the size of a large map with only one viable route between a couple large civs on one end and a couple large civs on the other end. That's essentially what the silk road was, so every route went through Kashgar, Balkh and Balkhash.

The merchants themselves were based in Syrian cities, and they would be considered the origins of the routes. Likewise, for Europe, Genoa, Venice, and Constantinople were the origins of trade routes to Syria and Arabia (the spice trade to India). The rest of Europe traded with Genoa, Venice, and Constantinople.

Only later did the shipping system develop where inland merchants could routinely hire Dutch vessels to carry goods for them, which seems to be closer to the civ model.

I forgot to mention that storms often force ships to stop at ports along the way, so they may stock anything they can get at a good price although they aren't in desperate need. Plus trade routes will include merchants who prefer to trade along the way because they don't have the contacts at the home port to make the big bucks.

Boy are we all being picky!

[The Joker]

About that trade routes passing by cities:

Maybe cities near trade routes should get a small trade bonus. But the thing that could really give you lot's of money should be to buy goods from one civ and sell it to another for a higher price. That was what the Arabians did, as the Europeans had no contact with the Chinese, and could therefor not buy anything directly from them.

I alos think it should be impossible for a trade route to go over both land and sea. It should either be a sea or a land trade route. If a trade route should go over both land and sea it should need to go through a coastal city. This could portray what the Dutch made money on: the germans and other civs had no coastal cities, so they transported the goods they needed through the Dutch's cities. In civ terms this would mean that the Dutch bought goods from the oversea countries (or simply traded it from their oversea colonies to the cities in their homeland) and sold it for a higher price to the Europeans.

Also, a trade route should cost a small amount to have (it should be made instantly simply by choosing what to trade from what city to what city - so no caravans) and this amount should be higher the longer it was.

[Harel]

Well folks, here is my final summary. Ofcourse, I won't send to the Hybrid till don don finish his part, so you could still pitch in last-minute updates and ideas.
Don don is incharge of resource management, so don't be suprised this part is not covered here.
Well, here goes...

<u>Economy and Trade</u> - By Harel Eilam ( harel@isdn.net.il)

<u>Index:</u>

1. Pirates and black markets
2. Budgets
3. Diplomacy
4. War and peace
5. Free-mind companies
6. Trade model options
7. All about caravans
8. Trade routes
9. Inertial trade
10. Tile improvements
11. Trade buildings & wonders
12. Effects of trade
13. ICS solutions
14. City management
15. Regions

1. Pirates and black markets

The element of crime should be more developed then civ II generic "corruption" rating. All money lost from corruption is not just "gone,” it is transferred to a pirate AI player. When it reaches a certain threshold, the AI gains a few pirate units. Even if the corruption would be taken care of by then, the pirate would not disappear: only military action is required. Once the pirate units are in place, they will start raiding trade routes, attacking caravans and villages (see idea 11). If a city is unguarded enough, they could even raid a city. All this time, they still gain the money from corruption. They will use the money they get to buy more units, train them, and build fortresses. Once they are firmly in place, they will start using spies that will bribe cities. A bribed city by the pirates has more corruption (generating even more money to the pirates), all money gotten directly from the banks and market places go to the pirates (the extra credit gotten from the bonus), and pirate units are invisible in the city vision radius. All this time, the pirates will save enough money for their big task: bribing a city into their hands. Once pirates own a city, they form a new civ. They cannot build a new city, however. Pirates also have a good use to the smart emperor: a high presence of pirates creates black markets. You can buy your military units from the black market with a reduced cost, but it will enrich the pirates even more. More, you can even bribe and manipulate your local pirates (or the ones the other civ have), and make them raid/steal/spy for you. Pirates are also a good source for experienced mercenaries for hire.

