I don't know about you guys but I have never been very satisfied with the trade mechanisms in 4x games. The best system I've seen would have to be Civilization, but that suffered from the way its resources worked (you either have a resource or not, quantity is irrelevant). Another flaw is that everything was instantaneous; trade would happen immediately, even if it would take my fastest units 10 turns to reach the trading partner.
Actually now that I think about it, Colonization does trade better. Its resources work closer to how they will in EWoM (i.e. quantity matters), and in order to trade you had to actually send a caravan or boat to the destination. What I want to see in Elemental is a significantly expanded version of the trade system in Colonization.
Internal Trade:
For internal trade, Colonization used an excellent supply/demand system. My only problem with it was that the control interface for it was clunky and confusing. I think that system should be adapted for Elemental, with a few changes. For one, because it seems caravans will be automatically generated in Elemental, there needs to be priority settings to determine which settlements are supplied first.
International Trade:
I posted this in the Elemental Subsystems thread, but I think the topic deserves its own:
I don't think trade should be instantaneous, but it should use the caravan system. If you just trade for a specific amount of a resource, a caravan should set out from one end and make its way to the other. If you set up a constant trade route, caravans should constantly head back and forth. This would make trading with close nations easier due to both distance and danger. A caravan coming from far away will be much more likely to be raided than one coming from your next-door neighbor.
I also think that foreign caravans traveling through a nation's territory should generate some income for that nation. This would actually provide some protection for caravans - if you raid every caravan that comes through your territory people are going to choose a different trade route and you will lose that secondary income. However, if you allow all caravans to pass through your territory, even those heading to your enemies, you could gain a reputation for being gracious. The AI could calculate the safety/value of different trade routes and nations' reputations regarding foreign trade could be a major factor. So if you're in a central location, or between two major powers, it might be worthwhile to allow trade to pass freely through your lands and become a major trading hub. If you're hostile to trade, routes might be diverted around your nation, sacrificing the shorter route through your nation for a safer, longer one.
Basically, simulation of major trade routes and associated benefits would be amazing. For this to work well, trading would need to be a major part of the game - which I think would be a very good thing. Resources should be dependent on terrain, and abundant but scattered enough so that most nations will have a surplus of some things but shortfalls of others, making trade very mutually beneficial.
Second, I must ask you what Colonization you're talking about.Edit: When I'm talking about trade, I mean the transfer of resources. For actual (continous) sharing of resources, I fully favour a GalCiv2-like approach (but more "full", like you suggested, with trade route options), aswell as "general" (gold-producing) trade routes. As a somewhat limping example, consider if I wanted to share the "Trade Goods: Spices", in a GalCiv2 context. In having that trade with, say, the Drengin, I'd now have a trade route between a planet of my choosing to another (Drengin) planet of my choosing, (possibly) adjusted for borders, but the trade itself would be instantaneous.
The trade route could be intercepted and raided for profit, as well as the resources (in the example of GalCiv2, perhaps the "Trade Goods: Spices" for a number of turns, but in Elemental, a flat-out resource increase of said resources in the nearest city).
Edit2: Of course, there's also the tactical advantage of attacking such trade routes; attacking the trade route should destroy it, effectively denying the enemy or enemies (or just rivals) the trade route, forcing them to set up a new one.
I love the idea of supply lines that are also potential tactical targets, and that have something like the level of detail (quanity, travel time) you describe. Even more, I like the idea that the game might include something like the real-world differences in raw material distribution so that trade treaties alone could become a major part of both the diplomatic and military situations.
I suspect, though, that anything along these lines will need some pretty simple & friendly top layers that let folks who don't want to bother with those particular details make a few quick choices and turn their minds back to building military units, developing cities, etc. Seems like another area where assigning the right sort of hero unit as, oh, Trade Minister, could be a good option for folks who want minimal micromanagement. That way, those of us who want to dig in deep (like me) can do so, but other types of player aren't obliged.
I'm talking about the recent remake, Civilization IV: Colonization. As far as I can remember, the trade system (other than the supply/demand feature) wasn't changed all that much from the original. It's been at least a decade since I've played the original Colonization, though, so I could be wrong...
@GW Swicord and Luckmann:
I agree that for this to work there would have to be a very easy interface for my idea to work. There should be a trade screen that displays your resources, the resources of potential trade partners, current trade deals, your trade reputation and income from foreign caravans.
