Not doing something because people might find exploits or cheats is THE WORST reason ever. Seriously. The trick is to find potential exploits and address them, and not to put in cheats that can be used if cheats are disabled. If you scrap every idea that could be exploited, don't try to make a game - you'll end up with a blank screen.

So he should protect his borders better. For one, being in the center of the map might not necessarily be the best place for trade - it all depends on geography and locations of the various nations as well as resource placement. And yes, if a player happens to be in a major trading hub, he would have a lot to lose by letting his trading reputation fall - that would be the balance to the advantages being in a major trading position would bring. If it brought only advantages with no ramifications or risks, then it would be unbalanced. If you allow mages to go sneaking through your territory destroying caravans and you can't identify him, then you deserve the hit.

Not true. If you can trade with everyone, everywhere instantly no matter what the resources and location are incredibly devalued. It removes a large aspect of strategy because you'll almost always be able to get what you want. If trading is difficult over long distances and through hostile territory/environements, then it forces lots of choices upon you that, under traditional TBS trading mechanisms, you can avoid really easily. It forces you to be more versatile, to make efficient use of what you have and can get. It allows you to take risks - do you strike a very valuable trade deal even though the only routes available aren't the safest? Maybe a belligerent powerful militaristic player is invading a trading hub that's important to you - do you join forces against the invader to protect your interests, or live with the consequences? Frankly, I think this kind of trade presents much more interesting strategic options than run-of-the-mill TBS trade.

I still don't really see the problem here. I don't see how it's a game exploit, other than it's behavior that the AI wouldn't be able to effectively implement. But there are millions of things two players working in concert can do that the AI cannot. And if the trade is shipped in multiple caravans over time, then the trade could be put on hold once the first caravan is raided to minimize losses.

Except if there is a 3rd party merchants guild, then for the 'good cop' to send the 'bad cop' his share, the merchant's guild would require a fairly large cut to bring it into the bad cop's territory. So in the end, if both parties stick to the deal it'd pretty much end in a wash. The good cop would be better off to renege on his end of the deal and keep the goods and his good reputation to himself and leave his bad cop partner out to dry.

You know, magic, channelers, heroes, resources and settlements should all be optional so we can still enjoy the rest of the game without having to encounter major problems/exploits and then waiting for one or more patches. Blah. Again, worst argument ever. Instead, they should just not ship the game until it's finished (and I trust Stardock to do just that). Sure, things will crop up here and there after release, but that will happen whatever the case, no matter how many options there are - no, especially if there are too many big options.

Read the "Rethinking 4X Economics" dev post. Resources will be brought from city to city on an as-need, automated basis using the caravan system. I assume it'll be possible to manually send caravans as well - it better be. No such thing as instant transportation of goods within your own nation (except maybe in exceptional circumstances or on very small scales) so I expect the same to be true with foreign trade. Whether foreign trade will be automated at all, dunno. I don't think it will be, unless maybe within specific bounds that players set. It might be neat if we could say, "I'm willing to sell up to 4 horses per turn for 100 gold each, or 1 iron each, or 3 mana each" or whatnot. But really I think an auction-type UI system like what your suggestion in the OP would be just fine.

Um, airplanes are designed with brand new engine designs all the time (well, not all the time - new planes aren't designed all the time). If no one ever built a new plane with a new engine, we'd be stuck with WWI era planes. The point is they are tested until they are determined to be good and safe and efficient. Yes, have a major feature of a game be revolutionary, something that's never been done before, is like making a new airplane with a new engine design. If it's a poor design that wasn't tested it will be a disaster. If it's a good design that has been thoroughly extensive it will be successfully.

Not an unforeseen exploit, a foreseen strategy. Keep a close eye on your enemies and a closer eye on your friends. If you're afraid that your ally might try to sabotage your trade, they keep watch against it and don't let your ally's troops into your territory.

And why can't "one day" be February 2010? Seriously, why do you think a new feature is bound to fail and flop the first time it's tried? I can point out a billion examples of games that did revolutionary things and were successful because of it, and not despite it. The original colonization, MoM, MOO2. SoaSE. Sim City. The Sims. Diablo. Hell even WoW. All of these games did something different, something new, and it worked. These new things didn't need to be trial run in other games before they became suitable for consumer use. I don't want Elemental to be limited by players' fear of change.