2. Budgets

Budgets, like in real life. The bonus gotten from libraries, for example would be decided by how much you put in Education. That money is divided among all libraries and universities. The higher the gold per institute, the bigger bonus they give. Hospital bonus by health, wealthfare gives happiness (divided by all the populace, like Luxuries), military would be divided between the support cost of all units and decide what morale bonus/minus you get, etc. (In democracy/republic, the senate should demand a minimum portion to some section.) The different budget sections:<list>
[*]Science ( labs and science rate )[*]Education ( libraries, universities, college wonders )[*]Health ( hospital, care for cancer wonder )[*]Defence ( military infra-structure, barracks, and units )[*]Internal affairs ( Police, intelligence and reducing unrest )[*]Wealthfare ( happiness bonus: like luxuries )[*]Transportation (Support of road tiles and Mans transport building [ highways, mass transt ] )[*]Construction ( reserve money to buy city building and wonders )[*]Arts (support for wonder)[*]Agriculture ( support for farms )[*]Religion ( the bonus for temples/church )[*]Trade ( caravans are bought of a pool created here )

3. Diplomacy

Via the diplomatic screen, you can sign several trade treaties and agreements. The first thing is the creation of trade pacts, or alliances, between three or more nations. In this trade alliance, you all automatically trade between you (with a nice big bonus). Also, all of the below treaties suggested are done with a bigger profit and efficiency then before. Active trade improve the relations between two nations. The more treaties you sign, the better the level of diplomatic relations will exist between the two nations. The suggested treaties have been posted on the various threads:

3.1) Single trade: exchange cities/tech/units/money/resources/land between two nations.
3.2) Fixed trade/tribute treaty: exchange/give money/food/resources every turn until canceled.
3.3) Construction: side A pays side B to build for him X units.
3.4) Shared wonder: both sides build a wonder togther (cheap in a labor/money pool), and get the effects togther (all possible in wonders that affect the entire civ, not just a single city).
3.5) Hired workers: side A pays side B for an agreed labor level (moves from side B city to side A city).
3,6 Monopoly: side A may demand side B to only buy his commodities only from him.
3.7) Lending money to a section side.
3.8) Port contract: side A pays side B to buy (or build) a port/airport on his land.
3.9) Trade passage: side A allows side B to pass caravans (or trade with nations only his is connected with), but gets a cut of the profit from the trade.
3.10) Embargo: side A demands side B to cancel all trade with side C.
3.11) Funded trade: side A pays side B to establish a trade route with a new nation (buying caravans, etc). They split the profit.

4. War and peace

The diplomatic relations between two nations should give you some specific bonus/minus. A state of war should give a boost to military production, but should drain civilian resources for a prolonged war. This could be viewed at increased support cost for units after long periods out of the city, increasing the minus to production in the SE screen, or simply reducing the bulk income. Unity, a high form of alliance, vastly increases trade profit, but makes you more vulnerable to spies.

5. Free-mind companies

5.1) Companies, and free trade, should hold a much bigger and obvious power in the game. Dictates by your market option, some of your economy (all, part, or none) should belong to private companies. You will stay gain the credits (via tax). It's more to show a real-life view and increase the realism of the game. The company could be a corporation (in transnational), a bank, a guild, a labor union, a single merchant, or a group of merchants. The type (and size/limitation/behavior) of the company depends, as said before, on your market option. The companies control parts (or all) of your caravans (or trade routes), and use those credits. They will build their own caravans. If in their interest, they will even build buildings in your cities (such as market places). But the profit from those will only go to the company: you only get a share via taxes. They could even build wonders if it will be profitable for them! The company will also build ports and airports, and roads/railroads to expand their trade sphere. You can sign construction treaties with companies, and cast "Embargo" and "Monopoly" treaties. You can also have "food" companies that will own part of your farmers and farms. They will even produce more food then you can (per tile), and give you a part of the profits. If needed, they themselves will build their privately owned farms, granaries, food markets, etc.
Switching market option from one with companies to one without (for example, from transnational to planned), will cause several things: all company building and units are moved to your hands, and you gain the full profit from those, but you will receive a large minus to all economy for several turns.

