A poll: do you accept caravan rehoming?

[solo]

Having always rehomed from within the city menu, I just tried it the other way, and sure enough, it says "You can not change the home city of a trade unit."

No one will believe this, of course, but I got into the habit of doing most things from the city menu, because I was always being told "That function can not be performed here.", whenever trying the "f" command on a settler or engineer trying to fortify itself inside a city to help protect it when there was no other defense.

My vote is also NO, since the game explicitly forbids it. 776 was fun, but rehoming was a major reason for it, so for me it doesn't count as any kind of record. It was more of an exercise in possibilities.

There are as many opinions about the innumerable things we do when playing the game as there are players. There is no way to verify anyone's actions, honesty, or results, so having "official" records seems pointless, but its still a lot of fun doing pointless things while playing CivII.

[East Street Trader]

LaFayette

There are two ways of trying to re-home and only one gives the "can't do" message. Evidently you always use the way which works. I'm struggling to remember what the two methods are but it must be something like giving the re-home instruction via the toolbar (which I think gives the "can't do" message) and clicking on the unit itself while in the city screen and then giving the re-home instruction from the pop up list or pressing "H" on the keyboard (which I think doesn't).

I suppose I am a bit influenced by the "can't do" message but my "no" vote is mainly based on a slightly different take. As with some other tactics the problem for me is that this one is both too easy to do and (I suspect) too effective.

I would accept the criticism of civ2 that the trade arrangements can be cumbersome (mostly because the "go to" function is so weak). But, leaving aside the occasional tedium, I usually rather welcome the need to take care to maximise the benefit of trade. It is my feeling that if I took up re-homing to my SSC some of the satisfaction would go.

But all this seems to me entirely personal. I see no benefit at all in working out a rule which Apolytoners are expected to follow in SP games. My admiration for Solo's outstanding early finish is wholly unaffected by the fact that he is happy with re-homing. And I shall continue to enjoy your company and to profit from your insights whether you continue happily to re-home or whether you decide to stop doing so for a while.

[La Fayette]

I haven't found the command that says no to rehoming, but I believe you and agree with you that if the designers wrote somewhere that it shouldn't be done, then it is kind of a cheat to use method #2 and do it that way.
Perhaps this is due to the fact that I play a game dated march 1996 and numbered 1.024 (or else I'm sure that someone will explain to me which command it is; something on the keyboard?).
Anyway this shouldn't be very important in the future, since there is a gauntlet lying on the ground, not far from my left foot, and that gauntlet cannot remain untouched. I am going to buy MGE and never rehome any caravan any more.
(in fact I started a game without rehoming yesterday, and it seems to be going fine: Rome scenario, Macedonian, hoping to manage to win in less than a century).
Meanwhile, please allow me to change my vote: if there is a command that says 'don't do it', then I say 'don't do it'.

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aux bords mystérieux du monde occidental

quote: Originally posted by La Fayette on 04-09-2001 04:57 AM I haven't found the command that says no to rehoming, but I believe you and agree with you that if the designers wrote somewhere that it shouldn't be done, then it is kind of a cheat to use method #2 and do it that way.

La Fayette, at least in my 'Civ2 classic 2.42'-version if I move my caravan over a city and press 'h' I get a message box "You can't change the home town of a trade unit". Try it in your version!

I'll edit the vote post and move your name to the 'No'-group. Thanks for the vote.

[Scouse Gits]

quote: Originally posted by La Fayette on 04-09-2001 04:57 AM I haven't found the command that says no to rehoming, but I believe you and agree with you that if the designers wrote somewhere that it shouldn't be done, then it is kind of a cheat to use method #2 and do it that way.

Monsieur La Fayette!

My original copy of Civ2 was similar to the version you own - 1.07 I think? I believe even in this edition if you tried to press the "h" (for home) key, you received a message saying something like:
"That function is not possible".
This is the reason for thinking that re-homing caravans is really a cheat. I too used to rehome some freights, but the more I have understood about the trading configurations in the game, the more I feel it should not be done.

I think you can download the 2.42 patch from this site.
(Last week I had an enjoyable game playing as the French)

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SG(2)

[La Fayette]

I checked "h" key.
It says "rehoming forbidden".
The fun with this is that I have played several hundred games, rehoming with help of the city screen, not having even noticed that there was a 'h' key available.
La force de l'habitude, as we say in french...

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aux bords mystérieux du monde occidental

[Ming]

quote: Originally posted by Marko Polo on 04-05-2001 04:52 AM SINGLE PLAYER Pro (3 - 13) Ming (did I interpret this correctly?

No you didn't... But I didn't make myself very clear.
Like Rah, I used to do it all the time in SP. But after many discussions here, I stopped doing it in SP. While there are many other "items" where the intent of the designers can be questioned, this isn't one of them.

So please consider me a no for both SP and MP.

quote: Originally posted by Ming on 04-10-2001 03:27 PM No you didn't... But I didn't make myself very clear. Like Rah, I used to do it all the time in SP. But after many discussions here, I stopped doing it in SP. While there are many other "items" where the intent of the designers can be questioned, this isn't one of them. So please consider me a no for both SP and MP.