We know the exist, so what? The question here is, should they be optional? So channelers are going to be the main character for a nation - what if I don't like that? What if I don't want a main character? Based on your arguments, channelers should be optional so that I can choose to play exactly how I want. But also, you just pointed something out. No one has ever implemented anything like really like a channeler before. AoW2 came the closest, with your wizard being a physical unit; but it was a frail unit that had to be tucked away in safety. There was no advantage to bringing your wizard into combat. And even more, nothing even remotely like essence has ever been implemented before. It's a huge, major feature, it's never been done before - so again according to you, it should be optional because it's bound to have all sorts of problems associated with it that you don't want to deal with. Maybe after being optional in this game the kinks will be worked out for the next fantasy TBS game on the block.

But you aren't arguing that. Because it doesn't make sense. It's a major, new feature and to work well it will have to be tested thoroughly - and it will. The first alpha is starting next week, and there are plans for an 8+ month-long public beta. The reason is so that Stardock can be creative and try out all sorts of new and crazy ideas, figure out which ones have promise and which ones don't, then work out the kinks in the ones that do.

The devs have never said the word 'overflow.' ALL internal trade will be through caravans. You will be able to mine ore in one city, ship it to another city to work into swords and armor, then ship all that to a third city to arm your troops. Based on new information it appears that they are going to make it intelligent enough so that this will be done automatically - but it will all be caravan based and in all likelihood you will be able to take manual control over this internal movement of goods. They said nothing about trading between players, but I think it's a natural extension of the system. And we already have confirmation that these internal caravans will be raidable.

Also, Civ 3 never had caravans. Civ II had caravans (not even remotely like the caravans that will be in Elemental), and they could be used to quick-build wonders. They were never removed from Civ II, and the whole trade system was changed completely in Civ 3. Comparing caravans between the two games is an exercise in futility because the economic models of civilization (any of them) and Elemental are incomparably different.

Lol. I'm sorry, but when the military tests its brand new fighter jets/bombers/etc, they don't mount an experimental engine on top of one they know will work - the planes are not designed to house two engines at once - you have one engine (in some cases there is also a secondary engine system, whose primary use is not as a backup). They test the engines extensively on the ground and then, when they're confident that it works to specification, they build the jet and test it.

And more importantly, it's a really silly analogy. This game will have a beta test, and if a feature they try out fails, no biggy. Either they fix it or remove it and no one dies. The finished product should never be used to test out or trial run features - that's why betas exist. If Stardock implements a trade system like the one I've been proposing, and in the beta process it becomes clear that it isn't going to really work, it can still be fixed or removed. 

You're really going to beat this horse to death. If it's foreseen, and it is determined that it isn't an exploit but a viable strategy, then it is not an unforeseen exploit! We've already foreseen it, though we disagree on whether or not its exploitative. That said, your argument is downright ridiculous. "If an ally sabotages your trade while within your lands virtually prevents anyone wanting allies to travel within their lands." So, what about an ally who turns on you while within your lands and attacks a city? I guess attacking should be an optional feature, because allies can exploit it and it will prevent people from wanting allies traveling through their lands.

Yes, I'll admit once you start limiting resources to such an extreme extent your options are obviously limited - especially in HoMM. But limited limited resources I think adds strategy and forces more meaningful choices. Do I try conquer player A for his iron resources? Do I try to get on his good side so he'll trade his excess to me? Do I do risky trade with fairly distant player B? Maybe I'll build up my military using my abundant copper, reinforce it with magic and then conquer weaker player C's tin deposits, allowing me to make bronze? If trade is too easy and you can trade with anyone, anyway, instantly with no associated risks, then resource acquisition more or less ceases to require strategic consideration.

I agree that there's a problem if trade is so limited that you're consistently stuck with just a small handful of resources and are often missing extremely important, key resources with no recourse. But if that happens, it just means they implemented resources and trade poorly.

No, I'm looking for a fantasy 4X strategy game that has a wide array of major features with depth and significance. You want a conglomeration of games that have already been made with nothing new thrown in - because new is scary and might not work and don't understand the point of long alpha and beta testing processes.

And really, you aren't going to be casting massively powerful spells until the end of the game. If you can teleport a grain-silo worth of grains across a huge map with no effort, maybe even dozens of time in the same turn, then you should be able to teleport whole armies across substantial distances. I am not opposed to late-game features that allow fast-transport or even teleportation of goods or whatnot. I'd love to be able to build magic portal networks for a massive investment of time, essence and resources making mobilization of military and trade much easier and quicker. But your argument really fails when you consider that our channelers will not be casting very massively powerful spells until later in the game.

