Scooby Doo and the Mystery of the Trading Posts

[Pazyryk]

Originally Posted by MadDjinn

they aren't going to turn around and drop in a Civ 4 mechanic for something that is in Civ 5 (post-launch). Gotta burst that bubble as there's too much 'hoping' for Civ 4 to encroach on Civ 5.

I agree with your sentiment entirely. However, modders can tell you that the game mechanic (i.e., improvements that upgrade over time) is already present in xml tables. And unlike other legacy Civ4 code (e.g., xml tags for religion), it actually works! To my knowledge, the devs have never added anything just for modders. I'm sure that something was planned (at some point) for this mechanism. Not necessarily an upgrading gold-improvement, though.

[Diego Havoc]

Originally Posted by AriochIV

Yes. The shot in the post directly before yours is from the PAX video, in which they were playing the regular game, not a scenario.

Derp. Missed it. My bad.

[theadder]

Originally Posted by AriochIV

Yes. The shot in the post directly before yours is from the PAX video, in which they were playing the regular game, not a scenario.

They are never going to believe you.

Regardless, that is the new trading post for at least a section of the game and probably [?] all of it.

[MadDjinn]

Originally Posted by Pazyryk

I agree with your sentiment entirely. However, modders can tell you that the game mechanic (i.e., improvements that upgrade over time) is already present in xml tables. And unlike other legacy Civ4 code (e.g., xml tags for religion), it actually works! To my knowledge, the devs have never added anything just for modders. I'm sure that something was planned (at some point) for this mechanism. Not necessarily an upgrading gold-improvement, though.

we know they didn't clean up the code base at launch, plus Civ 5 was originally built on the Civ 4 engine... so it's just excess code lying around. It's fine, given that modders can use it, but it's not 'meant' to be there as part of the actual game.

[Pazyryk]

Originally Posted by MadDjinn

we know they didn't clean up the code base at launch, plus Civ 5 was originally built on the Civ 4 engine... so it's just excess code lying around. It's fine, given that modders can use it, but it's not 'meant' to be there as part of the actual game.

There is a lot of excess code lying around that doesn't work. My point is that this "excess code" works. Leaving code around is easy. Leaving code around that still works after so many other changes is...well...not impossible, but darned unlikely and the only example I've seen after ~10000 lines of mod coding.

[Eagle Pursuit]

Have we considered the possibilities if the Trading Post is now available from the beginning like Farms or Monuments?

[SHaW1986]

Originally Posted by AriochIV

We're not making it up; the tooltip in the PAX video really did say "Trading Post."

Does that trading post say 7 food 7 gold? cant be

[Louis XXIV]

Originally Posted by Eagle Pursuit

Have we considered the possibilities if the Trading Post is now available from the beginning like Farms or Monuments?

I considered it, but didn't see the benefit to that (why not just leave it as an early tech in that case?).

[Ulthwithian]

Louis: The only benefit I can see is that I believe that means that you can construct an improvement on any tile in the game from the beginning of the game.

That is, is there a land terrain type that can have neither Farms nor Trading Posts placed on it? Discounting tiles with resources, of course.

[Camikaze]

Originally Posted by SHaW1986

Does that trading post say 7 food 7 gold? cant be

Probably a 2?

[Bisqit]

Originally Posted by SHaW1986

Does that trading post say 7 food 7 gold? cant be

Ya know, they do look like 7's, though that seems highly unlikely. Something is amiss with trading posts. Do they provide extra food and gold now? They also could be 2's considering the awful quality of the screen shot. I think the logical explanation is that trading posts have simply been moved farther down the tech tree but will do the same thing as always. The main change is the new style. Still though, something is odd with them. They might be moving further down the tech tree to simply make it harder to be filthy rich in the beginning of the game. You can easily spam TPs and be loaded all game. Could be a balancing move. Also, assuming the tile outputs stay the same, having trading posts come in later puts much more emphasis on rivers in the early game. Currently you could get by without being by a river but not having trading posts to build on the river tiles for that extra gold would make it necessary to build by rivers so you can get that +1 gold just from tile output. If you don't work river tiles you won't have any gold income from tiles. Again, could be a balancing move.

