Trade routes/Colonies

This has probably already been suggested, but...

I think just like you have to connect resources/luxuries with a road you should also be required to have trade routes to bring resources/luxuries from overseas colonies to your homeland. This would add a whole new dimension to naval warfare and make building a navy more necessary than it is now... I know that I for one seldom build a navy now, but if this feature were implemented then I would be more inclined to do it. Ships and submarines can interrupt the trade routes and maybe 'pirate' the goods and take them for themselves, so it will make it necessary for CIVs to build escorts to protect the transport vessels. It will also make building privateers and submarines much more useful because you could bring an island based civ to it's knees if you can cut off it's supplies from it's overseas colonies.

And this brings me to the issue of colonies which I think should be done differently than now. I think colonies should basically be what all cities start out as and they can later grow into cities. I do not think they should be absorbed by an enemy civ when it's borders cover it as it does now, it is because of this that I do not ever build colonies. In fact, I think colonies should have some borders of it's own, albeit not very large. Colonies should be able to build explorers and simple military units, but nothing advanced like artillery. If you want the advanced military you will have to ship them in from your homeland. Colonies should also be effected differently by corruption/waste than cities, though I haven't really thought about how that would work...

Thoughts?

No on the first idea.

Yes on the second.
I'd like to see colonies settled in strategic areas but they essentially are zero radius cities that don't grow until you build 3 improvements - towne square, smith and mercantile or three buildings that represent the least improvement to carry governmental functions (trade, governance & production.) These improvements should take about 15 - 20 turns to build in total.

This will lengthen the land grab portion of the game and reduce "aggressive" build locations since the cultural border extends to the settled square only.

Dwarven Zerker said:

No on the first idea.

Yes on the second.
I'd like to see colonies settled in strategic areas but they essentially are zero radius cities that don't grow until you build 3 improvements - towne square, smith and mercantile or three buildings that represent the least improvement to carry governmental functions (trade, governance & production.) These improvements should take about 15 - 20 turns to build in total.

This will lengthen the land grab portion of the game and reduce "aggressive" build locations since the cultural border extends to the settled square only.

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Why no on the first idea?

Supply routes are a must, IMHO. Otherwise you might as well get rid of roads too... same concept.

Yes to both, though I suggested the former some time ago.

North King said:

Yes to both, though I suggested the former some time ago.

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$2 a day doesn't by itself mean its a bad thing. For example, if you got$2 a day and a big chicken, with bread, carrots, potatos and all other goodies only cost you 10cents - then $2 a day ain't so bad. Its relavtive, I know in Italy they get paid in the millions, but that don't mean much if a tomato is gonna cost you half a million leura. (that was before the Euro).

I think the idea of having trade routes is pretty important. They shouldn't just be virtual, it should be possible to intercept a tangible trade and mess up a civ's foreign relations, all while getting some money.

It wouldn't need units... Maybe just "drawing" a route between two cities in the sea. And if an enemy decided to land on that route and pillage it, they'd gain money, and mess up your trade.

Not to mention that having tangible trade routes opens new strategies with some Nations as economic hubs. Do I go through the Near East? If the Near East is at war, then trade to Japan is nearly impossible, and the world has a stake in peace in the middle east. And discovering a trade route around Africa becomes pretty huge. And whoever has the security and resources to maintain that trade route becomes a superpower.

Teabeard said:

Why no on the first idea?

Supply routes are a must, IMHO. Otherwise you might as well get rid of roads too... same concept.

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It is essentially implemented already by needing a harbor and viable open water between two cities on differing land masses. If you have a colony on a different land mass with no city to provide "transport" you don't have access to that resource in your empire. So I fail to see what your first idea will add to civ that civ does not already have.

Dwarven Zerker said:

It is essentially implemented already by needing a harbor and viable open water between two cities on differing land masses. If you have a colony on a different land mass with no city to provide "transport" you don't have access to that resource in your empire. So I fail to see what your first idea will add to civ that civ does not already have.

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If there are actual automated units going back and forth with resources/luxuries between a colony and a city, or between two civs, then you can pysically attack another teams trade route. This in turn means that you have to protect your own trade routes from attack, as well as protect the actual spot where the resource is located.