If you want to play a game where you have constant interaction with your friend from the beginning of the game, then arrange it so you start fairly close to each other. Not very hard.

Also, why is magic more appropriate in a fantasy game than trade? I've read fantasy in which magic has played little to no role and trade has been a rather important one. Now if I were proposing something about fusion-powered spaceships and laser beams, I'd understand your "this is a fantasy game, that doesn't belong" cries, but I'm talking about something that makes perfect sense in the setting.

Well, Stardock has told us that they are implementing something that has never been done before, called essence. There will I'm sure be plenty of aspects of magic that will be similar to AoW:SM and MoM, considering Stardock is drawing from the good aspects of both of those games and others. That said, shards in AoW:SM merely dealt with mana; Elemental will have mana as well as essence. It is something brand new, it will be used to do things that haven't ever been done before. The latest dev post shows a Shard of Fire as a way of generating mana - not essence. It appears that essence will be an expendable measure of power, while mana will be more of a magical currency. This has not been done, I'm sure there will be exploits and bugs associated with it - the point is that they will be worked out during beta.

Wow, way to take my quote out of context. I was referring to essence, not trade. I like the totally baseless personal attack. I don't have expectations that trade will be as deep and thorough as I want it to be - but I want it to be deep and thorough, hence my suggestions. The point of these forums is to suggest features and ideas that we think could lead to a better game. I have already pre-ordered the game, I'm looking forward to beta testing it and playing the final version, and I'm sure I'll enjoy it even if trade remains an afterthought - but I think I'd enjoy it more if that isn't the case.

I do however have expectations that Stardock will do more than just reuse old ideas, no matter how successful. I expect that they will go beyond that - they will reuse old, successful ideas, and they will come up with their own, new ideas that will be a big part of what will make Elemental memorable. I will be disappointed if there's nothing new.

No shit sherlock? Obviously having all trade done by trade is nothing more than hopes and suggestions at this point, because we don't know. We haven't been told how foreign trade will be handled. We have, however, been told how resources will move from one of our cities to the next - we have been told explicitly that that kind of trade will be done through caravans. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then read these threads.

Somehow I don't think they removed caravans because people were using them to rush build wonders. Really, solving that problem would've been easy (remove that one aspect of caravans would've been the easiest way). I think that based on Civilization's economic and resource model, they went in the right direction. In those games, having a resource node meant you had enough of that resource to do whatever you wanted with it in every city that is connected to it by roads. If you only had one of a resource, then trading it meant you'd lose access to it yourself. Building units and buildings merely required access to a resource, and the time involved was determined by a single 'production' value. In such an abstracted binary model, a deep and sophisticated trade model wouldn't make sense. Elemental, however, will have a much different, much more sophisticated resource system. There will be no ubiquitous 'production' value - constructing buildings and training troops will require quantities of construction resources and equipment, as well as an associated time-frame - and resources won't be everywhere all at once (like they are in HoMM), but will be stored locally. Such a vastly different economic model in my opinion would benefit from an equally deep and sophisticated trade model.

I don't see why any experimental new feature that Stardock might want to try out should be made optional in the beta. The point of the beta is for Stardock to get players to test what Stardock wants us to test. Really if you want my opinion there should be as few options in the beta as possible (while there should be lots in final release), that way Stardock can keep the feedback as focused as possible to the major things they're working on at any given time. If they determine that an experimental feature is no good, or require too much time and effort to make work, then they should just scrap it.
  

Except you're being extreme again, you're comparing HoMM to Elemental even though their economic models are going to be very different, and you're brushing off my points as irrelevant when they really aren't. Under a simple 'normal' trade system, resources are so easily attainable that the examples I listed really aren't available (or at least not relevant). If you can trade with anyone, everywhere, any time with no associated risks, as long as you have enough to trade out for what you want to bring in you'll get everything you want. Which means there's no incentive to really fight over resources, there are no trade offs when considering potential trade risks (because there aren't any). When resources are so easily attainable, you don't have to take into account resources as much when planning your moves - because it's a pretty good assumption that you'll be able to find what you need. On the other hand, if your access to resources is somewhat limited then they actually become an important and meaningful part of the game. You have to plan ahead of time, take resources into account - what you have, what you can get and what you're going to live without. Fairly ubiquitous resources diminishes their strategic value; limiting them replaces one set of strategic options with, in my opinion, a more meaningful set of strategic options.

