How will trade work in Civilization 3?

King Richard · April 12, 2001, 23:13

In Civilization 2: Test of Time there are several trade commodeties open to trade. These are given to you if you possess them or not. It has been confirmed that in civilization 3 you'll have to possess these natural resources to be able to trade them with other civs. Some resources will control what you can build or can't. My question is: Will there be more natural resources in civ3? Which? (tobacco, bronze, uranium etc.) Will there be possible to produce and trade industrial products (computers, arms etc.)? Will there or should there be drugs? This could mean that civs that are rich in natural resources can import industrial products that they need, instead of producing them. Will resources like oil and uranium only appear when they come into use? Any suggestions???

SerapisIV · April 12, 2001, 23:16

Check this review, it tells most of what is known, plus the official civ3 webpage, the rest is speculation
http://www.zdnet.com/cgw/stories/mai...696968,00.html

King Richard · April 12, 2001, 23:20

I think I've read this allready. I know what's official, I'm wondering what people think?

SerapisIV · April 12, 2001, 23:25

I don't have a clue other then that resources are gonna be tied into trade goods and somehow harbors can be connected. (by a unit or just by having a harbor?) Though trade is gonna be more important with the increased importance of specific resources and the ability to monopolize them.

King Richard · April 12, 2001, 23:33

Do you know if one has to construct caravans and move them? Or does this happen automaticly like in alpha centauri? Hope so! I hate building caravans.

Gramphos · April 13, 2001, 05:55

quote:

Originally posted by King Richard on 04-12-2001 11:33 PM
Do you know if one has to construct caravans and move them? Or does this happen automaticly like in alpha centauri? Hope so! I hate building caravans.

As far as I know the resources will be gained to all cities linked together with roads (maybe also rivers). On the issue of over the sea transports I've no clue.

Roman · April 13, 2001, 06:30

The goods will automatically be transported over the sea to the cities that have harbours.

Gramphos · April 13, 2001, 07:19

I think that stockpiling the resources that you must obtain by trade and are required for a lot of the military units.
I.E. if you don't have any oil within your borders, and buy oil form another civ. What happens if that civ puts a trade stop on you, or worse declare war on you. It will certainly not continue to sell oil to you, so that you will be able to get fuel to your tanks. If you have no stockpiles you will be without a chance when you run out of fuel. Either you will need alternate fuels or a large stockpile

April 13, 2001, 18:36

It is still uncertain if resources can be stockpiled, or if it is a case of "you either have it or you don't".

I hope that they will be stockpiled in the manner that if you have 3 oil resources under control, you will be able to build up to 3 "oil-using" units each turn. Unused resources would then be lost. Thus if two nations are at war, one has access to 4 oil the other only 2, one would be able to outbuild the other 2 to 1. I know this is simplified, but I don't think firaxis is going to implement anything more complex. (It would be great is oil actually accumulated over time, thus allowing real stockpiles... you could then have diffrent units use diffrent amounts (i.e., Mech Inf.=1, Tank=2, Battleship=5, etc.)

There was a thread here about more detailed resource usage, but it seemed to die after firaxis made "their resource" announcement.

King Richard · April 13, 2001, 18:42

quote:

Originally posted by Trachmir on 04-13-2001 06:36 PM
It is still uncertain if resources can be stockpiled, or if it is a case of "you either have it or you don't".

I hope that they will be stockpiled in the manner that if you have 3 oil resources under control, you will be able to build up to 3 "oil-using" units each turn. Unused resources would then be lost. Thus if two nations are at war, one has access to 4 oil the other only 2, one would be able to outbuild the other 2 to 1. I know this is simplified, but I don't think firaxis is going to implement anything more complex. (It would be great is oil actually accumulated over time, thus allowing real stockpiles... you could then have diffrent units use diffrent amounts (i.e., Mech Inf.=1, Tank=2, Battleship=5, etc.)

There was a thread here about more detailed resource usage, but it seemed to die after firaxis made "their resource" announcement.

