Openciv3 - Trade

[amjayee]

Started: May 23rd 2000
Updated: -

Trade

I will send my ideas here when they get formed in my head. You others may send suggestions freely until that. I will take them into account.

[markusf]

Here is what i thought of adding to open civ.
1. All units built by a city will be supported by the national treasury.
2. This means that if your city is size 6 and produces 7 shields it will always produce 7 shields.(unless it grows)
3. Some specials will take certain techs before they become discovered, and they get used up and you can find new specials.
4. a coal special may produce 4 coal in one spot and 6 coal in another part of the map.
5. All specials like coal and iron will be added to the "civ storehouse".
6. Once steal making has been discovered you can make steel from iron and coal. But to make steel you will need to build the "Steel factory wonder" This wonder would represent all the steal mills in your country. This wonder is available to everyone.
7. You can buy and sell special goods, or manufactured goods(like steel) by setting a price and clicking sell. Other players then have the option of buying that good from you.
8. Each city will still have trade routes, but instead of moving a caravan around, you will just select the destination city that you want to trade with. If the city is 6 squares, the trade route becomes active in 6 turns.
9. Wonder helping caravans will be another unit.
10. Units away from the city in dem will triple the cost of the unit, in rep it will be double.
11. Cannons etc will have ranged attack.
12. Lots of charts and info!

[amjayee]

markusf: Good, you sent them here. Thanks. I will come back to those later.

[Guildmaster]

Trade routes aren't established by caravans, as Civ and Civ2 would have you believe. They are established in ancient times when goods are transferred from one point to another several times over an extended period of time. Their existence reciprocates civilization to no end. In the middle east numerous cities grew up out of the desert becaue of trade routes... not being the destination of such routes but being a stopover point for caravans traveling east or west. Earliest civilizations known today grew out of the fertile crescent. This has nothing to do with arable land as Sid Meyer would have us believe, but look how that region of the world is a bottleneck for three continents! Goods, services, people, and most importantly ideas were funneled through a very narrow land passage between Egypt and Mesopotamia. With all these things passing through for people going between Persia, India, China all to Africa and the Mediterranean the locals realized theirs was a main thoroughfare. In this thoroughfare cities with great trade marketplaces and bazaars grew wealthy and powerful. Raiders also grew powerful in competition with (and sometimes allied with) these centers.
This same phenomena appears in the new world, with the earliest civilizations appearing not in panama, but the nearest arable land, Mexico. An ancient civ couldn't ask for a better location than Mexico, able to dominate trade routes across the gulf, across the isthmus and as we can see Mayan influence is seen as far south as Peru and as far north as Ohio.
Even today just take a look at trade routes all over. Cities and towns grow out of nothing simply by having a freeway offramp. It starts with a few gas stations, then a roadside motel, a few houses, spurns the need for construction, which draws a need for local banks and supermarkets and voila! A city appears. Lace City, FL while not being a major metropolis is a lot more than it used to be ever since the I10-I75 crossroads was built there. Now it actually is a city. Albeit a small one, but indeed a city. All this is because of a trade route.

And if you think of it, it makes sense, too. All those caravans are driven by sims, who need rest and food and water and all that stuff. Is it easier to get all these things in the wilderness where they are subject to ambush by raiders or in a city where they are all plentiful. Earlier civ games have totally ignored the importance of the word ROUTE in trade route. It is exactly that, a trade ROUTE. If Babylon and Rome have an established trade route between them, the entire route should be littered with little towns. When two routes cross, a new city is usually born. When a route crosses water, there needs to be at least a dock there where ships can be waiting and to support them, there needs to be support people to work on the docks and there needs to be farmers and fishermen to provide food for them all.

Trade goods themselves:
These need to be very diverse, and categorized.
A) Products
1. Foodstuffs
a. This includes specialty foods made within the empire as well as regular foods like grains and stuff
2. Made things
b. This is for certain items which constitute "specialty items" like purple dye, silk, beads, etc.
3. Industrial
c. This is stuff that can be made anywhere but for whatever reason the recieving party has decided to import them
4. Raw Materials
a. Minerals, woods, etc. things that are simply mined or chopped. Energy producing minerals like coal and oil are included here.

Trade specialty items have to be "discovered" before they can be used. Of course the first to discover will always enjoy an authenticity benefit when trading in these items... Chinese Silk, French Champagne, American Bulls..t, etc.
This will leave a lot to the imagination, what kinds of specialty items haven't been discovered yet?
These particular technologies can't be discovered by any special research, they can only be had by opening up presents. They can diffuse to other nations, but then there will never be silk like Chinese silk.