Uhh, yes, I do want a wide range of major features - I said exactly that in the paragraph you just quoted. I just don't see having a deep trade system as being exclusive to that - instead I see it as part of it. And aww, boo hoo NTJedi doesn't want to beta test a sophisticated trade system, I guess we can't have it then! Beta testing is not for anyone to have fun, it's for gamers to suffer endless frustrations in order to help make a better final product that they will be able to enjoy even more. I, and others, would like to beta test such a trade system if it means it might make it into the game. I'd like to beta test the other features you mentioned as well - as I'd like to see them implemented well, too. I really don't think the development of a sophisticated trade system would require so much dev time as to ruin or limit other features - especially if Stardock is already planning on it (which they may or may not be).

You've been given the distinct impression that you meant having it as an option in the final version. This new position is definitely a step forward; but again, I'm opposed to many options in betas. If Stardock wants to test-run a major experimental feature, it should definitely not be optional. They should force the beta testers to test what Stardock wants them to test, not what the testers think might be the most fun, as that would largely defeat the purpose of a beta in the first place.

Ok, let me put it this way. I hope Stardock takes inspiration from Colonization (both the original and the recent remake), and implement a caravan-based trade system like it has, but improve on it greatly. The trade in that game wasn't connected to diplomacy and the UI for it (in the remake - was no UI for it in the original) was clunky, confusing and limited. There, done. A caravan-based trade system similar to the one I'm suggesting here has already been done, albeit not implemented particularly well and in a much more limited way. There, now it's not a totally brand new idea; it's based on inspiration from another game. Now do you grant permission?

I do? I didn't know that! Damn, people never tell me anything these days.

Seriously, what are you talking about?

[quote who="NTJedi" reply="6" id="2080368"]The Civilization series are about the historic development of civilizations within a game.  In history trade played a major development in the history of civilizations and a deep complex trading system would definitely be more expected as compared with a fantasy type game where the creation/destruction of most places and things really don't have a logic explanation.

And I don't approve of your crusade against all things new and different. I don't want to be forced fed the same old features I've already played in other games. You say, "Players should be allowed to trade with anyone they want once establishing contact using teleportation spells"  - why? Because you say so? Because that's the way most people have done it? Why does your opinion matter more than anyone else's? Not to mention the whole can of worms you open with being able to teleport arbitrarily large quantities of resources over arbitrarily large distances - especially when it's been explicitly said that that will not be the case within your own kingdom.

You need to start paying more attention to what I write before writing scathing, mocking retorts. I said there should be as few options as possible in the beta. Thankfully Stardock seems to be of a similar mind - they're considering making the earliest betas played out entirely on the cloth map, forcing us to test the features they want us to test. The beta testing process should be focused and narrow at any given time, with breadth provided by constantly adding/removing/tweaking features, but not options. The reason I say this is it will be much easier for Stardock to understand and fix/improve problems/features if every beta tester is reporting relevant information - whereas in most betas, the testers are reporting about a huge number of all sorts of different things at once; much harder to sift through and deal with so many things at once. A fast-moving, option-limited beta is the way to go in my opinion. The final product should have lots of options (but I think keystone features that are at all fundamental to gameplay should remain set in stone).

Why is asking for a deep trading system any more close-minded than asking for the same old simple trade system we've all played dozens of times? You and I have very different opinions of close-mindedness. The reason I don't believe something like a sophisticated trade option should be optional is because then Stardock would have to code in two trade systems, make the AI work well with both trade systems and balance both trade systems. In my opinion, options should only be included when the associated work isn't so mammoth. Stardock should pick the kind of trade system and perfect it, not try to please everyone with 2 or 3 different versions of everything, resulting in 2 or 3 lacking versions of the same feature.

And I hold by my opinion that beta-testers have no right or expectation to be presented with many options. It makes the process less efficient and a lot more chaotic. Beta testing, like I said, is about frustration, not fun. The games will be crashing, the AI will stink, features won't work, there'll be exploits and game-breaking bugs. Playing a game to completion will be a trying task, at least until later on in the development process. Options in games are there to allow players to configure each game the way the think they'll enjoy the most - that concept is irrelevant in beta processes. The beta process should make it clear, however, which features should be mandatory, which should be optional, and which should be scrapped.