5.2) People have expressed wishes to be able to actually "play" for themselves the "free-mind" companies. You should have the option either to "zoom in" and take control of one of your nation’s companies for several turns, or to start the game as a company and play it over along the game. (One player can build the empire, and his friend managing the company at the same time, at multi-player. Maybe even several players playing several companies with a single player, or multiple civ players. A possible future add-on?) In addition, some suggested the option to play the pirates (see idea 1), and play them!

5.3) Beyond companies, you should the more "generic" private sector. The doing of the private sector are completely autonomous and unknown to you (not hidden, just not reported). As a general thing, the private sector will deal with building his own key city improvements alone. Like libraries, churches, market places. Those will be built by the public expense, not the government. The extent of power the private sector posse relies on your SE choices in government, market and structure. If Budgeting would be used (see idea 2), then some of the cost will be collected from the appropriate branch. For example, the government will finance some of the cost of building new churches out of the religious section in the royal budgets. The maintenance cost will also partly drop on the shoulders of the government.

5.4) Once transnational market option has been discovered by any nation, the central banks are created. It's yet another AI company that you may converse and sign several treaties with. The world global bank will invest in civ, buy off city improvements, lend money, and if holding enough power might even posses a small army of it's own (for the sake of guarding the economical stability, of course). Or maybe it could be created when a specific wonder has been created?

6. Trade-model options

6.1) Considering how faulty the trade system was in civ II, a new system must be used. Trade was very ignored on civ II, and no one can deny the absolute great importance of trade along history. This section list all of the new trade methods proposed:

6.1.1) Use the caravan system in civ II (in this case, make sure you use some modification to the system, see idea 7).
6.1.2) Internal trade is automatically, like SMAC. All cities generate a small trade bonus, regarding the size of the city, size of the empire, location of cities and eco bonus. External trade is done with caravans (see idea 7 to further increase this).
6.1.3) All trade is totally automatic, just like SMAC. The income generated also relies on the size of your allies and their numbers.
6.1.4) All trade income is generated by signing "commerce treaties,” like Master of Orion series. It is signed via the diplomacy screen, and generates a fixed amount of cash every turn. The size of profit depends on the population size of the two nations and any commerce bonus/penalty either of you have. The size of the profit is negative at the start, and is increasing steadily over time.
6.1.5) Every big city can support several trade routes. The number of routes is decided by your SE options, tech level and city size. Each route is connected to a city of a non-hostile nation. Every foreign city can be connected to just one cities in your civ.
6.1.6) Trade is done with buildings, not units at all. You build a "depot" in your city. You automatically gain a profit, considering how many cities you have near you, the size of your city and the size of the city you are connected with. The size of the city decides the maximum bonus you can get, and how many other cities can gain bonuses from this city. For example, if a foreign nation has a city which can support three connections, it gains up to three connection bonuses, and only three other cities can get a bonus from her.
6.1.7) Just like 6.1.5, your city gain trade routes. However, when you create a trade route it will automatically call for the nearest available caravan and send it to create the trade route.
6.1.8) (Requires a commodity system) Trade won't generally produce any credit: no tiles producing trade arrows. Nations only trade resource/commodities between themselves. The majority of profit would be, ofcourse, to buy cheap and sell high ( usally being a third side between two nations ). The value of each commodity vary upon supply and demand. However, every trade gives both sides a few credits upon completion of the trade contract. The bigger the trade is, the more profit both sides will get. Another option is when a trade agreement has been made an available caravan automatically is sent to the other nation land.

6.2. Civ II didn't allow you to trade with barbarians: a very false idea. Barbarians should have a bigger role: like pirates they could have some diverse options, and can also build cities, if they obtain the cash to buy a settler. In a nutshell, people would really like the option to trade with barbarians, primitive and nomadic tribes.

6.3) The economy, and income from trade, needs to shift up and down, like in real life economics. The more free your society is (democracy/free market), the more the numbers will shift for better or for worse. In social or controlled markets however, the market will hardly shift at all. Shifting can cause up to +/- 50% of income in a single turn, and move up or down by an additional -/+ 5% every turn.