[Maniac]

This I posted last year in the Civ3 Economy thread. It could be used for the trade system Guildmaster wants.

quote: I suggested something wàààày back that now can be reused. All trade routes are visible on the map. Of course to limit the amount of information on the map it could be toggled off, Shift [T]rade eg. The trade route runs from the origin city to the destination city along the fastest possible way. Means if ocean is faster than over land (I think, before there are good land transport means like railroad, sea travel would be much faster) there's a trade route along the coast (until the invention of The Compass). That way coastal cities could have profit and trade because ships have to dock. The same counts if the shortest way is over land. Cause traders usually had to pay toll to use the roads. Of course rivers fasten the speed of travel, so cities built near rivers are more likely to receive trade routes. Roads also fastens travel time, so if you build a good road system in your empire, your economy will profit. Now, what good does a passing trade route to you? For every trade route that passes a city square of you, you get one (or ten if x10 used) extra trade. So if a trade route would enter your city radius SouthWest and leaves the radius North East while entering your city square, you get 5 extra trade icons. If it would enter South West, go to the city square and than goes straight Nord to leave the city radius, it would mean 4 extra trade. Of course several trade routes can follow the same way and can go to the same squares. So if there are cities where very much trade routes pass, it would get a huge amount of trade. That way eg Palmyra, Petra and Bokhara would be great trade cities since all the trade routes to the east pass there. So, as in reality, not only the origin and destination cities would get a trade bonus, also all the cities between them lying in the neighbourhood of the trade route. This is a very easy system. There is nothing really new to program. The game can already seek the fastest way for a unit to go to a place, so it can certainly find the fastest way for trade routes. The only new thing Firaxis would have to program is : +1 trade to every square where a trade route passes. Voilà, I have just said how to make trade in Civ3 more realistic.

Of course, if the present ideas are followed, there shouldn’t be a city radius in OC3, so trade routes can’t pass through city squares as I said above. Therefore, my new suggestion is that, if a trade route passes through your city, you get 10 or 20% of the trade it yields to the source and destination city. That may seen little for one route on itself , but if several trade routes pass through the same city, let’s say ten Silk routes through Bokhara, it ends up as a serious trade boost, and a big motive for people to migrate to that city.

BTW, you seem to know a lot of it, Guildmaster, so I have a question for you. Also last year, as a comment on my quoted post, several people mentioned that bulk trade, so trade of mass goods like food, wood and stuff happened over the ocean. Only small and very expensive things like silk or spice were transported over land. Is this true?
If so, how can we represent that in OC3?
And if so, how could large inland desert like Palmyra feed their people? They’re sited near the desert, so I guess they couldn’t grow enough to feed the whole city population on themselves.

Another thing I wanted to discuss. In Civ1/2 you didn’t need to trade to survive. It was just an option to gain some more money. As a consequence, few people did it, because they didn’t like the cost of one Caravan, nor did they like the fact they had to move the units around on themselves. So to stimulate trade, you have to make it necesssary. Therefore I suggest that producing equipment for units should cost a certain amount of raw material, besides of course a certain amount of Labor.
A few examples:
To make 100 Triremes, you need 1000 Wood and 10(000) Labor (# of Labor depending if you work with real population or with PU’s of 1000 people).
To make 1000 copper/bronze/iron swords, you need 1000 copper/1000 copper ànd 1000 tin/1000 iron, and do not forget 1(000) Labor.
Having a Purple Dye trade route to a city increases the happiness of those citizens.


BTW, if that wasn’t clear yet, I would completele delete anything resembling Civ1/2 shields. Labor is produced IN the city, not on terrain tiles (no matter if they are triangular, square or hexagon). Every citizen/PU produces 1(000) Labor (by now you probably know why I put the parentheses). Of course buildings like Blacksmiths and Factories would increase the Labor.


Same for trade. It isn’t produced on terrain tiles, but in the city. For the moment I see three ways on which Trade can be produced.

The first is the most common. Normally Every PU produces one trade. This represents the taxes that are inned by the government. But I think you should be able to determine the # of taxes that your citizens need to pay. Therefore in every city you should have the option to set your taxes on:

None – Very Low – Low – Moderate – High – Demanding – Oppressive

By default they would be Moderate, resulting in one trade/PU. If they are low, the taxes would be 33% less, Very Low 66% less and None 100% less, resulting in 0 trade/citizen. The opposite would also count. High 33% more, Demanding 66% and Oppressive 100%, resulting in 2 trade/citizen. Of course, the more taxes, the unhappier your citizens. However, high taxes would sometimes be needed, eg if you’re in a heavy war and your units require a lot of support. And throughout history, it was common practice to demand high taxes in conquered territory.

