Reduce Micromanagement in Trade Negotiations

Here's a quick idea, and one that will need to be fleshed out more.

The Problem

But one of the most mechanical processes in the game is that of negotiating the best trade deal. You enter a number, then enter another number, then another, until you finally find something that will get you what you want. I can only imagine the number of minutes (hours?) per game I might lose on this one.

I've actually heard one person say "make the trade advisor invisible, so it's HARDER". It doesn't make it harder, it makes it longer, and equally as mechanical and repetitive.

Any gameplay challenge that needs to be overcome with a repetitive, mechanical process ought to be drastically rethought. These are candidates for useless micromanagement.

The Solution

I think trade negotiations would benefit from taking the player back a step. The player doesn't need to punch in little numbers to get what they want. The main high level decisions you make in a trade like this:

• What do I want from him? (The most important thing.)
• Will I get a huge flat gold fee, or a set of long term payments?
• Will I try to squeeze as much out of him as I can, or take a fair deal? (Am I willing to hurt our diplomatic relations?)

Bargaining should be done by a "haggle" button that you can press up to three times before they say "this is my final offer". The less you haggle, the more they like you. But the more you haggle, the better your deal.

The other stuff, like selecting what you want and if you want to go with gold per turn, will be similar, but with some nuances.

1. You pick what you want.
2. The trade advisor still tells you if it's a good deal or not.
3. A bad deal simply will not happen.
4. An "almost" deal can probably be resolved by haggling (3 times).
5. A good deal will be accepted, or can be improved by haggling.
6. Picking "gold" will automatically give you the AI's first (fair) offer of gold, on top of whatever else he's giving you.
7. Picking "gold per turn" will automatically give you the AI's first (fair) offer of gold per turn, on top of whatever else he's giving you.
8. Picking both "gold" and "gold per turn" maximizes the "gold per turn" first, and then squeezes out the remainder with plain "gold".
9. The automatic gold offer can be improved by haggling.

We often hear about ways to add to the game, but we don't hear ways to "shrink" the game -- something the Civ 4 developers have said that they need to do to make room for new features. I'd gladly give up punching in numbers by trial and error if it meant they could add something new -- civil war, provinces, religion, health, civics, improved economics, espionage, culture, and so on.

Anyway, the idea isn't perfect. But I figure I'd throw it out there so there could be some collaboration.

Hi DH_Epic, Can I just say, once again, that this IS a great idea. That said, I want to point out that I don't really like the Trade Advisor-as I feel it takes the fun out of REAL NEGOTIATIONS. Second, that I don't mind the initial 'deal' making, but do get tired of having to TOTALLY rebuild the deal each time the AI turns me down (or my trade advisor says I won't get a good deal).
I think that a system which starts out like the Civ3 system (sans Trade Advisor), with your 'Haggle' Button could save a lot of time, and make trade/diplomacy a LOT more fun. It really does come down to streamlining at days end. Each time you 'Haggle', for instance, the computer can increase your offer, or decrease your 'demand', based on sensible systems (your past trade deals, your current standing etc etc)

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

I'll give you two common examples.

"Trading Techs, plus some Cash"

1. You pick what you want. --> You offer a tech, and pick one of his to match.
2. The trade advisor tells you it's a good deal.
3. Skip.
4. Skip.
5. A good deal will be accepted, or can be improved by haggling.
6. You pick gold, and the AI offers you 28 GP on top of his tech.
7. You cancel that and pick gold per turn, and the AI offers you 1 GP per turn for 20 turns.
8. You pick both gold and gold per turn, and the AI offers you 1 GP per turn for 20 turns, plus 10 gold (flat).
9. You press "haggle", and the AI increases increases from 10 gold to 15 gold (flat).

"Trading Techs... Barely"

1. You pick what you want. --> You offer a tech, and pick one of his to match.
2. The trade advisor tells you it's a close deal.
3. Skip
4. The almost deal can be resolved by haggling. You press the haggle button, and the AI asks you for a few gold. You press it again, and that gold decreases. You haggle again, and the AI says "fine, tech for tech, no gold. Is it a deal, then?" And you get your final yes/no.

"Trading for More Advanced Techs"

1. You pick what you want. --> You offer a tech, and pick one of his to match.
2. The trade advisor tells you they probably won't accept it.
3. Because the bad deal won't be accepted, you need to sweeten the deal.
4. skip
5. skip
6. You click on your "gold" to make an offer. The AI automatically calculates that 50 GP would cover the difference between the techs.
7. skip
8. skip
9. You decide to haggle once and find the AI will accept 42 GP. You haggle again and get him down to 38. Rather than haggling your third time, you figure it's best not to piss him off too much, and take the deal.