7. All about caravans

7.1) If the caravan system will still be used (see idea 7) some modification to the system needs to be made. The micro-management of each caravan in civ II made trade so very bothersome, that some players choose to ignore it completely. The caravan system could be changed to the following:

7.1.1) Keep it like civ II: you build them, move them around and create trade routes (which a creation bonus when first creating the path).
7.1.2. You build the caravans yourselves, but they automatically move to the most profitable location (decided by distance, ETA, merchandise carrying, nationality of the city, etc.). To increase procession speed, you could make the caravan invisible (totally automatic).
7.1.3) Caravans are generated automatically at large cities (depending on city size and location, like rivers and coastal connection). They are replaced after X turns if they are killed. You then direct them to their destination.
7.1.4. A trade advisor governs all trade for you: he builds the caravans, moves them about, and chooses the best merchandise for maximum profit. You also can toggle "caravan viewing" for extra speed: without seeing the caravans the game will run faster. He will also manage building roads and ports for you. The advisor could be mandatory, or could be optional, and be switched off/on.

7.2) To further increase the depth of the caravan system, new caravan types were suggested. Those specific-task units will further enhance the depth of trade. They will can be used with automatic trade (trade advisor). He would build armored convoys when sending them into "hot-regions,” use "double-capacity,” or "finished goods,” if it's more profitable, etc.

7.2.1) Special movement: a trade plane and ships. Trade ships are critical for realism.
7.2.2) Double capacity: costlier, slower caravans, that carry a double cargo that offers a bigger income.
7.2.3) Armored convoy: a costlier caravan that has some defensive capacity and can protect himself for pirates.
7.2.4) Finished goods: a costlier caravan version, but one that offers a much bigger profit.
7.2.5) Tourist caravan: carry no resource. The profit is purely set on the size of the two cities, with no connection to request and demand. Losing a tourist caravan, however, causes grave diplomatic strains and morale drops.

7.3) New ways to get caravans: hire them! Hiring caravans can come at two options. One, is hiring privateers. Privateers are controlled by the AI, and automatically seek the most profitable location. Hiring privateers reduce the time and cost to takes you to make a new caravan: but you only get a cut from the profit, and you can't control or direct your units. Full hired caravans are under your control, just like any unit. You don't build them however, or buy them: you rent them for a fixed price. Like privateers, you don't get the full cut of the profit from the trade route.

7.4) Convoys may help a besieged city (under artillery fire, or an enemy unit is in the city radii, or both). If armored convoys exist, only they may do it. If not, then any sort of caravans. Helping caravans generate food for the helped nation, and reduce money (at a reduced cost) for the owner of the caravan. However, it will greatly boost the diplomatic relations.

7.5) Caravans can assist cities that were harmed by a random event (earthquakes, tornados, etc.). The caravan helps fix the damage to the infrastructure and boosts the food supply for several turns. You gain no money by this interaction, but you do greatly help the diplomatic relations between the two nations.

7.6) Caravans can't simply "help" wonders. They only reduce the mineral cost of the wonder, not increase the labor rating (by offering new means of construction and rare items). If the caravan is carrying construction goods (timber, concrete, steel, etc.), the bonus to resource is doubled.

7.7) Caravans "know" how to use boats, and will "call" for one automatically when it needs to pass over the seas. In other case, a caravan unit can be "glued" to a ship which will move the caravan all the time. In yet another option, you can set ships into "trade mode,” where those ships, and only those ships, will be "called" by the caravans to move them back and forth.

7.8) Instead of having caravans create trade route, caravans move back and forth. Instead of generating a fixed amount every turn, the caravan will produce a sum of money whenever it reaches another city on the route.

8. Trade routes

Trade routes are the path where trade passes between cities or nations. It could be caravans moving back and forth, or a generic "trade route" which is generated automatically. The following things can be added into trade routes to make them more realistic:

8.1) Once you create trade routes with another nation, you can't cancel it alone. Your only option is to cancel all trade with that nation, which means breaking ALL trade routes and all profit gotten from them.