Your Economy SE factor would also have an effect on Taxes. The higher your Economy rate, the higher the living standard of your people is, the more they deserve, the more they can pay taxes.


The second way you could get trade is by trade routes (see above).

The third way would be by obsolete buildings. To make obsolete wonders not completely useless, I would let them generate some trade, to represent tourism. This could also count for obsolete buildings, like a Colosseum in the Modern Age. (the modern age equivalent would be a Stadium)


Because Labor and Trade are produced in the city, that would mean Food is the only thing produced on the surrounding terrain (there would be one other thing produced on terrain but that I’ll tell later). I’ll shortly summarize my food model here. The full explanation you can read in a Civ3 thread.

Every terrain type should have a different number of Forage Units, ranging from 0 to 10, using PU’s of 1000 people. After checking in an atlas, I saw these eleven:

1) Decidious Forest: 10 FU’s (if chopped), eg Western and Eastern Europe, NE USA
2) Subtropic Rainforest: 9 FU’s (if chopped), eg SE China, SE USA
3) Grass Steppe: 8 FU’s, eg East of the Rockies (USA), above the Black Sea (let’s count Mediterranean vegetation to this one)
4) Savannah: 7 FU’s, eg under the Amazone forest, India, N-Australia, large parts of Africa
5) Desert Steppe: 6 FU’s, eg Mexico, SW Africa, Pakistan
6) Tropic Rainforest/Jungle: :5 FU’s (if chopped), eg Amazone, Meso-America, Congo, SE Asia
7) Taiga/Pine Forest: 4 FU’s (if chopped), eg large parts of Canada and Russia
8) Thorn Steppe: 3 FU’s, eg Rocky Mountains, parts of Australia
9) Desert: 2 FU’s, eg Sahara, Arabia, East of Kaspic Sea, Gobi
10) Tundra: 1 FU, eg parts of Canada and Russia
11) Arctic: 0 FU, eg Greenland, Antarctica

12) Ocean: 3 FU’s from fishing

Every Forage Unit produces in the beginning 10 Food. That can be increased with technologies, TI’s, SE...

The only other resource that would be found and produced on the terrain tiles would be raw materials and trade goods like wood, gold, silver, copper, tin, salt, iron, oil, uranium. You would have to build a mine on these (or the AI could do it for you) to gain use of it. So a mine wouldn’t produce minerals as I suggested earlier.

I would also want to revise the use of two other TI’s.
You would have to build an Animal Farm on a terrain tile with Horses or Elephants special resources on it. Such resources would be necessary to build all kinds of Horsemen and War Elephants. It wouldn’t have any other use, unlike I earlier suggested.

And a Culture Farm would produce what Guildmaster calls ‘Made Goods’, like Purple Dye, Silk, Cotton, Tobacco, Spice etc... The resulted goods you could use for yourself or trade them. But a Culture Farm wouldn’t directly produce Trade as I earlier suggested.


Later I’ll post a revised version of my ideas on pop growth.
PS: I know all this was a bit off-topic, but since there's no Economy/Resources thread I posted it here.

M@ni@c

[amjayee]

To comment the recent messages, first I agree dumping the caravans and shields.

The trade must be more important than earlier. One way to do it is to add the more detailed resource system suggested in many places. If there are many resources, no one can produce all of them themselves, so people have to trade - those resources are needed to build things, and to satisfy your people's needs.

The trade route thing also has to be emphasized. They should go along a specific route, increasing the value of the land. Players could set tolls for trading routes passing through their area. Also as suggested, new cities would spawn in key points, even if they don't have enough food - they get rich from the trade, so they can buy food elsewhere.

About special trade goods proposed by Guildmaster: Those should be in the game. I think in certain areas, certain trading goods could be produced much better than elsewhere, and they would be more valuable. For example silk, it cannot be produced anywhere. Same applies to cotton, wine, purple dye, etc. Also the original "founder" of the good would forever hold the status of the "original" producer of that good. They would get more revenue from their products.