Ming, sorry for the misunderstanding. And thanks for clarifying your point of view, I'll modify your vote immediately!

[geofelt]

In the early part of the game, I send caravans to a city with the intent to use them to build a wonder. At this time, the building city is vulnerable to obliteration, taking the supported units with it. To guard against this, you can tell the wonder city to assume support for the caravans, which is good tactics. I would vote to allow changing caravan support.

[Carolus Rex]

I accept it and do it all the time (both in SP and MP) unless it has been ruled out by a gentlemen's agreement prior to the game.

That being said, I consider it a loophole as a result of sloppy programming.

Carolus

[Carolus Rex]

And geofelt raises a good point; the precautionary aspect. I do the same thing all the time when peripheral cities have built caravans.

Carolus

[This message has been edited by Carolus Rex (edited April 12, 2001).]

[La Fayette]

bump

[Xin Yu]

Of course yes! That's the center part of my "two continental trading strategy". I put down a size one city and get 3 commodities, rehome and trade for big money, beats a size 36 city which uses up all commodities. It's fun.

[Adam Smith]

Same comments as Xin Yu. Rehoming also greatly helps the Repeated Commodity trading strategy. Rehome the desired commodity to a large origin city, and develop reliable transportation to a large destination city. Lather, rise, repeat.

[Jacobite1688]

I never even thought about doing this. If anybody is still keeping score, I vote a resounding NO! Clearly, this is not intended by the designers. You might as well just go up to the cheat menu and change your cash if your gonna do this.

[Straybow]

Think of it this way. Merchants from the big city travel to the new city. They use the capital available from their rich trading company to exploit the resources available in the new city. Hence, the trade value of the product reflects the trading power of the big city.

If your hoola hoop factory in Dinkiesburg had to lease a cargo ship, send their own workers to the port to load it and unload it in the other country, hire multilingual salesmen to hawk them in the destination that would be like "no rehoming." You sell them to a distributor, and you ship them by some dedicated shipping company. That is like rehoming the hoola hoop freight unit.

But the game mechanics intentionally limit each city to three commodities (with rare exceptions designed into the mix). Rehoming is obviously a feature which they intended to disallow for trade units but never patched to prevent the cheat.

[ramses II.]

I think it's a trick, not a cheat, like bomber shielding or the airbase trick.
For the AI is cheating the hell I think I can accept it. In MP-games all (human) players can take advantage of this trick, in SP-games you can decide it by yourself whether to use it or not.

[La Fayette]

I gave a bump to this thread only because SlowThinker asked for it. My opinion about rehoming is the same as Straybow's: the feature is quite realistic.
But there are 2 commands in the game: one (the city screen) allows it, the other (the 'h' key) forbids it. It is therefore very important to make a choice (and not a hidden one).
I think XinYu and any other honest player is perfectly entitled to use rehoming (just like solo in his famous 776 game) as long as he states he has done it.
Personally, I stopped rehoming after the discussion in this thread, but I would never say that rehoming is a cheat (except if someone used it and then said he didn't ).

[SlowThinker]

I vote NO.

Originally posted by rah
Because when you try to rehome a caravan you get a message saying you can't do it. So obviously it was the designers intent to not allow you to do it. The programmers just forgot that there was another way to do it, hence the discussion here.

This is NOT an argument for me. I want a good game, not to obey designers. (especially because we know they were far from genial).

I have two reasons:

1. the game should be as most interesting as possible from the strategic point of view.

With caravan rehoming the need of player's strategic decisions is reduced. The bulk of civ games would be based on one SSC city supported by shield producing cities. I want various forms of civs.
A sidenote: It is similar to the effect of corruption and waste based on the proximity from the capital. It is a bad rule. I always expand in concentric circles. Front lines and borders are always simple, no isolated cities. This is boring.

2. the caravan rehoming is not natural

Originally posted by La Fayette May I ask ONE question?
Doesn't any of you rehome settlers or military units (for example build them in a city with barracks and station them where needed)?

Rehoming of settlers and military units is natural, there goes about real (shield, food) support. But caravan rehoming doesn't change the source of support.
We can imagine 50 shields represents an amount of work that is put in the caravan. The city that has high trade is able to load a larger caravan (using an equal amount of work as a low-trade city). You can't expect the caravan will get larger if you "rehome" it.

[rah]

While I also mostly agree with your other reasons, the designer's intent plays a role for me. The desire for a balanced game is one of the main goals in a designer's eyes and make the rules accordingly.
But the other glitch with repeating "hide" routes defeated their purpose also.

RAH

[Straybow]

Do we know for sure that the continual Hides is a glitch/bug? It is possible to get new commodities, right?

[DrSpike]

Check out the active MP threads.......they are pretty funny. The avatars are a temporary homage to a post by War4ever. Though I'm getting quite attached to mine.

Oh, and IMO caravan rehoming is a blatant no-no. It's clearly not intended to work that way, and it is unbalancing even if you think it is supposed to work that way. Having said that for SP records you may as well exploit whatever you can; just acknowledge it has been used.