8.2) Once you create a trade route (with a caravan or not), then you can further expand the level of trade that pass by the path automatically, by signing extra "contracts" that can further increase the profit and resource swapping that go along the path.

8.3) Trade routes can never pass over enemy land, or any nation that didn't sign a "right of passage" treaty with you (or you are in a high state of alliance with them). The route will go around the land, and it's impossible, the trade route will be canceled.
8.4) You should be allowed to toggle "economy map,” and view all the trade routes displayed over the land, with statistics over the city names showing the level of profit.

8.5) A city that sits on a river or on a shore (or both) gets an extra trade route credit (or extra income from trade, if that system is not used).

8.6) Trade routes automatically adapt themselves over roads/rail roads over ground, and into the "trade winds" along the ocean (fixed paths in which movement cost is ½ ).

8.7) All tiles that belong to a highly active (several caravans using it), trade route generate +1 trade ( considering you use the X10 format, see idea 14.4 ). All cities that have trade routes pass through their radii benefit from the trade route in this manner. This is cumulative: if several trade routes pass by the same tile, then that tile can get a larger bonus. However, the tile is last to receive this bonus (see below). However, the maximum income that can be gained (the number of tiles that get the +1 bonus), depends on the number of caravans, their profit, and their type. Important! A land trade routes that link two of your own cities (a domestic trade route), would get no such bonus at all. It has to be linked to another nation city.
For every land caravan, you gain up to half the profit they generate. Boats give ¼, and planes nothing. For example, a land route with 2 caravan that each generates 20 trade icons per turn, can give up to 20 tiles a +1 bonus. If they were sea crafts, the bonus would have applied to 10. If one caravan is land, and the other is airborne, the profit will be 10 since airplanes generate nothing.
This bonus is received by all friendly nations of the trade route owner: not just him.
If the number of tiles is smaller then the bonus (a 50 tiles trade route with only a bonus to 10), then only those that belong to a city would get the bonus. After that, railroad tiles are last to get a bonus, since when a train speed past a city it's less likely to give any profit. If still in need, large cities collect the bonus before smaller ones. Therefor, in order of importance, this is the tiles that get the bonus:

City tile (center)
Village (see idea 11.3, on the village itself)
Inside large city radii + road/river
Inside large city radii
Inside large city radii + railroad
Inside small city radii + road/river
Inside small city radii
Inside small city radii + railroad
A city tile that already has a bonus (for extra, cumulative bonus from several trade routes)
Outside city radii (doesn't really matter, does it? Since no one does get it anyway...)

8.8) If a trade routes pass over a road, and several caravans move on the road, it is automatically upgraded into "Royal highway," which will give a slightly better increase in speed (1/4 instead of 1/3).

8.9) If you create a trade route between two of your nations over sea, you can assign a transport ship to the trade route. That ship will automatically ferry units from one side to the other. Your units (caravans or any other unit) that were directed over seas will automatically move to the harbor on their side and wait for the ferry. Several ships can be assigned this way to the trade route.

8.10) Trade routes can use accepted way points.

8.11) You may position a military unit along a trade route and order it to "raid" it, diverting all income to you. Consider a hostile act. Pirates (see idea 1), use it all the time to generate more cash. Spies can destroy the trade route totally.
8.12) Trade route profit relays only of supply and demand of both the cities in the trade route. The bonus for distance (like in civ I/II), is better represented by the +1 trade per tile idea (see idea 8.7).

8.13) Trade routes take a small amount of cash to maintain. The cost is decided by the route length.

9. Inertial trade

Inertial trade is a radical idea that states that you can "center" your nationwide trade power on several cities. For example, frontier cities always support the bulk, if not all, the trade routes (caravans, automatic, whatever the system is). In inertial trade, you can transfer the "option" for trade routes to a nearby city. So, a single city could get 5,10,15 extra trade routes when several inner land cities pass their "Trade power" to her. Of course, for play-balancing, there is some lost which increase the more trade routes you pass. You can pass 1-2 with no loss, but try to pass 20 and you only get an extra, let’s say 10, for the destination city. This represents trade cities that dealt with trade for most of the empires. With contracts, you can even grant the other nation trade routes credit for him to you (when you are getting some back, of course).