About the M@ni@cs ideas sent earlier to the economy thread: even if we have no city radius, the cities will "control" some territory around them - not the old x-shaped area as earlier though. The trade route passing through a tile increases the value of the ground, producing revenue to the player. Also, traders might prefer being able to rest in cities, so if a city is near their route, they might go through it, even if it's not the optimal or fastest route. This is especially true with ships - they have to visit harbors to resupply themselves.

About PU's, I think the real number of populations is better, and not much harder to implement. Also it increases more variation. If you need only 300 people producing something, you would not need to use a PU of 1000 people. Also, 1 man could produce some amount of grain in one year - it doesn't need to be an integer number. Then, 345 people would produce 345 times that amount, etc.

I agree with how trade revenue would be got. I'd like to add here the revenue got from the "land value rising" when trade routes pass through the tile. Valuable tiles would encourage the people to build cities in those tiles. The owner of the tile would get money for the tolls got from the traders. If the player demands too much tolls, the traders might find a better route.

This brings to my mind a historical event. Everyone knows Troy. It had an excellent position in the Dardanelles (the Bospor Channel). Traveling ships passed through the channel, and they collected tolls from the traders, and became very rich. But the people didn't like them asking too much money. That is what the historians of today think was the reason for the war of Troy described in Ilias. I don't know how to write it in English, but you know the epic written by Homeros. Actually, Troy was destroyed many times, and rebuilt again.

About the terrain types, that sounds quite correct. But we don't need to have a fixed set of terrain types - the tiles should have certain properties, giving each tile a unique character. This would also allow some kinds of "intermediate forms" between terrain types, like savannah with some rain forest properties, and production determined according to those properties.

I agree with the raw materials production. They would be scattered all around the world. For metals for example, there would be several very good sources, and many minor ones. A mining station would be needed to get hands on the resources. The mine would eventually turn into a mining city, if the mine is important.

Same with farms. There wouldn't necessarily be tiles that produce animals - each tile where animals could live could produce certain amount of animals. Then the player would need to build farms, and the amount of people working in the farms would decide the actual produced amount. Also the people could build farms automatically, or if the people are kept in serfdom, the vassals might build the farms for the player, etc.

I agree farms and mines don't produce trade. They produce resources, that go to stockpile, where you could use them or sell them. It could be possible to have warehouses in cities, so you could store goods all over the country. This would give some efficiency bonuses, when you don't need to transport stuff to your capital and then back when they are needed. The logistics would of course be automatic, but you could decide where you want to store your things and how much. This also adds a possibility to plunder the resources from other civs with a military attack.

Never mind about off-topic. And I think it was not that off-topic. When I get my design website done, I will re-organize the threads.

[Maniac]

amjayee:

quote: About the terrain types, that sounds quite correct. But we don't need to have a fixed set of terrain types - the tiles should have certain properties, giving each tile a unique character. This would also allow some kinds of "intermediate forms" between terrain types, like savannah with some rain forest properties, and production determined according to those properties.

I think that would require the SMAC system of rainfall and also temperature, as I suggested in the post back in the Civ3 forum when I first mentioned that food system. However, since you guys didn't really react much on it (except saying that it was generally good), I didn't really know what parts you really liked and what others not, so I (wrongly?) assumed you weren't in favor of a rainfall/temperature-system. That's why I came up with these fix terrain types.

quote: About the M@ni@cs ideas sent earlier to the economy thread: even if we have no city radius, the cities will "control" some territory around them

Would that 'control zone' be similar to SMAC borders and would it expand simultaneously with the decrease of waste from resources gathered from faraway terrain, or do you suggest something else?

quote: It could be possible to have warehouses in cities, so you could store goods all over the country. This would give some efficiency bonuses, when you don't need to transport stuff to your capital and then back when they are needed. The logistics would of course be automatic, but you could decide where you want to store your things and how much. This also adds a possibility to plunder the resources from other civs with a military attack.

Would 'storing goods' also count for weapon equipment you built? I hope not so, cause that would create a lot of micromanagement. Therefore, for weapons I would prefer a general stock for your civ, though it would be a bit unrealistic. When you need some soldiers, you would just click on the city to open the city screen, then click on some 'Conscript' button, whereafter you would come in some Unit Workshop where you decide the characteristics of your soldiers. There you could have access to all the weapons in your civ. They would be everywhere and nowhere at the same time, ready to be given at soldiers. A bit like the 'Imperium Galactica I' Equipment screen, if you know the game. Only if a city is being sieged and cut off from the rest of you civilization, you wouldn't have total access. Then you would have only a certain percentage available, dependent on the population size of the city.