Anyway, I'm ranting. But I figure I'd throw those examples out, just in case that didn't make sense. The automatic gold calculation and automatic haggling are the meat and potatos of this idea.

Gold slider would help

I agree, micromanaging in trade should be reduced. I'd like to see some changes in the what info you get also, so you don't need to open up the trade window each time to see what techs they have.... The whole 'sell tech at the right moment' takes too much time from the game.

Loppan Torkel, I definitely agree with that one. I spend too much time "visiting" each Civ to say "what's new?" and find out the answer is usually "nothing".

dh_epic, I think your idea is a good one.
Nevertheless, I see it incorporated in a new "trade screen" where I can see at a glance what the other nations have to offer and what they lack.
If I am going to do a offer of my own, the interface would automatically pick the best response to go the negotiations.
Now we are at your proposal (there we would be as well if the player picked an offer from another nation). In case of trading tech vs tech, I see the chance to click on both techs and a slider coming up to check another tech (if available). Then it would be indicated if this other tech (might it be his or yours) is acceptable.
And now we could have just three buttons:
Easy deal = accepts the offer
Balanced deal = haggles a bit in the background and finds a solution which fits both parties
Hard deal = haggles down until you get the max / pay the least possible value.

What I mean:
Who of us is really interested to know exactly that he got tech A for tech B plus 734 gold? We want to have tech A, and we want to give the least for it, may it be 734 or 754 or 768 or whatever. That's how it works, no?

I'd like to see a restriction to the trades - Just one techtrade per turn, it's probably not the perfect solution but this way it would be more of an option to accept techtrades when the AI offers one and you would get rid of the micromanaging that comes when you exploit the techtrades. The AI wouldn't need such high tradebenefits if the player couldn't exploit it as bad, and the 'strategy' in the trades wouldn't take the same amount of time.
Commercial civs maybe could be allowed two techtrades per turn!?

Another thing I'd like is the option to keep your new techs hidden, and therefor not open for trade or threats, for some while. Either until the become widely known, seen in combat ( -They ride the horses!), found out through espionage or just after some time.

Commander Bello, the difference between your idea and my idea is negligable and I'd be happy if they decided to go with what you have. Much happier than if they just left it alone.

The "haggle button" isn't that different from "easy/balanced/hard". The more you press it, the harder the deal you drive, until you hit the AI's "final offer". Accepting the first offer without haggling is akin to "easy", and clicking haggle three times is akin to "hard". (You can't click it more than three times, because the AI will just say "take it or leave it" over and over.) Yours is a more transparent system, and I like that -- mine is more like a real conversation, which isn't necessary.

When you click on gold -- either yours or his -- it throws down enough to cover the "difference" if one exists. It adds more of your gold so you're not shortchanging him, or it adds more of his gold so you're getting what you deserve.

Let me do one more example deal:

"Trading for More Advanced Techs"

A. You pick what you want. --> You offer Tech A for Tech B.
B. The trade advisor tells you they probably won't accept it.
C. Because the bad deal won't be accepted, you need to sweeten the deal.
D. You click on your "gold" to make an offer. The AI automatically calculates that 768 GP would cover the difference between the techs.
E. You decide to haggle once and find the AI will accept 754 GP. You haggle again and get him down to 740 GP. You haggle him one last time and get 734 GP. The AI says take it or leave it, and you take it.

If you haggle three times, you ARE getting the best possible offer. So if you want to minimize what you give and/or maximize what you take, always haggle three times.

Of course, in this situation, a player might look at that 700+ gold figure and say "you know what, I'm gonna throw in Tech X as well". Suddenly the AI's gold demand shifts down to 80 GP -- the automatically calculated difference. The essence of this model is the automatic calculation of those things you'd normally do by trial and error.

Loppan, not to whore out another thread of mine, but I feel as though a branching tech tree would start to cut down on floods of tech trading (as a side benefit to having multiple different paths on the tech tree). Although I'm cool with other small adjustments, too.

The interface, screen advisor ahead could be rethought and improvement.
So we could acquire a tech, resource or luxury in several steps:
1. we click on capital and choose 'foreign affairs', 'diplomacy' or 'external trade' options.
2. In screen advisor we choose 'I want a resource/luxury/tech'.
3. One screen show me what civs and the several deals they have to offer.
The offers are payed in gold, gold per turn, resources/luxury/techs or a mix of them. The offers is taken or leave it.
4. We choose the best deal.

The bargain is out but we save a lot of time. Internally the AI calculates the best deal from several options and how far civs are dispose to go.
If a AI civ want something and we have it we made our offer. If we are choosen the deal are maded.
A screen also shoe the deals we have and