You should be able to initiate trade relations from that screen, which would pop up the diplomacy screen, including a map of known nations color-coded by their reputation towards foreign trade. You select the goods you want to trade, and either have the AI choose what it thinks is the best trade route or choose it yourself.*
I'm not sure how you'd choose it yourself. It would be ideal if you can actually draw the route - that would be awesome.
I think SD is kind of locked into non-instantaneous trade anyways. It would be really awkward if international trade were instantaneous even though internal trade is planned to revolve around caravans. Given this, the only real added complexity the player would have to deal with is choosing trade routes - but if implemented well that should be pretty easy.
There is such a thing as too much complexity: often abstracting stuff out makes for a better game. I think you could be pushing the boundary where it might get too complex to be fun. Caravans can be interesting because they give you a new military target and a reason to raid and patrol. But they could also be annoying and fiddly and distract from bigger issues like flooding the world and crushing your enemies beneath your magically augmented heel.
I don't mean to be too critical, I kind of like the idea. But, I've also seen so many games fail where the developers poured their resources into making realistic dynamic trading economies in a well meaning attempt to procedurally generate unpredictable stuff for the player to do. Presumably because they played Elite. It always ends up in tears and messenger boy quests.
I agree, and i hope to see this with the caravans as well but i dont want to see some bulky caravan unit (imagine the "Great Merchant" unit in Civilization 4) trudging along my roads. I would hope that they were small, similar to how small freighters in Galciv 2 were. And would they move closer turn by turn or be just moving as little pieces of art moving in "real-time" down the road? Because that way they might be hard to intercept unless you positioned your men along the road and waited.
Also this reminds me of something I read on the forums about diplomacy and the sending of diplomats as units instead of it being instantaneous communication but I can't find the post. Someone said this and unfortunately i can't recall their name either but I really really like their idea in that you send a diplomat with certain parameters to achieve a certain goal. Such as saying you will give up to 1000 gold for them to stop attacking your friend. And they can accept or deny and then your diplomat would have to come back and get an update. I know your thinking "what about time?!" However, my belief is that with the right balance, time wouldn't be too much of an issue. You might have to wait a few turns to get things done instead of having them done right away but that alone adds a huge depth of strategy! and helps in my opinion to provide a unique and enjoyable gaming experience
I personally have mixed feelings on trading. Obviously gold xchange should be possible. I fear I don't know enough about the resource system yet for me to give valued input. I personally like the basic trade systems of MoM and AoW just fine. I also like the Civ 4 system where there are other commodities that you can trade to others.
Really, I just don't want too much time on trade. Trade is awesome, I play settlers of catan and all. It encourages diplomacy which I feel SHOULD be a major factor. But really, I just want big armies and big magic. Trade should suppliment that only as much as it needs too (to help make allies mostly I think). I've seen advance trade systems turn games like Sim City into a not-so fun game.
That way, trade routes wouldn't clutter the screen, but you could get a good overview of trade routes by the touch of a button.
Lots of good points being made. It seems like the biggest worry about a trade system like the one I proposed is that the extra complexity it adds might detract from the game rather than add to it, which is certainly possible.
The devs have made it clear that they want this game to be winnable in many different ways that require significantly different play styles. If they concentrate on big armies and big magic to the exclusion of all else then it will lock you into magic and conquest oriented playstyles, with anything else just being a minor variation on those themes.
My only point of contention with what you wrote there is "But really, I just want big armies and big magic." See my above response to Nights Edge. That said, I agree with pretty much the rest of what you said. The trade system in SimCity 4 frustrated me to no end - the simple system in 2000 functioned much better in my opinion. Likewise, I also don't want to spend too much time on trade. I want to be able to spend a small amount of time on setting it up, and have the computer take care of the details.
Another point that's been raised by RisingLegend and Luckmann are how trade routes/caravans are displayed. I agree that caravans shouldn't be obstrusive, large units trekking across the screen. It would look kind of funny, and it would make things way too cluttered near popular trade routes. I can't remember where, and I can't find it now, but I think Frogboy commented briefly about how caravans will work, that they will be somewhat abstract. He didn't give much away but hinted that caravans won't work the same way as armies or heroes. I hope I'm not going crazy and making this all up... This seems like an area where we'd need more information from the devs.
Well I would guess they would work similar to the trade routes in GalCiv2.
A faint line shows the caravan route while where small caravan units travell along.