About your Troy story, I heard the Greeks weren't able to capture the city because of the Troyan Horse, but because there was an earthquake around Troy. Otherwise the city wouldn't have been captured.
Which brings to the question: will there be such natural disasters in OC3?


Corrections to my previous posts:

1) Bronze is made out of 90% Copper and 10% Tin. So saying there is need of 1000 Copper ànd 1000 Tin for bronze swords is exaggerated.

2) I made another discovery: after they used irrigation, the Sumerians harvested 40 times the wheat they seeded. This conflict seriously with what a historian had told me long ago: that in the Middle Ages they got 2 or 3 wheat grains out of 1, and now 30. That would mean the Sumerians had more harvest than we do!
So I'm afraid I have to report my food system sucks.

M@ni@c

PS: (this is off-topic, but who cares?) I have a question about the technology tree for all OC3'ers. Do you plan to largely reuse the Civ2 tree or do you plan do build a new one yourself, containing many more technologies? If you want the last option, I can say I already have a 30tech containing tree in my head, that goes from Sedentation and Stone Working to Astronomy and Aristocracy. Do you want me to publish it in the tech thread?

[amjayee]

About terrain types: I favor using tiles, that have certain set of properties. Those will propably be elevation, fertility, roughness/rockiness, vegetation amount, rainfall, temperature... did I forget something? Then, those properties decide what that land is good for. The tile types would be land, sea, coast, mountains, river; perhaps also islands. The things like forest depend on the other properties; all tiles have some forest. Even Sahara has some trees. The type of the forest is determined by many factors, and the vegetation amount decides how thick the forest is. Also the ranges of the values for these properties would be larger than in SMAC. Yes, you would not know the excact amount of resources each tile produce, but the idea is, that you don't need to, and shouldn't try to find out. You only need to have a view, what the tile is good for. Like I have said many times - if you cannot be excactly sure of something, if you manage to survive the situation well, you have proven your strategical capabilities.

About cities controlling tiles; the cities can "collect" resources, like food or metals, from tiles. The farther the tiles are from the cities (roads and such affect this more than how many tiles it's away) the more disadvantages you get, like waste and corruption. So basically, you could take control of any square in the map, but if it's very far from your city, the disadvantages would be greater than advantages, so you might want to build a new city near the resources you want to exploit.

About storing things: as I said, the logistics of the equipment transfers would be automatic, but I think storing stuff physically on the map someplace, might add some more strategical elements. For example, the rebels might take control of some of your armories, and arm themselves. Also you couldn't retreat too quickly, or you would lose your equipment to the enemy. But of course the things could also be held in a global treasury. We don't need to decide all things too strictly, we can test different systems and find out what is the best.

About Troy: as I said, Troy was destroyed several times - twelwe, if I recall correctly. The incident described by Homeros, appears to be the seventh or so time. It's impossible to say, why the Troy fell that particular time - I think it's entirely possible the epic was based on a real historical incident - but I consider an earthquake a more propable reason than a wooden horse.

About tech tree: I think the "tree" system is highly unrealistic and silly, it should not be used. Instead, I propose the system where the "knowledge level" of each field of knowledge (mathematics, metallurgy, sword making) increases gradually. Certain level of knowledge would be a prerequisite for progress in another area, etc... and the better you are in certain thing, the more bonuses you get when you do things needing that knowledge... Then there would be "milestones" that are kinda like the advances in civ2, large breakthrough ideas, like printing press, automobile, microchip... all these would be connected to other technologies, and also there would be much larger array of things affecting the technological progress; also one of the key ideas is that you cannot be sure, that when x happens, you always get y. Instead, certain things would increase the propability of something happening. You can send you tech ideas in the appropriate thread, if you like - most of the civ2-style techs can be used as "milestones". All in all, there will be more tech stuff than in civ2.

[markusf]

Ever heard of the kiss principal? I think we should do basic implimentations of everything then work on doing vast improvements on what users don't like in our demo's

[The Joker]

NOTE: I still like the PU system more than having population in numbers. The PU's shouldn't be as heads in Civ2. In stead they would still to the player seem like people, so it wont be that 6 PU's work in farming, but that 6000 people do so. The PU's would just mean that there would be no entities of people in the game than 1000 people. This has advantages, as it makes the game a little easier to overview, so you don't have 598337 people working as farmers, 634498 working in inustry, 43909 working as administrators and so forth. It also mean that numbers can be lowered a bit. Using a variant of the x10 system one PU would eat 10 food per turn (this has the advantage that you could give them a little less, which would make them unhappy but not make them die). Using a real amount of population when each CIVilian eats 10 food per turn it would result in extreme numbers in the endgame - a 6459902 city would consume 64599020 food per turn - these are numbers too large to overview.