And you clearly misunderstand my suggestion based on the above quote. I don't want trade to be a huge time-sink of require inane amounts of micromanagement - I would hate that. Aspects of it should require input, of course - but the vast majority of it should be automated. Again, I'll point to Civ 4: Colonization's caravan UI - confusing and clunky as it was, once you figured it out it allowed to you make fully automated caravan routes based on all various guidelines. Once set up, they'd run and run and run until you stop them. Yes, you'd have to monitor and make sure they aren't being raided, but I don't see that as a problem...

Name one game even remotely similar to a 4X strategy game that has a trading system that's very different from the one we're all used to (except for Colonization, which has a working trade system along the lines of what I want). I'll point out again that if a system like I'm suggesting cannot be done without introducing inane amounts of micromanagement, then I will be the first to ask for it to be replaced (but I don't think that's the case). And beta processes are monarchical. Stardock is the monarch. They tell us what they want us to test, we tell them what we think about it, and they decide what to do about it. Stardock happens to be a benevolent monarchy and actually takes customer feedback to heart, which just makes things that much better. If Stardock decides to test out a sophisticated trading mechanism, it should not be an optional beta feature. They should release Beta Client 0.3.4 which focuses on the new trade mechanism; it should be one of the only major additions from the previous beta version, and in short order they'll have received a deluge of feedback about it. From there, they can decide whether it's worth keeping, or if they should scrap it. This applies to all major features, not just trade. I'm hoping the beta clients evolve rapidly, each one focusing on a small area, at least in the beginning.

Ah, I got the impression that originally you were arguing for sophisticated trade and other experimental features to be optional in the beta, but if they get fleshed out and are successful could be implemented as full features in the final release. And gamers do not need options in a beta to help guide the games development. Gamers will play the game Stardock provides, tell them what works, what doesn't work, and how what works can be improved and how what doesn't work can be fixed or replaced. No options required™. The result will be better features, new features, and optional features for the final game. 

Now if it turned out that games consistently had very limited resources as well as very difficult trade (for whatever reasons), then that would be a problem. The trade and resource mechanics could not be developed in isolation of the other - that would lead to some of the problems you keep mentioning. But if the two things are developed side by side, then a nice equilibrium can be found.

But my suggestion could potentially make many otherwise bad locations not quite so bad. One example of a traditional bad location is someone sandwiched in the middle of a bunch of other players - even worse if the sandwiched player doesn't have many natural resources of his own. But with my suggestion, that position could end up being a great location. All the trade that could flow between those players would be crossing that player's terrain, bringing him wealth and prosperity. My suggestion won't simply make bad locations worse - it will mix up the normal rules of what makes a good or bad starting location. It adds one more thing that could go wrong, but it also adds one more thing that could go right.  

Ah I see the source of confusion. What I meant by that sentence is that I don't have expectations, I have hopes.

I'd rather my TBS games play out more like a book - nay, an epic saga - than a movie; though I'd rather my RTS or FPS games turn out more like a move than a book.

I've already addressed numbers 1-3 previously, but this one deserves special mention. You've mentioned that you have no qualms about including a sophisticated trade mechanic like what I'm suggesting as long as it's optional. But you're opposed to it being mandatory because of the extra programming and patch time it would require? Do you see the hypocrisy? Making something optional is inherently more time and effort intensive than making it required. Your argument #4 fails in epic proportions.

Yeah, it might make sense for Stardock to implement a much more basic trade system until they're ready for a more sophisticated one (if they decide to try one out) to be tested; heck I wouldn't be all that surprised if trade doesn't even exist in the first betas.

I already covered the bit about bad starting locations - nice of you to completely ignore reasonable arguments just because you can't find a flaws in them.  And quite frankly, a sophisticated system needn't have more bugs, exploits or cheating involved than a simpler one - it would only have more of such problems if it weren't tested and developed sufficiently.

Obviously any options within the game would have to be tested. You've been involved in beta processes, so you should know that they occur in stages. Stardock might try out a feature, and it might be very controversial, so they could decide to make it an option in the final version. My point was just that in the process of testing, it will be clear that some features should be made optional, and some options should be implemented in order to make some features workable for everyone. As this happens, those options would have to be put into later stages of the beta for testing.