I hope this will work out like in SMAC (resources run out, and new ones turn up). If oil has a limitation like you're suggesting, nobody is going to sell it! (unless you earn a hell of a lot of cash...) Perhaps if you can't choose if you want to sell or not, that it happenes automatically?

Cyclotron · April 13, 2001, 22:54

As I have said, my observations of the screenshots given us show the icons themselves of the trade routes being used, not any quantity being stockpiled. In addition, I don't see any sort of indicator for stockpiled resources on the city screen. It looks like stockpiling will not be used in Civ3, and instead they will use the Civ2 and CTP style whole trade routes.

If you ask me, stockpiling is too much work and would make the player work instead of play. Too much complexity and realism is definitly a bad thing. But that's just my opinion... Whether you like it or not, the future doesn't look very promising for stockpiling.

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- Cyclotron7, "that supplementary resource fanatic"

Maccabee2 · April 15, 2001, 21:59

quote:

Originally posted by cyclotron7 on 04-13-2001 10:54 PM
If you ask me, stockpiling is too much work and would make the player work instead of play. Too much complexity and realism is definitly a bad thing. But that's just my opinion... Whether you like it or not, the future doesn't look very promising for stockpiling.

Cyclo, if you're right, 'twould be a pity. IMHO, stockpiling doesn't have to be work. Whatever you don't use each turn is automatically tabulated in the resource window that tracks how much you have of each item. One nice thing about CTP (I'm surprised, I found something good about CTP) was the screen for each city that reflected how much food you have stockpiled for that city. Civ3 could have one simple screen that tracks all the commodities/resources for the entire civ. If it doesn't interest a player, he doesn't have to look at it. Nothing bad happens if you ignore it, you just can't build certain units if you run out, that is, if it's a unit-critical resource (like copper, iron, oil, uranium, maybe.)
Anyways, can't wait to find out. Wait, this reminds me of feelings I haven't had in a long time...sleepless anticipation...like waiting for Christmas morning. That's it! Sid Meier is really Santa Claus! That's why he's so good at this!

tniem · April 15, 2001, 22:15

I certainly hope that if multiple commodities/resources/etc in Civ III are needed to build units and buildings, that Firaxis will design an engine that does most of it automatically. The micromanaging necessary to finding a good price for wood and then getting enough to buy a ship just seems like to much for me. Good luck to those designing this part of the game.

dognheat · April 15, 2001, 23:16

I want to be forced to have to build 3 caravans for each city and sneak them across vast distances, often behind enemy lines with 6 rival civs looking for anything of mine to blow up. LOL !!!

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*PLOP*

hoppy39000 · April 16, 2001, 08:17

I Agree I Love building Caravans and "escorting" them across the map is alot of fun and allows you to base a civ on economy more than military BUT I would like to see a way to automatically set destinations... not to say they would reach there undisturbed..would still like to see its progress and or a way for transports to auto pick up caravans...then go to specific locations...also in civ2 is very difficult to determine trade cities where demand is ie a long process to see list...with was option to set as the caravan destination...I remember 1 of Sid early games, colinization..which had better trade features....also like the ideas of resourse more tied to land around cities and monopolies... and ability to build units but I think drugs as a commodity is far too difficult to factor into an AI as drug trade can be Either negative as in illegal drugs, or positive as medications and hospital supplies...

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samurai · April 17, 2001, 03:20

quote:

Originally posted by Maccabee2 on 04-15-2001 09:59 PM

Anyways, can't wait to find out. Wait, this reminds me of feelings I haven't had in a long time...sleepless anticipation...like waiting for Christmas morning. That's it! Sid Meier is really Santa Claus! That's why he's so good at this!

I know, Sid is a supreme human beeing. The fifth element.

Thats why I hope Firaxis will be able to make the trading part of the game a lot more interesting than CTP2.
In CTP you had to find at least three of each good before the trade of any use. Maybe not so realistic that you traded with the same good between cities, but I liked the idea that you had to think of where you would place your cities.

With this new idea to Firaxis, I hope they do as in CTP and have a sort of stock market where you can see whats for sale and see how much other civs will pay for one particular good. The market will then be controlled by supply and demand.