As far as colonies go, I think that when you make one with a worker, a caravan unit should return the resource/luxury to your closest city. This unit then travels back and forth between the colony and city.

If it is killed by an opponent, that opponent gets cash, maybe more or less depending on what the colony is for? Also you are denied the resource/luxury from that colony until you create another caravan unit (at the colony, for a gold cost) and it reaches your city. And there would have to be an escort command where you can have a military unit go along with the caravan on its route to protect it.

Yeah, what dh_epic and plastique said. It will make submarines and privateers much more useful as you can actually profit from using them and also you can bring an Island civ to it's knees, which you cannot do under the current system. Maybe all you have to do is station a privateer or submarine on an enemy trade route and it will automatically attack transports that move along that route? That way there is no big micromanagement involved.


One other thing, you should be able to send fishing fleets to ocean squares which have whales or fish and this would establish a trade route of sorts which would bring food and/or Ivory (ivory from the whales) from that square to your cities. You cannot do this now because you can only harvest fish from squares within your city radius, but this way you can harvest ocean squares far out to sea.

Oh yeah, and later in the game when oil is discovered you should be able to build offshore oil platforms out on ocean-oil squares and then have a trade route from that to your cities bringing oil that you could not reach with the current system.

Anyone know of any other sea or ocean resources/luxuries?

Not sure, I think there was really only fish and whales... not exactly a big deal. But it should be a bigger deal. I'm a fan of more resources and different types / subtypes.

dh_epic said:

Not sure, I think there was really only fish and whales... not exactly a big deal. But it should be a bigger deal. I'm a fan of more resources and different types / subtypes.

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And the undersea oil, which should be useful in the later age.

Maybe shipwrecks could be used as a undersea goody hut where you could possibly recover sunken cargo? Maybe there could be underwater ruins which count as a luxury (old relics and so forth)?

plastiqe said:

If there are actual automated units going back and forth with resources/luxuries between a colony and a city, or between two civs, then you can pysically attack another teams trade route. This in turn means that you have to protect your own trade routes from attack, as well as protect the actual spot where the resource is located.

As far as colonies go, I think that when you make one with a worker, a caravan unit should return the resource/luxury to your closest city. This unit then travels back and forth between the colony and city.

If it is killed by an opponent, that opponent gets cash, maybe more or less depending on what the colony is for? Also you are denied the resource/luxury from that colony until you create another caravan unit (at the colony, for a gold cost) and it reaches your city. And there would have to be an escort command where you can have a military unit go along with the caravan on its route to protect it.

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And even if the "caravan" units are completely automated by the computer I will still have to MM the ships protecting the "caravan" units. I still say no thank you to this idea.

It's primarily a question of scope. Dealing with minor issues (such as actual supply of resources) is below the scope of the game. That's more a Starcraft/Warcraft type game which I REALLY don't want to play (because I don't play RTS games well - which is why I like turn based games thank you.) As eternal emperor of my nation I shouldn't be bogged down with the day to day activities that make up my empire in CivIV. That's why I have warlords, nobles, or advisors working for me. Does a leader of any nation get involved with the details of ordering individual supply shipments? Neither should I have to deal with the individual shipments of resources I have access to.

I do agree that some people will find the possibility of raiding other supply lines beneficial and I would do it from time to time (when I needed the cash) but more often than not I'd be frustrated with the details of setting up protection for my supply lines even if I could automate the protecting ships to follow my caravan ships.

I take it that you don't like having to connect resources to your cities and protecting those roads either, then? It's the same concept except with the sea instead of the land.

It should be possible to build destroyers and other ships and set them to escort the transports along the routes. This way there is no micromanagement and you as the leader do not have to do much at all. Just build a destroy and click a button putting it on escort duty. Would that really be so hard to do?

Teabeard said:

And the undersea oil, which should be useful in the later age.

Maybe shipwrecks could be used as a undersea goody hut where you could possibly recover sunken cargo? Maybe there could be underwater ruins which count as a luxury (old relics and so forth)?

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Can anyone explain WHY we get an offshore oil platform... and NO OIL?????

Maybe the escort, too, could be automated?

Once you build the caravan, you bind a troop to it.

