Cochineal Insects Resources?

I was doing some random researches and came across this interesting resource. It was a very valuable resource found by the Spanish in Mexico. It used by the Azrec and Maya as a red dye. It was so valuable that the Spanish hid the secret of its manufacture for centuries. It was coveted in Europe so much that it was listed on the London and Amsterdam stock exchanges.

It was the second most exported good from Mexico behind Silver.

Interesting. Apparently, the dye is called Carmine.

I have a thought that an interesting way to go might be have a building/profession that turns Cotton plus Carmine/Dye into Fine Clothing. Fine Clothing would sell at a higher price in Europe obviously.

I am working on a indigo dye, indigo was produce in virgina at the time...

Well, I think the solution would be to use the Dye resource whether it was Indigo or Carmine Red. But what finished product to use I don't know.

I like Deliverator's idea about using it for fine cloth. You could also just use Dye as the finished product - processing a map-harvested raw dye in the dye shop for sale to Europe/Natives.

I had a similar idea a while back with dye, but rather then making fine/dyed cloth, I came up with the concept of complimentary goods, were selling one good raises the rpice of another.

Civilization A exports equal amount of Cloth and Cigars. After a while, both the Cloth and the Cigarsdrop down 4 gold in price. Due to the surplus of Cloth and Cigars, the prices for Dye and Coffee each raise by 1 gold. However, Civilization A has no way to profit on this, and continues exporting Cloth and Cigars at reduced prices.

Civilization B exports Cloth and Dye. After a while, both goods also drop in price. However, because both complimentary goods are supplied, they drop by only 3 gold, allowing Civilization B to profit off of the increase in demand resulting from their products.

This system would work for each resource in existence, possibly as follows:

Indigo(or Cochineal) -> Dye
Cocoa -> Chocolate
Coffee Beans -> Coffee

Coffee <-> Cigars
Dye <-> Cloth
Chocolate <-> Rum

Not sure what would be done for Fur, but that's sort of always been a second to the other three resources anyway.

Has someone done Coffee and Cocoa then? It would be good to add them too.

I think some more interesting mechanic is needed, rather than just having a long list of raw materials that get turned into a finished product by a building and profession.

Cotton->Cloth, Tobacco->Cigars, Sugar->Rum, Raw Dye->Dye, Cocao->Chocolate, Coffee Beans->Coffee. It sort of gets boring unless they is more interesting game mechanic going on.

To summarise different mechanic ideas from this thread so far, we have:
1) Two resources into one finished product e.g. Dye and Cloth -> Fine Cloth.
2) Price-linking so that the price of one good affects another.

I'll add:
3) Two stage production processes akin to Ore->Tools->Guns for other produce.
e.g.
Raw Dye -> Dye -> combined into Fine Clothing
Cotton -> Cloth ->

I still think the big limiting factor on adding further resources, building and professions is the interface. It would be necessary to rework the City Screen and Europe screens quite a lot to make room for the extra resources and buildings.

Maybe a system similar to that used in the Settlers games could be used. That had several different uses for the same resources, meaning you had to balance which where they were being allocated carefully.

@Deliverator
Yeah i've done coffee and cocoa is coming along...

Adding buildings to the city screen shouldn't be too hard, I thinks it's only XML and CvMainInterface.py. The problem is adding new yields... I haven't yet figure out to...

That's cool - I'd definitely be interested to see this once it's done. Won't the buildings have to be a bit smaller to fit in the city screen seeing as there'll be more of them?

I think we can manage to reduce the margin between them before we have to reduce there size..