10. Tile improvements

10.1) The current system used to create tile improvements (such as farms, roads, etc.) is very bulky and require a great deal of micro-management.

10.1.1) ]Keep the current system (settlers), but further develop the automation option that was introduced in SMAC.
10.1.2) Use the public work option like in CTP: you earn work points, which you can spend to construct public works.
10.1.3) Combine public works with settlers: build them in the public work menu, which will automatically send a settler to construct them (for the public work points), automatically.
10.1.4) If companies or private sectors are used (see idea 5), then many tile improvements will pop up with the support of the public himself (farms and roads, mainly). If budgeting is used (see idea 2), then increasing the development section will make more tiles produce themselves. You can also hire the company to build tiles for you.

10.2) Regardless of what system, tiles should cost maintenance, mainly the roads and railroads. Roads that are not properly maintained decay over time. If not using budgeting (idea 2) to support tile improvements, they could cost gold, or just degrade if not used for some times, requiring a settler to fix it (takes half the time). Roads that are not traveled, mines that are left alone, farms that are not tilled, etc.

11. Trade buildings & wonders

11.1) To further show and increase the importance of trade, you should have several buildings, and even wonders, that increase the usefulness of trade. The effects of those buildings/wonders can be:

11.1.1) city can support extra trade routes (one or more). Wonder can give an extra trade route for all your cities, world wide.
11.1.2) Extra profit from trade routes: a fixed amount of an added percentile.
11.1.3) Free caravans upon completion of structure. A building can give you an instant caravan for the city, and a wonder can give you one free caravan in every city you have. Another option is a wonder that generates a free caravan every few turns.
11.1.4) Reduce the number of population you need to support one extra caravan (see idea 7.1.3 ). For example, instead of a caravan every 5 pop, you get one every 4. Local effects for buildings, world wide effects for wonders.
11.1.5) Increase movement of all caravans (wonder only).
11.1.6) Reduce support cost of all caravans (wonder only).
11.1.7) Increase carrying capacity of all caravans (wonder only).

11.2) Settlers can build a new type of building in the outlands: a trade depot. The trade depot can do one, some, or all of the following options:

11.2.1) Give a bonus to trade in the range of operation.
11.2.2) Act like a fortress.
11.2.3) Heal all caravans resting one turn on it.
11.2.4) Building, or generating caravans.
11.2.5) Defend all caravans in range of operations from raiding.
11.2.6) Resupply all fueled units.
11.2.7) Store cargo.
11.2.8) Act like a waypoint: you can send units to it by the command "go to.”

Sea ports are built on shore tiles, and act just like a trade depot: only they work on ships (protecting/building/repairing ships). You can also ask via the diplomacy screen for your friend to build a port/trade depot for you (see idea 3).

11.3) Villages are constructed by a settler, which forces the settler to disband (like building a city). Villages are a bit like supply crawlers from SMAC: they generate some food/resources which they send to the home city (the original city of the settler). If that city is destroyed, the bonus can be directed to any city of your choice. You can't build a village with your first settler: only after you have at least one city. While a village is in fact a one pop unit city, the pop unit does not count toward your city total (it does however on your nation scale), and requires no food. They are several types of villages:

11.3.1) Farm village: produce food + resources + trade in equivalent of the tile the village sits upon. The tile automatically has food improvement on it (irrigation, fields, farms, farmland). Must be built on flat, fertile land.
11.3.2) Mine village: Just like 11.3.1 in all cases, except you have a mine on the tile, and must be built on a mountain/hill.
11.3.3) Fishing villages: Only produce food and trade (no resources), but you automatically generate food like you are using a fish-improved ocean tile. Must be built on a shore.

12. Effects of trade

While one nation trades with the other one, they affect each other. Specific events can also boost, or hamper the profit generated from trade. The suggested effects of trade are:

12.1) The most basic one: the more trade you generate, the better the diplomatic relations between your nations.