Or, in a model I suggested in another thread, when you negotiate a trade route, you plan the route (between which cities, by land or by sea). It gives you the costs and the payoffs, with more spending generally resulting in fewer risks and faster payoffs. If you want to invest a little extra in trade security, you should be able to benefit.

Dwarven Zerker, we kind of have two discussions going on about this, you should read the other thread here.

I do get what your saying about the extra work. When your at war you would have to guard your trade route carefully to make sure an enemy doesn't break it. I think the "escort" command would allieviate most of this though, because if you had a big enough stack of units moving with your caravan, it wouldn't be worth it for anyone to attack. And we essentially already are dealing with this "minor issue", a caravan unit just makes it all the more visible in the game.

I think the benefits in terms of real trade units far outwiegh this though. Having an actual unit to go after to prevent a rival from getting iron is a lot cooler than trying to blockade all his harbors. And caravan units is pretty much how it would work IRL. Think along the lines of the Cuban Missile Crisis where you'd be blocking uranium from getting to a civ so they couldn't build nuclear weapons.

I'm keeping up in the other thread as well and these two should be merged.

If you "load" an escort into a caravan the only point is to add a small variation in the game that needs to be managed in spite of a perfectly good model currently.

Even if this is automated (protected caravan units) what's the point other than an exploit for the player to increase his treasury from time to time? The AI won't attack a protected caravan and no player would leave a caravan unprotected so it comes down to another game mechanic I've got to manage to gain an unnecessary advantage of the AI that the AI cannot (is not capabale of) replicating.

Why do you think the AI wouldn't attack a Caravan (protected or not)? Not only might the AI attack, but you need to worry about Barbs too. This is what happened in actual history so it should be represented in the game.

Actually I kinda think the way to go with Caravan defense is not necessarily to have an escort (though that would work to), but instead to build forts along the road and station garrisons as well as units to patrol the roads between the forts. I believe this was how it was done in the silk road. In fact, it's stupid to not have vast stretches of road defended.

Teabeard said:

Actually I kinda think the way to go with Caravan defense is not necessarily to have an escort (though that would work to), but instead to build forts along the road and station garrisons as well as units to patrol the roads between the forts. I believe this was how it was done in the silk road. In fact, it's stupid to not have vast stretches of road defended.

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This would be a very cool idea but I just don't think it would translate into the game. Which would you rather do, build and pay the support costs of an escort, or build an entire system of forts, units for those forts, and pay support for the units, who most of the time would be just sitting there protecting and empty road. Of course nothing is stopping you from going with the forts if you want to play a more realistic game, but units that are always with the caravan are more efficient. I could see people building outposts along their land route though, so you could see up ahead to where your escorted caravan was going, so that is kinda like having patrols along the route right?

The current mode is not perfectly good. Look at the trouble you have to go through to stop a civ from getting a resource.

It could easily take 20-30 ships to blockade, and tell me that isn't a hell of a lot of micromanagement sending them to each individual harbor. It is also unrealistic because Spices wouldn't come in through every port (the may come in through a few) but there would be key routes that you could cut off the spice trade.

You could try to sign trade embargos, but they are only good with civs that you are at peace with, and then only if then aren't already trading with your rival. And our system still allows trade embargos. Same with getting the civ giving them the resource to declare war on them, that is still an option with caravans, although it would probably be unlikely as a trade route would be hard to break.

I just see the current system as overly simple and unrealistic, trade is a very important aspect of the game, it shouldn't be invisible.

plastiqe said:

The current mode is not perfectly good. Look at the trouble you have to go through to stop a civ from getting a resource.

It could easily take 20-30 ships to blockade, and tell me that isn't a hell of a lot of micromanagement sending them to each individual harbor. It is also unrealistic because Spices wouldn't come in through every port (the may come in through a few) but there would be key routes that you could cut off the spice trade.

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I think this is the exact point we should be hammering down. There's no strategy when it takes 20-30 units to even put a dent in somebody's trade.

Not to say that we have all the answers, but we ought to make this work.

Automated caravans, or greatly simplified caravans would be a step in the right direction. And protecting them with escorts would be an important decision, not just a foregone conclusion. Can you really afford to protect your one main trade route with 10 units, that might be better allocated elsewhere?

(Speaking of which, I think there should be stack limits in the next game. 10 units on any one square, while part of my strategy, is pretty absurd.)