Yes, even a very good implementation of my trade suggestion would require more micro-management than the traditional system, but it would bring with it a lot more depth. In my opinion, the depth to management ratio is more than worthwhile.

Can't argue with that. A deeper trade system, like a deeper anything, would definitely require more AI work and programming in general. It's up to Stardock to determine whether it's worthwhile.

Only in your own fantasy world, not mine... Or at least, not in the one I'm proposing. 

That makes it different, not inherently worse. Personally I think this aspect makes it better.

All new ideas come with new challenges. That's no reason to not even consider trying something. If Stardock decides to implement a more sophisticated trading system, I'd expect them to map it all out before trying an actual implementation. After mapping it out, they'd be able to make an informed decision about whether it would be worth attempting. After attempting it, they'd be able to make an informed decision about whether or not to work out the kinks and keep it. Dismissing something off the bat because of a small handful of nebulous potential issues is juvenile.

You just gave me two games with a primary focus on trading - the majority, or at least a huge part of your time is intended to be spent on trade. I don't want that for Elemental. I want trade to be sophisticated, but largely automated and not particularly time-consuming. More time-consuming than we're used to, but very minimal compared to the time I'll spend doing things like planning, fighting, building, doing magic. I'm used to trade requiring a negligible amount of thought and time - just because I want it to require more planning and effort doesn't want it to become the dominant aspect of the game - unless you choose to make it dominant by concentrating your efforts on it to become a major trading nation.

That was more or less what I was trying, and maybe failing, to say. Once the beta process matures and the game becomes more and more fleshed out, desired but still untested options should definitely be thrown in. The last beta or two could even have no specific focus, with everything thrown in, and the goal of miscellaneous bug-finding. But the earlier betas, at least, should be limited and focused on what Stardock wants tested the most.

For one, it wasn't possible for the random map generator to prevent you from getting to one of your initial wood/ore mines with a high level stack - it was scripted to prevent such a debilitating scenario from occurring (I have played hundreds if not thousands of randomly generated maps in HoMM 3, and it has never happened to me). Any good random map generator is designed so that such utterly debilitating scenarios cannot occur. And in HoMM, even with the quick and easy trading mechanism, there is no guarantee at all that you'll be able to find someone willing to trade with you - especially in the beginning (the most important time), where everyone tends to be low on all or most resources including wood and ore. And the AI doesn't trade with other players at all, so you'd have to use the marketplace's exorbitant rates which, quite frankly, tend to be impossibly high unless you just need 1 of something or you have lots of marketplaces.

Except now you're adding your own horrible bits and pieces to my suggestion. For one I don't envision most neutral territory as being all that hostile, especially to trade. Exceptions would be dangerous forests or deserts or whatnot that are governed/inhabited by some power or another. But in general, there should be very little tunneling through neutral territory just to trade. A combination of good map generation rules, and a balance between the risks and difficulty of trade and the abundance of resources would go a real long way.

You're adding your own little tidbits to my suggestion yet again. I suggested that the trade caravans be third party; maybe you'd be able to assign some of your military as a defense force but if so it should be completely constrained to protecting the caravan so it can't be a threat to lands it passes through. If you're in the middle of those nations and other people start sending armies through your territory to keep their trade safe, they'd be declaring war. Unless of course you give them permission to do so. Declaring war on the nation all of your trade is going through is a ter rible way to guarantee your trade safe passage.  If such a situation leads to war, your trade wealth should be enough to allow you to be competitive - and any rival or enemy of your aggressor would likely side with you, as they would not want their enemy conquering such lucrative trade routes.

Another point I'm going to try to hammer through is that I envision trade being much safer than you are imagining. I get the impression you think I would trade to be perilous and dangerous at every twist and turn. But I want the consequences of disrupting trade to be severe. With a little extra cost you could even make your caravans defended well enough that raiders might lose more in the raid then they'd loot; add onto that penalties for disrupting trade and it makes it a really serious decision. I do not want trade to be so prohibitively dangerous that it may as well not even exist. Read that sentence again, because you don't seem to get it.

I agree that all those features should be at least as deep as trade. Except maybe lessons of wisdom and mysteries - I don't really know what that means in the context of a game. Wanting one or more features to be deep and sophisticated needn't prevent others from, as well - unless the devs decide they don't have the time for it all.