Now for my ideas:

I am for completely removing trade, luxuries, taxes, science and shields as these are in their current form.

Having trade and production as two seperate entities is completely unrealistic. In stead I think that all people should work in certain professions. The basic one of these would of cause be farmers. They would produce an amount of food. If they produce more than they eat themselves they would sell it to other people, freeing workhours to other jobs. But to be able for things to change hands traders would be needed. Each trader would be able to trade a certain amount of things. This number would increase with advances, city improvements and more.

The production system should propably work pretty autonomously from the player. People working in industry would produce things, and these things would be divided into categories, like consumer goods, heavy industrial things and more. Consumer goods would make people happier. To be able to produce the things the player would want - units and more - he would have to buy workhours from his people. This would of cause cost him money, which would make money and therefor tax rates far more important than in any previous civ games.

Also people working in administration would have to get payed.

It is obvious that I have not completed this system in any way, but I think it is necessary for the economic model in our game to be totally different from that in Civ2. Not only because our model should be more realistic, but also because it, if done properly, could reduce micromanagent.

[amjayee]

Joker:

Good comments. But I'm not sure whether the 1000 people PU system would be better than the real pop amount. I don't say right now that we use either one of them, since I don't know which one would be better. Instead I give some points to consider.

1. The amount of food being very large - does the player ever need to know the excact amount of food the people eat? Instead, the overall amount of food produced, and the amount got from trade would be shown. Then, the percentage eaten from that would be shown.

2. It shouldn't perhaps be set, that if the people eat 10 food they live, if not, they die. Instead the amount they need should change depending on some things - modern people working in offices need less than the medieval people working in the fields, or industrial people working in mines and factories.

3. Some malnutrition always exists - the poor people will not be able to get enough food. Also some people will be overweight. The excact amount of people undernutritified or overweight would not be shown - again, percentages would be shown instead.

4. The player would see the amount of food produced, the "nutrition level" (how much food the people need in average), the percentage eaten (based on the nutrition level), and the amount of undernutrified and overweight people. Then, after revising those figures he decides to build more farms, to get some colonies to grow more food, to buy it, or to conquer some good grazing land. If extra food is produced, some of it could be stored to handle the famines, or given free to your poor people to decrease the amount of undernutrified people.

5. The things in 4 could be also given under ai control. The player could order, that he wants x amount of food stored, x amount sold, and the rest given to the poor.

6. The main disadvantage in the 1000 people PU system is, that then we need a very large amount of PU's, and since each one of them needs to have the same properties as I listed in the Population thread, they would consume way too much memory. Count for yourself: 6 billion people (and there might be much more in the game!) means 6 million PU's. We need 6 million instances of Population Unit class, each one taking certain amount of memeory. If we assume, that each PU takes 10 bytes (which might prove to be too little, if we want a realistic population system), we would consume 60 MB of memory. Doesn't sound good, does it?

7. With the real population numbers, we will usually need only one PU per tile, in some cases 2 or 3, in largest modern cities the amount might be larger. If the map has 30000 tiles, 70 percent of them sea, we get 9000 tiles with people living on them. If we assume there is averagely 2.5 PU's per tile (which might be a good guess) we get 22500 PU's. Now that sounds much better - almost 270 times less tham in the 1000 people system. If each PU needs 40 bytes, we need only 900 kB. That's much, yes, but it's reasonable. Anyway, we would want a more detailed population system, and that requires more memory. So, with the real population amount system, we consume less memory, and we can have more properties for the population. With some optimization, the memory usage could be kept under control.

8. With good interface design, the more complex population features would be hidden from the player, so he doesn't need to bother about them. Also, when good ai is used, most of the tedious things can be given to the advisors.

The other things you suggested sounded good.

Just some thoughts. I still tend to favor the real pop amount system, but I'm open for other thoughts, if someone comes up with a better solution.
[This message has been edited by amjayee (edited June 19, 2000).]

[amjayee]

Any thoughts about the PU system vs. real population thing? I argumented the system somewhat poorly, but I still like the real pop idea better - it allows more variety and more realism, without being too complex for the player - that is, after all, an interface related thing. But if people like PU idea more, I will start creating a system using that. We need to decide soon.

