baseballfan45 said:
how about we use the current trade system in civ3 but it will produce a physical unit that goes on the trade route. for example say i am rome and i need saltpeter, and egypt has saltpeter, so i g and talk to cleopatra and my offer for saltpeter is accepted. so a caravan unit will spawn in her city closest to one of my cities and travel to my city. this will happen every turn for twenty turns, this way i will have saltpeter for 20 turns. also caravans could be attacked by barbarians or other civs. this way we get the best of civ2 and civ3
I have always liked the way Civ represents most concepts on the unit level. This would really reinforce that, especially since the player does not have to create the trade units. Although Civ 2 caravans were cool, they were one of the biggest exploits ever created. You could go the entire first half of the game without putting one gold into research, and be ahead in the tech race.
Here is a concept that makes trade both more realistic, and ends the strategic resource hordeing. As the leader of a nation, all you can do is enact or import restrictions or embargoes on foreign goods. Cities that have a supply will send out caravans, flights, or ships out to cities that have a demand. Each time a caravan/plane/freighter reaches its destination a certain amount of trade would head back to the source city. When you limit or ban trade of good x, there will still be smuggling. Whenever you attack a stack, you can choose to escourt(take up the same square for that turn), steal(take the goods), or inspect(see what the destination, source, and cargo are). Inspecting foreign caravans outside your territory could cause unhappiness with that nation. Also, this is the way you try and identify black-market goods. Because of the hassle of doing this by hand, you could set units to automatically check caravans of nation x, including your own.
Caravan generation:
A city has more then just luxury, bonus, or strategic resources to sell. The food to each city is unique to a certain extent. Extra food would be considered a delicacy elsewhere, and could bring in additional trade. Local products of industry are also unique, so industrial areas will create many consumer goods. Local faciliites will also encourage more organized forms of export.
A city will always generate one exporter-unit every turn for every resource of resource 'x' that it has local access to(colonies handle thier own caravans and transfer the trade to the government). It may generate more based on technology and facilities.
A city will generate one 'food delicacy' exporter-unit each turn for every food past the minimum required. These caravans don't actually take food, but do exist because of hte excess food.
A city will generate 'goods' exporters based on the production. How much is generated each turn all depends on technoloyg, facility,k and mostly the quanitity of production.
A city with no trade facilities will generate farily slow and vunerable trade units.
A city with trade facilites(Marketplace and Harbour and Commerical Ports and Airports) make trade units you would want to be travelling around.
Taxes:
A lot more econoimc warfare can occur now. 1) You can set tariffs on imports which take a cut of the trade they earn. of course expect a similair move on the other side, and possibly nations not involved. 2) You can restrict exports to try and keep a nation from getting resources, but cost you potential trade.
Resources:
A city needs a resource caravan to come in or be locally connected to a resource. Since resource caravans are rather frequent, this should not be a huge problem, but roads are not good enough now, however harbours are not required, but your ships will need a few turns.