It has become abundantly clear to me that the pages and pages we've written in this thread come down to this one thing: I like this idea, and you don't. You've made all sorts of excuses to make it seem like your opposition is more than that - that there are major, insurmountable issues associated with it - but it all boils down to the fact that you simply don't like it. I'm done arguing this because I've made my point clear - I like this suggestion and think it has potential and its problems solvable. You don't like this suggestion, and you aren't really willing to give new features that you don't like a chance. You make some valid points but you drown them in shallow doomsday, end-of-the-world scenarios and arguments that make your real position clear. Well I guess that's kind of unfair - I don't know if that's what you do in general, but it's what you've done here.

I've not much to add since it really sounds like SD has their own ideas about trade and other echonomics, so I'm inclined to take the side lines until I've at least a sample of what they have before I start helping construct something that might be grossly different from what the game actually is.

I know I said I was done here but it appears I don't have the willpower to stick to my words... Sigh.

I'll say it again that the possibility that an exploit may or may not be discovered after release is a terrible reason to not even bother developing a feature. Seriously, worst reason ever. And I'll also say again that for me, the ability to have instant foreign trade across arbitrary distances, and yet having to wait 3 turns for my swords to get from one of my cities to another, would shatter any illusion of immersion. There is simply no way of reconciling that.

This game is not HoMM. HoMM is a TBS game, but not a 4X game (at least not a conventional one). Yeah sure there'll be wandering monsters and dragons and beasts and all, but if that's at all as common as in HoMM (where literally every few steps usually requires a fight) then I think it'll be a disaster. Take Civ IV for example - the barbarians and animals could pose threats towards the beginning of the game, yes - and maybe that will mean trade would be harder in the beginning. But alternatively, caravans could be protected well enough to have a fighting chance against regular wandering groups. If a dragon decided it didn't like caravans going through its territory that's an entirely different thing - I don't expect dragons or other powerful beings to be swarming all across the terrain; that would force everyone to be a turtle in the beginning.

Except you're again making it much more complicated and messy than I want it to be. If I ever have to micro-manage tons of caravans each turn, then it means they've implemented it poorly. And again, there are many ways to make trading still be possible towards the beginning of the game.

That's odd, like I said I've never experienced that. I was under the impression that the map editor RMG was the same as the in-game one, so I don't know what's up (and I have used both). All I can say is that it's never, ever happened to me. Sometimes the guard stack is tougher than other times (i hate it when one of my initial mines is guarded be ranged units), but I've never seen anything as extreme as a level 5 stack in my way or anything. I don't use WoG that much, honestly I'm happy with the base game - and if there are problems with the RMG when using WoG that's another story - just means the modders didn't do an excellent job integrating their features into the generator.

See I think that's a recipe for fun! Major world events or pesky adventurers stirring up some ancient power, temporarily disrupting trade in parts of the world or causing trade routes to migrate - that sounds awesome to me! But I do think that trade should be protected enough to be able to stand minor assaults or it would be disastrous. And historically in our world that was indeed the case -all trade caravans were accompanied by a significant number of defenders, except maybe along short, well-guarded trade routes.

Already covered this exact scenario several posts back... It is one of the few really good arguments you've made and I think is something that would require testing, not theory, to figure out which solution or combination of solutions would work the best. If you're interested in reading some potential solutions, look back a few posts.

Yes I agree, that's the very reason I suggested the whole 3rd party idea in the first place. Having trade operated and managed completely by the players would open several cans of worms. A 3rd party would keep those cans closed and potentially add lots of additional potential on top of that.

If its worth it to you to use your mana preventing someone from receiving a few swords, so be it. Make the cost of such spells such that it'd cost you at least as much as the other person would usually lose. (Operating under the assumption that other players won't be able to know what a caravan is carrying unless they invest resources into finding that out). 

If I were the blackmailed player here, I would turn around and tell Blue Player, "Look, this bastard is threatening to attack me unless I stop all your trade. How about we gang up on him?" Additionally, this would in all likelihood be the sole problem of humans, and humans will always be able to blackmail humans about something or another and you simply cannot guard against all such scenarios without making a really boring game.

The boiling point was when I realized that I was repeating myself over and over again, and you just weren't getting it. Or you would argue one thing, I'd counter it, then you'd invent even more outrageous scenarios, which I'd again counter, then you'd put words into my mouth or alter my suggestion in ways I would never want and then point out problems that could arise as a result, as if somehow that makes my suggestion, in which said problems wouldn't/shouldn't be relevant, insurmountably problematic.