So if you want to raid them, you can wait at the routes until a caravan comes along and then attack it. Imho it worked quite well in GalCiv2 and isn't very obstructive.
With the caravan system as described for internal movement of goods I don't think they could avoid using the same system for moving goods for moving goods to another player for 2 reasons:
1) if the transfer were instantaneous, where would the resources go? Their capital city? To their channeler? (this would be ok as a use of magic, but only if the goods were with your channeler before transfer). That wouldn't work very well if the other guy has more than one city, particularly if the cities are far apart.
2) Exploits. If the transfer is instantaneous, and you get to choose the destination city, two players in MP could transfer stuff back and forth to simulate an instant internal movement of goods. Depending on the situation, the advantage could be significant, and certainly an exploit of the system.
It's far more likely that SD will have to abandon/abstract the caravan system than that they would have internal trade be caravan-based and external trade be instant-transfer-based. And I don't think they'll ditch caravans. It will be interesting to see how they pull it off and make it fun.
One of the more interesting tidbits I've seen from dev-land so far is that this new engine is supposed to have really high flexibility in terms of building UIs for the underlying functions. I agree that the default play of the game should stay relatively simple, both to help everyone when they are new, and also to help attract players who are making their first try at 4X.
But I don't think we necessarily must sacrifice underlying complexity to have a sufficiently simple base UI. Don't care to micromange your trade routes? Assign them to the Duke of Sforza and just check the quarterly reports. Want your game to be mostly about owning all the mithril in the world? Put the Duke of Sforza in armor and move your court to the biggest counting-house in your realm.
Well I have no doubt that however they end up doing it will be fun, but hopefully they keep a uniform decision. I mean I definitely like the idea that Frogboy raised in his journal entry, about caravans transporting goods from one city to the next as means of production. However, if they decide to have external trade be instantaneous I would prefer they have internal trade be the same
Overall, I would like to see trade be a realistic venture, Internal: with caravans traveling from city to city to create units like Frogboy said and External: being the same, where you send a diplomat to another nation's city with parameters (or possibly more effective would be when your diplomat arrives in the city then a diplomacy screen such as the ones in Civilization and GalCiv pops up) and for example pay them for use of their horses. If they agree, then a caravan is sent from their city to yours, and it becomes the same as your internal trade as you can expect those horses to arrives in say 8 turns/days.
I have thought about the issue of trade in strategy games over many years. I am sure Brad has already got a bunch of good ideas together.
Some ideas:
- I hope the fantasy is rooted in reality. Without the 'fantastic elements' such as Mana and so on, there are already a bunch of key and different natural resources that any society must harness. Wood, Stone, Food, Tools, Luxuries, Salt and Spice, Cloth and Textiles, Metals, Mounts, Slaves, Precious Metals / Money and the availability of labor.
- Having a sufficient quantity makes the world INTERESTING. Certain places have more on one, less of another, none of a third resource, thus limiting their development to certain lines. Or more importantly, creating opportunities for trade or conquest, that is, reasons for engaging in trade or war in order to develop and prosper.
- The PRICE of resources should be dynamic and based on market (world) conditions. The value of trade is in creating value for both parties by giving them access to resources that they need/want, at the cost of something they produce in excess. Prices should reflect the relative current scarcity of all resources, including inflation of material resource costs in money terms, if money supply increases and resources do not. The price should also reflect the end value of resources, given that there may be good reasons to hoard resources or refuse access to them, knowing that other nations might use them to create weapons which will come to be used against you. The price of trade also has to reflect the relative relationships between parties. If you are not liked, trade may be more expensive, or refused.
- I agree that while we do not want trade mechanics to be tedious, we do want them to be detailed. Quite a trick to pull off
Cheers
I only want to control if state sanction trading is allowed. What is traded and how should be automated. By merchants that pay trading tariffs to me, the king/emperor/wizardman.
What does this mean if I want horsemen but have no horses? Well, I should still be able to request my settlement to build horses. And it will be the AI's job to acquire those horses.
That way, there is a fluidity about what I can choose to build.
Building a unit which requires imported goods, will obviously take longer since the breakdown will have those horses requiring 10 weeks, maybe to reach unit.
Galactic Hunter reminds me about a wild hope I have for GC3 that might also be plausible for Elemental (espcially given that the engine work here is engine work for there also).
Modern folks have a very hard time imagining an economy without any form of currency. But Elemental will include trade in use-value goods, apparently as an important part of the larger economic system. I'd like very much to be able to design a furiously isolationist faction that had no interest in gold other than its use value, and maybe not even that.