[Jo the spearman]

Originally Posted by Bisqit

...

Maybe they want us to start using merchants and great merchants . Gold isn't indeed an issue when you can spam TP everywhere. Actually, building a TP isn't an interesting game decision, it's a no brainer. In fact, the whole terrain improvement aspect is pretty bland in CiV. You know you have to build farms near rivers, mines on hills, trading posts on grassland and that's it. If Firaxis moves the TP further in the tech tree, it won't really make the first part of the game less rich. On contrary: the player will have to use the terrain features to it's full potential or go bankrupt pretty fast.

[theis81]

Originally Posted by Jo the spearman

Maybe they want us to start using merchants and great merchants . Gold isn't indeed an issue when you can spam TP everywhere. Actually, building a TP isn't an interesting game decision, it's a no brainer. In fact, the whole terrain improvement aspect is pretty bland in CiV. You know you have to build farms near rivers, mines on hills, trading posts on grassland and that's it. If Firaxis moves the TP further in the tech tree, it won't really make the first part of the game less rich. On contrary: the player will have to use the terrain features to it's full potential or go bankrupt pretty fast.

I agree, but late game will still be overflowed with money and with no CS to buy off anymore, production being increased by patches (better workshop, stones,...) there's nothing else to do with the money than buy an army and go to war. Quite boring.

I really hope they find a fix for late game overflow of money. In ideas and suggestion I proposed giving TP +1 as a base, but only +2 when on a road. It could be when next to river as well. It makes sense both for gameplay (as discussed above) and realistic reasons (infrastructure is needed for efficient trade).

[anandus]

Originally Posted by SHaW1986

Does that trading post say 7 food 7 gold? cant be

I believe it's 2 food, 7 gold.

Have a look at the video.
It's at 1:43:00 exactly

[Montov]

It's 2 food, 2 gold. The food number and gold number are the same, and if you look in the video, you see the same when its normal grassland (which has 2 food) and one of the cities with 2 gold and 2 production.

[anandus]

Originally Posted by Montov

It's 2 food, 2 gold. The food number and gold number are the same, and if you look in the video, you see the same when its normal grassland (which has 2 food) and one of the cities with 2 gold and 2 production.

Hmm, I believe they are not the same, the left number has extra pixels at the bottom compared to the right number, but it's hard to see.
But of course I might be wrong. It's really hard to see.

[Jo the spearman]

Originally Posted by theis81

In ideas and suggestion I proposed giving TP +1 as a base, but only +2 when on a road. It could be when next to river as well. It makes sense both for gameplay (as discussed above) and realistic reasons (infrastructure is needed for efficient trade).

That's a very good idea, I like it. Even better: let the TP keep it's 2 gold bonus and modify it so that it can only be built on roads. Because an isolated TP doesn't make a lot of sense. I hope some firaxian is lurking in this topic because it's a great suggestion.

[Uberfrog]

Originally Posted by anandus

Hmm, I believe they are not the same, the left number has extra pixels at the bottom compared to the right number, but it's hard to see.
But of course I might be wrong. It's really hard to see.

The same 2/7 issue came up when we were looking at the Citrus screenshots. It's almost certainly a two: not only do the numbers look the same (to me), but 7 for a trading post that's not on a river tile is extremely high.

[Gough Whitlam]

I know it's something very different, but what if they've replaced the customs house with the trading post.

It'd make great merchants a lot more popular and even their ability up compared to the other great people.

[KillingMeSoftly]

Great Merchants may be able to create a certain amount of Trading Posts, similar to how the Great Prophet can be used to spread Religion up to four times before being consumed. They may have tried to make Great Merchants more desirable, as they're rather lacklustre and not part of any real strategy. But that would all but remove Trading Posts as a normal tile improvement, which would really change a lot of things. This would make people going for a puppet empire actually want Great Merchants. Thematically it make sense, because puppets are all about money (and culture).