Cultivating ressources

What about being able to cultivate the ressources we traded, as long as those are acclimatized to our country?

This would need a minimal climate simulation, but this would go into the direction of a sweet world simulation!

So are you suggesting be able to grow corn or rice for example once you have traded them with someone else and provided you have the right climate to do so?

If this is the case then the biggest problem I can see is that ultimately it will change the way resources work. Who will want to risk trading a resource when they know that twenty turns down the line your opponent will cancel the deal and have that resource themselves. This could work if you make resources have a pop or city limit per incidence of a resource (eg one fur square makes 20 pop or 3 cities happy). You'd then have to move resources around cities and 'grow' new ones. However, this might just be over complicating things for many people.

You're right, I didn't think of this possibility problem... that makes the idea more complicated than I thought.

I don't like your system not because it is overcomplicated, but because it minizes the importance of internal communication webs.

Either we scrap the climate thing, and then ressources should only have to be more expansive, either we find a system that would prevent a civilization to cultivate a traded ressource to be able to determine the appropriate real value of it.

For example, there could be a new diplomatic agreement, like "agreement of non cultivation" that we could be attached with a ressource trade. That would make the cost of the said ressource much more lower.

Now, to possibly add some spice to the game, either our workers could simply not cultivate this ressource, either we would have the freedom to do so anyway, and if the trade partner notice it, it could create a diplomatic incident and all the other civs to cease to trade with us, plus bad mood towards us!

Heck, what I think we should first get past is (a) the 1 deposit of a resource is enough for an entire nation and (b) all resources are created equal problems.
The solution to (a) could be a simple if you have (x) resource deposits and (y) cities, then your # of cities maintainance cost is multiplied by Y/X. Or you could make things a little more complicated by saying this only applies to luxury resources, wheras strategic resources (like iron, horses, copper), the X/Y is applied to construction times and food resources (like corn, rice, cattle) has the X/Y applied to population growth rates. This way, simply having a single deposit of iron is great-if you have only 2-3 cities-but you are gonna need more if your empire gets really big.
The solution to (b) is to make the trade value of resources based on other factors-like scarcity in the receiving nation, the distance between said nations and the difference in cultural strength between these nations.
Anyway, I know its slightly off-topic, but I do believe we should look at these issues before we begin to deal with things like 'cultivation'.

Aussie_Lurker.

When you trade for example fur, you trade the fur of the beaver, not the entire animal... The same withe cattle, pigs and sheep, there you get the meat, not the animal... And copper, iron, aluminum, oil etc. are not possible to "grow"... But if you can make the workers build breeders in tiles where there are, for exalmple, pigs, then you could spread pigs in your own nation. Cus I think it's a bit weird that you can build farms, but there are no animals or grain there, what do a farm then produce? You can't have a farm without any form of grains or livestock, right? Only some of my thoughts...

When you trade bananas, do you want the skin only too?

Out of joke, I think one could trade an entire animal as well. For example, let's assume that if the trade is attached with an agreement of non cultivation/breeding, with a much lower cost, the animal is traded dead and in parts. Because that's not true that only the skin of a pig or sheap can be traded. Now if there is not this agreement, obviously the animal is alive and the cost is much more high. Of course the analogy is not true with Corn, Wheat and Rice, but it would still work in the same way with them. (= higher price without the agreement)

However, some ressources could be problematic like furs or dyes, sugar, whales, deers, etc... because they are very precisely the product of an animal or vegetable, or because they are savage animals that can't be breeded. Maybe the second could be "introduced" though, and the first just considered to be the animal/vegetable and not its product.

As to cultivating ressources in your empty squares, that's precisely the center of the idea: no need to trade with your neighbours in order to do so, you can start with your own ressources. Of course ressources growth capacity would have to be revised lower, for example 3 instead of 4 or 5, and not any other improvement could be build on it. One would have to choose between cottages or vegetable or animal farms.

The difference between vegetable and animal farms would be that vegetable ones would be harvestable right after their construction, but the animal ones would have to grow with time like cottages to reach their full efficiency. Both would have to be built near rivers until the discovering of the Well or the Bureaucracy. (increasing the strategic importance of rivers, too low in Civ4 IMO) Some animal would grow faster, some other would give more food, etc... each animal and vegetable would be different, with some possible exceptions, like one is like one other, but can't be harvested under the same climate.

EDIT: another idea about if a traded ressource can be grown or not, and that would make the agreement of no cultivation/breeding useless, is to have the same ressource into different states. For example, Wheat that can be grown, and Flour that can't be grown, Beet that can be grown, and Sugar that can't, Fur Animal that can be introduced, and Fur that obviously can't, Rice and...? Dried Rice? Corn and ? Pop Corn? Maybe some ressources would have only one form as well. Maybe also that the different forms of a same ressource would have different effects.

ok, maybe they can add chicken and egg

seriously...
you can base it on biology and/or genetics: cloning of corn or cows
or the other way round: modify the resource/trade genetically so that the cows can't have calves, or the rice is unable to reproduce itself to protect from cloning

all you have to think of is if you want to allow the reproduction of resources before that point

another Idea similar to mines: add a random 0.1% chance to spawn a deer/beaver in an unused wood, or spawn a cow/pig/sheep/horse resource in an unused farm or a corn/rice/wheat/sugar/banana/spice/dye/wine/silk resource on an used farm, of course the appropriate tile has to be there: grasland for sugar/banana, plains for wheat

but that spawning is only possible if you have the resource available (in your borders or by trade) and you may not have any units on this tile like for growing forests

I thought about this genetic thing, but unfortunately it could not come up early in the game. Unless it is for an Alpha Centauri 2.

I don't really see why there should be some percentage chance to spawn some ressouces though. The only reason I can see is that the savage animals would migrate or reproducing themselves... oh wait... I got it. In fact you want to give around the same ability to savage animals to spread than the other ones? Well, like I said before, you could always "introduce" them in the appropriated square, but indeed, until farmed (those you can tame), they could have a small chance to spread in the squares around, like the forests themselves do. Good idea.

when basing on technology: add the ability to reproduce flora & fauna with biology and then the ability to prevent this with genetics, this should simply open up a new option in diplomacy

maybe your spies could even steal a cow to get the resource ^^

the random thing has the advantage that it is not completely overpowered like the method of introducing a resource to a square, but it still can improve a city a little bit, like spawning a resource in a mine
imagine a city with slavery, golden globe theatre and 6 or more plots with food resource

Craziivan said:

when basing on technology: add the ability to reproduce flora & fauna with biology and then the ability to prevent this with genetics, this should simply open up a new option in diplomacy

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No. Biology would not do the deal. You would need to trade ressources way before it. The agreement of non cultivation would be the solution.

maybe your spies could even steal a cow to get the resource ^^

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That's how it happens in reality. There are chicken, pigs, cows, sheeps in every single area of the planet. So... either we keep the agreement of non cultivation, either we scrap it and make the exploration more of a ressources research: the difference between two civ ressources would be determined only by climate, what may be unfair. As to allowing spies in the first system, I think it would unbalance it: everybody would send their spies and at the end it would be the chaos depending on the consequences of a spy failure or it would be just like the second system at the end.

the random thing has the advantage that it is not completely overpowered like the method of introducing a resource to a square, but it still can improve a city a little bit, like spawning a resource in a mine
imagine a city with slavery, golden globe theatre and 6 or more plots with food resource

Click to expand...

As I said above, they would be cultivable ealry only near rivers, and second would not be as important than Civ4 Corn for example...