Or, should I make a document containing both models, explaining how they work, and their good and bad sides etc., and then we would decide which one is best? I think I will make one anyway, since perhaps everyone hasn't got very good idea how those models work.

Send me suggestions for these models to amjayee@kolumbus.fi

[The Joker]

Amjayee:

Hmm, I never thought about the memory problem. If that is how things work, then of cause, the PU system will not work.

But for the real pop system: Wont it be a bit annoying if we have a 6,000,000 city with a real pop system? This city will need 60,000,000 food per turn, and might very well produce far more.

Anyway, I'm not sure. But in a real pop system, we wouldn't even need PU's in cities. In stead things like religion, nationality, culture and the class system of SI will be handled independantly from each other - a city could have 40% believing in one religion, 20% in another, and 4 religions with 10% of the city's pop as worshippers. At the same time the city could have 60% English and 40% German people. But there is no real need to know anything about what religion's the English worship and such.

My main reason for liking the PU system was, that I thought it would be more easy to handle. But you seem to be right about the real pop system being even more so. So let's go with that.

BTW: how would you decide how many people would be able to work on a tile? Would the efficiency decrease as the number were increased or what? Also, you have written somewhere that you thought that the tiles should be larger than in previous Civ games. I must very very strongly oppose to this. Why would we ever want that? In stead I think we should have more tiles than in previous Civ games, making the game more realistic and such. Of cause unit movement should be dramatically changed and very large empires should often collaps.

[amjayee]

About the amount of food the people eat; why should each individual person eat 10 food? We can still have 1000 people eating 10 food, or even 10.3 food. We can well use floating point numbers.

I have started to agree that religions and nationalities should be dealt with as percentages. But I still think we should keep track of the people belonging to the same ethnical group AND religion, at least the game system should know this - the player could be shown only the percentage of people believing in each religion, belonging to the same ethnical group, etc. This might allow some cool game features we can't think of right now.

I agree that the real pop system is not necessarily more complex. And, it allows much more flexible game system, when there can be 203 people working on some task, not necessarily always 1000.

Also I have changed my mind about having an own population for each tile. Since we can assume, that all people livingin the same region/province in the countryside, react in the same way. So, we need to have a population for every city, and then one population for every region; it would include all the people living outside cities in that region. Then we would only need to have single variable for each tile, telling us the amount of people living in that tile.

We would need PU's to keep track of the statistical properties of the people, like the age structure and the professions.

The player would not need to know about the excact numbers behind the pop stats. he would only be presented some figures, in percentages, graphs etc., so he can figure out what's the situation in that region.

About the number of people able to work in each tile; for the tiles outisde cities this is done automatically. For example, the amount of farms/fields in the tile decide, how many jobs there are for farmers. The actual amount of workers available then decide how much things can be produced. This is no problem. But for the building projects, there could be set the minimum and maximum amount of workers; the player could assign more than the maximum amount, but then some workhours would be lost due to inefficiency. If there are too few people, the project is put on hold.

Generally, most of the population/production should be automatic.

About tile size: I meant larger on the screen. The diameter of the tiles, in game terms, should be smaller. For example, we could decide that each tile is 70 kilometers wide. Or something.
[This message has been edited by amjayee (edited June 24, 2000).]

[The Joker]

My main reason for having 1 pop eat 10 food was, that it would make it possible for you to give them less, without them necessarily dying. Giving 1 pop 8 food, for instance, would just make them unhappy.

The whole pop system seem ok, but I really hope that you have a very clear idea about how it should work. Cause it all seem very cloudy to me. I can imagine it all working out, but I do not at all have a clear vision on how it would be. When the map is settled (which shouldn't take too long) I think we should start working on a pop system. It is very complex and very important for the game.

[Guildmaster]

Ok trade goods. You figure it was only a matter of time before I get you guys started thinking about what are going to have as far as trade goods...

To begin with, there are materials.
Iron
copper
silver
gold
wood
leather
lead
aluminum
helium
These and others would become available once the necessary technology is discovered to smelt them. This is handled by a materials by materials basis. However, once your civ develops atomic theory, you can compile an atomic chart, or, Periodic Table. Periodic elements (in game terms) are non major elements that are used in industrial use, but either too scarce or too unimportant to be used in game terms (like francium). Therefore At this point, others would be called the resource named "Periodic elements" or you could just call them "other." Construction resource cost on many modern equipment would require the "other" materials we're talking about, which would render automated-hover-tanks and SkyMechs out of the question for primitive civs regardless of how many shields they're producing (not that we're using shields.)