12.2) Trade slowly generates a map of foreign territory: the area around the cities you trade with, and all cities that are interlinked via trade routes with those cities.

12.3) If one side possesses some technology the other one hasn't, the other side can easily acquire it (less research points needed).

12.4) If one side possesses trade tech and the other size doesn't, after one single trade the other side acquires it too.

12.5) The side that posses a clear technological advantage gets a bonus to trade.
12.6) Trade in general greatly increases technology output (more scientific relations, diverse cultures originate more ideas, etc.). Maybe make trade routes produce a small science bonus?

12.7) Cities with large population and food production obtain a small trade bonus: cuisine is a key industry in trade and tourism.

13. ICS solutions

The problem of ICS, meaning one city size, has been discussed heavily over the forums. Mainly, the problem relies on the fact that small cities, usually one pop size, are more profitable then large cities, making it unprofitable to spend money on expanding, beyond hampering realism. One, or a few, of the following solutions could be used:

13.1) Increasing the production ratio of workers at a geometrical rate. For example, the first pop gives 10 labor, second 20, third 30, etc. So, a 3 pop size city would produce 60 labor, instead of 30. This is fitting to the fact that the level of population in real numbers also increases geometrically. If this incremental increase seems to steep, maybe 10-15-20-25 system is better used. Like the above idea except increasing trade profit. 1 pop city produce 10 trade, 2 pop city produce 30, etc, etc, etc...

13.2) The city center tile won't produce anything, just give a +1 food/+1 prod/+1 trade to all surrounding hexes.

13.3) The effects of specialists (which are usually only used on large cities) should be much bigger.

13.4) You can put several workers on the same tile, but it with reduced efficiency (up to a max of 3 workers per tile). This will allow big cities to put more people to work, and further increase their power.

13.5) The number of population that can be put on tiles is city size -1. Meaning, a size 1 city would just work on the city center tile production, size 2 city would only have 1 worker, not 2, etc.

13.6) The maximum number of production increasing buildings that can be built is the size of the population. So, a size 1 city could only support 1 market/factory/bank, making bigger cities more profitable.

13.7) World-wide wonders that give "+1 happy citizen per city" unbalance things in favor or the smaller nations. Maybe it could be replaced by "+10% happy citizens in city".

14. City management

This section list all of the changes suggested to the "building" menu in cities, to further increase the ease of control of the player over his empire.

14.1) Having build queue: up to 5 buildings, one after another.

14.2) Allow multiple construction at the same time: slider bars share the labor power between various constructions. The maximum amount of items that can be constructed at the same time is either fixed (4-5?), or decided by your city size/tech level/city improvements. One idea is simply to have city improvement construction separate from unit construction.

14.3) Making the governor more intelligent, and allow worldwide control over governor (and regions). Also, allow more fine-controlling the governor.

14.4) All production values related to cities should be increased by a factor of 10. Meaning, a farmer produces 20 food instead of 2, and every citizen consumes 20 food instead of 2. By increasing the numbers, you allow small increments to be used (+10% to food, for example, almost never has any effect in the current system).

14.5) The population logarithmic scale used in civ II isn't very realistic. For starters, 10 thousand citizens for a starting village/hamlet, mainly in the old days, is way too much. One thousand sounds more reasonable. On the other extreme, even the largest cities never tend to reach the size of truly huge cities on modern Earth. Fixing the scale is very needed.

14.6) Instead of using pop size units in a logarithmic scale, use real-life numbers. You then divide the citizens by percentile among the works (for example, a city has 120,000 people, and 12.1% are working in farming, meaning food production per farmer * 14520).

14.7) Totally change the way you manage your cities and workers. You build generic buildings like farms, factories, libraries. You then assign work force (the size of your city) to the various building in a sort of a slider bar menu. You can then upgrade the buildings as technology increase. The basic output of farms and mines is decided by the surround lands around the city. This system was introduced in Birth of the federation. It's far more realistic: farmers should hardly give any labor or mine output.