The paladin talk elsewhere is part of what has me thinking about this now--if the game can include some factions that are more or less 'theocracies,' what if the most extreme of them so thoroughly rejected 'worldly things' that they would never trade in currency or luxury goods? That could present interesting challenges to a trade-oriented player trying to influence them, or to anyone who just wanted to acquire some specific resources that are scarce outside the xenophobes' territory.
It would be pretty cool to see some factions that don't use gold for currency at all. It could even be an advantage of some factions. To take a paladin faction, for example - the citizens and military can be so zealous that they don't need to be paid, and workers can build for free - all they need are the actual resources. No upkeep at all (unless there is any non-gold upkeep). It would be neat to play a faction like that, although there would obviously need to be a detriment to such a faction as well to balance it all out.
Seems like food would be a minimum input for human and Fallen units. If something like a no-currency faction is possible, I'd imagine the balancing details would need to follow from the back story for why they have no currency.
I hadn't thought of a super-zealot faction, but it seems like such a culture might still be inclined to collect and use coins for external trade, unless they were also serious isolationists. I was thinking along the lines of a really weird Fallen faction that just hates everyone else and simply has no practical use for precious metals. The balance for a group like that might be as simple as having no real ability to do external trade, but they might be able to expand various forms of construction & recruitment very rapidly when they acquire new resource supplies because they'd have no need to arrange all those pay packets or save up both coins and things like wood or stone for a big one-time purchase.
I think gross inefficiency would be enough of a handicap, as territories like what you guys described would need to either be small and communally based, or rely on a barter system, which by its nature is inefficient.
That makes some sense to me, although I think that the larger technical-historical context is the major factor. I'm hoping to heckle the Stardock devs into some startling brilliance that will yield a base set of game economy mechanics that can handle nearly any fictional setting, kind of like the Hero System or GURPS attempted to do for table-based RPGs.
For late pre-industrial and industrial economies, perhaps an efficiency penalty for rejecting currency would make sense. What I'm more interested in is the idea of having a *viable* internal economy for *extreme* isoloationists (and perhaps ideological/religious zealots) for which both specie-based currency and stuff like our modern faith-based money are either usless or an outright offense to TPTB. And I want it to be workable for both a timeframe long before the invention of currency (e.g. opening phase of Meier's Civ) and a time in which technology has completely eliminated basic material scarcity (e.g. later Trek universe).
As far as the released version of Elemental goes, I have to admit that the back story will determine whether I feel whiny about having to use money always and everywhere. If it makes cultural sense for how I read Elemental history, I'll be fine. This burr in my britches really got started when I wondered why the GC2 Yor or Thalans gave a flyin' flip about BC. For me, the way they play still makes them feel a bit too much like humans in robot or bug costumes and not thoroughly alien civilizations. I suspect a bump like this is less likely for Elemental because the playable civs will be human or Fallen (which, AFAIK, are at least partly based on humans?).
I think I will be happy as long as "gold" (let's just pretend that's the general currency for now) doesn't become the be all and end all resource. It should be good for certain things, like paying workers' salaries and military upkeep, but really unhelpful for most other things. If I want to trade for a resource with a neighbor, I should usually get a better deal if I can offer them a desired resource in exchange, or some research, than if I try to just pay them in gold.
Personally I hope they integrate in a Galciv 2 style of production simulation where gold and production are integrated but not synonomous with one another.
I think you've convinced me that I'm almost asking for the exact opposite, which might make my last few posts here Never Mind stuff. Unless I really am chewing stupidly on the edges of a decent idea.
BC and production are not 'synonoums' in GC2, I agree. My problem there is that BC is *everything*. Nothing happens without it, period.
In a world where communities are based on values and history, and magic, it just seems like making currency so fundamental would, well, cheapen the game. Sure gold is handy for long-distance transactions, and might even be of deep cultural importance to some factions, but if everything in the game can be bought if you have enough of one thing, the rest of the 'rethought 4X economy' could get marginalized, at least by folks with a hardcore score or war-win focus.
But back on the 'drop the stupid thing, Swicord' channel, I'm starting to suspect that my weird digression here is just a side effect of me already starting to imagine my first custom faction as some sort of druidic crowd for whom metals are mostly alien and maybe generally icky--mass troops in hardbark & leather, knights in enchanted glass plate, that sort of thing.
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