Other trade goods, food
Mostly this goes on within the confines of your empire. Vast agrarian areas like to pass excess food on to major urban sites. You can, however, buy or sell or trade or steal or give food to or from other civs. Price should be negotiated between the two.

Specialty items
As stated earlier, these items start as being unique to the origional civ. They can go to other civs, but you would always enjoy a revenue bonus because of authenticity. Listed here are some default trade specialty items, but we should leave this in a .txt file so the player can tweak them as needed.
Trinkets
Gizmos
Widgets
Doodads
Items
Thingys
Whatsits

Y'all expand on these ideas if you like

[The Joker]

Materials:

Iron and copper is ok.

Silver is not needed. It basically does the same thing as gold, so why not just have one - gold - to cover them both?

Gold and wood should of cause be included.

Leather is propably a bit far out. Is it really an important material?

Lead is also too far out.

Aluminium is great.

Helium is not very useful, so I wouldn't include it.

Other materials:

Oil
coal
uranium
stone (maybe not - can be found anywhere)
coffee? (it is one of the major trading goods of the modern world)

Besides these we need all the manufactured goods. I am not sure I think we should have widgets and gizmos. I would much rather have automobiles, clothes, gasolin, computers and such.

We would propably need several of these, but we should try to limit us to 50 or so. Of cause most of them would be traded by the people themselves, so the player wouldn't be directly involved. We would propably also need to make some generalizations, so we could have Small consumer goods as one category in stead of 20 gadgets.

[amjayee]

Joker: Yes, but in your system 1 pop meant 1000 people. So, 1000 people could eat 10 food. This is no problem. You could then give only 8 food for those 1000. Or, 10 food for 10000. It is after all only a relative figure showing how much the people get to eat. All production could be measured in "units" - for example your civ produces 10000 units of food. This would feed one million people, if the average rations are 10 units per 1000 people. The amounts could well be rounded, or we could use floating point numbers.

About the population system; I have quite good vision of it, but haven't been able to explain it very well yet. It will be one of the first things to do, yes.

Resources, materials, trading goods:

We shouldn't make the groups very specific, to keep the number under control. The total number of all items could go up to 60, but hopefully not very much higher. Notice that usually no civilization can produce all of these.

These are the raw materials we will need. They are found in deposits, and usually have only a limited supply:
iron
copper
tin (needed for making bronze)
gold (includes all valuable metals, as Joker suggested)
uranium (used for... well, you know.)
aluminium
coal
oil
methane?
rare metals (includes all other uncommon metals, used in modern world)
gems (precious stones)

Refined materials: These are basically raw materials, but are not found from the ground.

semiconductors
superconductors (in future)
ceramics (needed in space industry, electronics, etc. Might be very important in future.)
antimatter (far in future)
plastics
chemicals (Do we need to specify?)
water (in future, if fresh water supplies go very down... or demanded in dry countries)
steel
some other metal alloys perhaps?
bronze?
uranium? (refined from uranium ore)
some other refined raw materials? Perhaps mining should include also the refining effort. For some materials, you would need to build a special mine, for example.
plutonium? (refined from uranium, needed for H-bombs)
aluminium? (refined from ore, very difficult process)

These two are needed for fusion, so they might be very important in future world:
helium (or tritium)
hydrogen (or deuterium) (needed also for H-bombs)

These can be found almost anywhere:
food
wood
stone (important for large buildings, and eventhough it's found everywhere, it's hard to mine)
clay (for pottery&bricks, we could live without it, though)

These are "grown", but not anywhere:
wine
cotton
silk
coffee
spices
cocoa
tea
fruits
furs
ivory

These are produced in factories etc. They are not listed in any particualr order, I wrote them down as they popped to my head:
All unit equipment&war machines
All buildings (you could buy a nuclear plant, for example)
(These two are special - usually they are ordered in a package, and not traded regularly)

gasoline
automobiles
consumer electronics
computers
airplanes (civil aircraft)
ships (civil vessels)
software
clothes
machinery
electronics? (components)
telecommunicators
furniture?
paper
consumer chemicals? (Cosmetics etc. What would be a better word?)
explosives?
medicinery
Some biotechnical products?

Any more? I think there are around 50 of them now, so we can add some. But, if we want the game to extend into future, we need to think what people could need then...
[This message has been edited by amjayee (edited June 30, 2000).]