Just to point out one simple example to show that I'm not just blowing hot air here, you have said things like,

Well guess what? My suggestion includes a 3rd party system. So any examples about how problems might arise if there isn't a 3rd party aren't relevant! I already agreed with you that in my formulation, if you remove the 3rd party it introduces lots of issues - that was the point of including it in the first place. 

And an example of me repeating myself over and over - how you just brought up the issue of what happens when two players are trading and a caravan going one way is stopped, just 3 or 4 posts after we had already gone 'round on that exact same topic.

I feel like the contents of all my posts have been more or less identical, just reorganized to address your slightly reworded concerns yet again.

Oh there should definitely be teleportation, hopefully several methods of it. However, if they'll be cheap enough to be used for large amounts of trade, and available to everyone from the very beginning of the game, then teleportation would not only be cheapened but way too cheap! It means from very early on I'd be able to teleport troops and all huge distances for small mana costs. I'd much rather teleportation of anything more than a lone item (the kinds of items you equip on heroes and the like) to be a kind of Big Deal magic; not trivial, cheap magic that everyone can do for miniscule costs. You talked about getting to the point of having to manage 100+ caravans - well if I can teleport that much, well, quite frankly I think that would be fairly game breaking.

Well, I'll go the other way: I don't want your desire of a map absolutely swarming with powerful independents to come at the cost of a sophisticated trade system... I definitely agree we should be able to scale the frequency/abundance of wandering independents, from none to lots - but if you choose lots of independents then you should expect the beginning of the game to go much slower and contact with other people to be more difficult. It makes sense if you think about it.

Wow, this is as bad an argument as your whole "there might be exploits!!" shtick. By that argument we shouldn't suggest anything at all. After all, any suggestion or request for something that isn't part of the original plan will require extra effort, and we don't know how much time the developers have devoted to other more important features, so we should wait until beta! Quite frankly, that's downright stupid. For one, Stardock put the forums up in order to provide us with a means to make suggestions. They asked for our suggestions. The earlier suggestions are made, the easier Stardock will be able to implement if they like the idea.

And my point is that methods of indirectly/anonymously attacking another player or caravans should be expensive enough to make up for not taking a hit to your trade reputation. Really, methods of indirectly or anonymously attacking anyone or anything should be more expensive than doing so directly (in order to make up for the advantage of being anonymous). In other words, using indirect or anonymous means to disrupt someone else's trade would be its own cost. There could also be a chance that your anonymous role will be discovered.

But it should be hard to tell that ahead of time. And if someone is sending an extremely valuable shipment, they could pay for better security or something.

I can't imagine would kind of scenario other than possibly a pissed off dragon or end-game world breaking spell that would be able to completely halt all trade, in all directions, for any meaningful period of time. If random events or whatever manage to conspire against you to achieve such a drastic effect then disrupted trade is the least of your worries. And if someone else does it to you, then they deserve credit for pulling off such a feat.

You've made that abundantly clear in pretty much every one of your posts. You said it once, and I agreed with you - and yet you keep bringing it up... 

Yeah, but really there was no point in you continuing to come up with problems with a 3rd party-less trade system as a reason to why a complex trade system would be a bad idea once we both agreed that the 3rd party would make it much better. Of course Stardock could decide to implement a similar feature to my suggestion, without a 3rd party - but if they did I'd hope they'd have some other solution to deal with the problems. But that isn't what we were discussing, so it really feels like you were grabbing aimlessly at anything that you could construe as a reason to stick with a traditional system, no matter how irrelevant.

Yeah... I was using Safari in OS X, but I just started up into windows and tried to load this page and partly failed... Now I'm in IE..

Is this a record or something? Have any other people been insane enough to write so many crazy long posts all on one page of a thread before that it's gotten cut off?

You have no idea how proud that makes me

Thank you NTJedi, for making this possible

I wasn't exactly aiming for a compliemnt. This thread might also be in the renning to becoome the Second Dead Horse Buffet, except that the OP is still celarly into the thing, ad nanseum.

For maps which will be expanding to sizes never before reached finding balance for teleportation costs will be easier than finding balance on a new trading system which has more variables and is significantly more complex. 

Yes, this is why I continue the discussion to not only identify problems and their possible solutions, but also provide improvements because it's possible trading may exist only by caravans.