14.8) Trade goods should be a conversion of minerals to goods (by labor) and sold automatically for profit

14.9) Citizens can either be assigned in tiles, which produce food + resources, on inside the city, which produce labor. One labor + one resource equals one civ I/II build shield. The concept of labor is based by many of the ideas included in the summary. However, it means starting cities would need several workers (since one would not be able to both mine and build). Another option is that all workers tend tiles, and automatically produce X amount of labor (in this case, make sure you see idea 13.1).

14.10) When building military units, and if your social options allow (free market), you may hire them as mercenaries. They require no construction or buying, and they start as veteran, but they cost twice as much to support and are less loyal to you (easier to bribe them). Another, more realistic option, that you can't just hire any unit, you have a few offers that will vary along the time.

14.11) Since shipping items from the fringes of the city in early days was very hard, the outer ring of the city radius has a "maximum output" setting that will improve along the years when new city improvements are allowed. For example, a farm can produce 5 food, but since it's the outer fringe it can only produce 3 (the rest are lost). Build a warehouse, and it will increase to 4. A highway will raise it once more to 5. Tiles that are connected by road have a +1 to their maxima. Connection by river or railroad gets +2.

14.12) "Rush-buying,” meaning buying the rest of the product in a city in a single turn must be limited due to vast un realism. In a resource system, you can only buy the resources and still need to build them by labor. In civ II old system, limiting the buying to only doubling the speed would do it (produce twice as fast, and buy the difference in shield * 2 every turn).

14.13) Citizens that are not assigned into any tile, and have not been yet "specialized,” are considered "unemployed" and increase the city unhappiness. Certain key technologies would increase unemployment for a few turns (like Industrialization, robotics, and other economy-changing techs).

14.14) Lack of communication for a long period of time can result in a city breaking down and declaring independence. The further away the city is, the more likely the city will revolt. The following things can decrease the chance: soldier inside the city, trade route connection with your empire, roads that are connected (by some way) to your capital, key buildings and wonders (like torch-lines), and technologies (radio, TV, etc).

15. Regions

The concept of regions is that you are able to "group" several close cities into one shared pool. The number of cities in the region, and its maximum size depend on your SE options and your technological level. All the "grouped" cities pool their food, resources and labor rating. The food pool first take care of the need of all the cities: any surpluses are shared equally by all cities to produce pop growth. The "home" city, either selected or the biggest one, is affecting all the others. All wonders that exist on this city, or buildings, give their effects to ALL cities in
the group. A temple, for example, would reduce 1 unhappy drone in every city, not just his hometown. A wonder that normally affects the hometown will affect all the grouped ones. However, buildings that only exist in the other cities won't affect ANY city, including the one with the buildings. Wonders that only effect the home city, and exist in another city than the central one, won't give a bonus to ANY city. However, the support cost of all buildings/wonders in the center city is doubled by the square root of the number of cities. For example, a temple in a 9 city pool would cost 3 times more, while affecting all the cities. Once the grouping is canceled, the support cost returns to normal.
For limiting the power of regions, it was suggested that only a specific set of buildings give an effect to all cities (like highways, or stock exchange), and the other needs to be built several times (maybe a nice menu that tells you the number of temples you have, and how many cities you support). Maybe the buildings that don't affect all the cities generate a bonus regarding on the comparison of amount/city size. For example, if you have 10 cities and 5 temples, maybe all cities will get a temple bonus, but only 50% of it (5/10). Extra! Another way to implement this is by creating "regional command" in the home city. Since "Grouping" can be very powerful, the support cost for the command building should be very big.

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[Maniac]

"Like the above idea except increasing trade profit. 1 pop city produce 10 trade, 2 pop city produce 30, etc, etc, etc..."

I know that idea could be unbalancing, if there are still as little ways as in Civ2 to use gold. But remember that many people suggested new things you can spend your money on, just two example a serious gold support cost for units and money donations etc to religions. With all that new ways suggested where you have to spend your money on, the burden to your economy would become too great.
Just assume the above increasing trade thing as a possible solution for that and nothing more.