finished goods

in the epic game your cities should produce products like pottery, cloth in ancient times, medicine and cars in modern times, and trade them with allies or other cities in your own empire. they would have a quantity and your city would produce a certain amout each turn if it has the prequisites. a larger city would produce more. for example, a level 5 city with an auto plant would produce 5000 cars a turn while a size 30 city would produce 30,000 cars. finished products will act as luxuries, not as powerful though. some could even have bonuses, cars help tranportation, medicine lowers disease. it would be very useful to have these resources, it would promote trade and make diplomatic negotiations better too ( i'll give you 40,000 cars a turn for rocketry)

tell me what you think---------

Good idea, but what happens if you start going into a deppression. What happens to the values and how would that drop. There has to be a good and bad side. Plus remember, Sid Miers probally has already decided how they are going to build civ4. We can only hope they look at some of this stuff. I once loved Empire Earth. I hate the magic stuff, rumor has it civ4 may incoporate some of that. I can only hope not. Unless of course we have people who can cause God like conditions?

also cities could have supply and demand like they did in civ 2, so you only need to

circulate your goods to cities that need them

And then if you want, you could act like the Bank of Japan and play with exchange rates to prop up a massive export oriented economy. Or be like China and have little control on bank lending and such along with a fixed exchange rate with the world's biggest net importer. Or be like the US and have massive farm subsidies. Or be the dumbest of all and be like India until the 90s, keeping out all foreign investment and products with massive tariff walls and having unchecked population growth.

I think finished goods are a HUGE part of trade, which is very inadequate in Civ 3.

Who ever heard of a nation being an economic powerhouse, but without trading with anyone outside their country?

(Who ever heard of a nation being a cultural powerhouse, but without trading with anyone outside their country?)

I think this idea is too detailed. Basically, you should be able to set up (abstract) trade routes with other nations and each side would receive income from the trade route. A good example of this is the game Galatic Civilizations.

As long, as they are easy to manage it would be quite a good idea.

If was on the sending end of the units (i.e.- 20 tanks/turn for rocketry) would those shields come off my production line without even seeing them or would i have to manually send them?

I voted yes, although the specifics of the idea are debatable. Even if Civ 4 keeps the abstract, one-tile-supplies-as-much-as-you-need approach of Civ 3, then this idea could still be incorporated: certain cities could make certain goods, and if more than one city made the same good, you'd have an extra supply to trade to a neighbor.

I do agree with the idea of 'finished goods' in principle, but with the following modifications:

1) Finished goods should be left fairly abstract. i.e. they won't be specific products, just a very special form of shields and food.

2) These finished goods would be created by diverting food and shields from their 'normal' functions into specialised 'finished goods' pools.

3) Finished goods act as a form of 'pseduo luxury'-the more of them you have the happier your people are, but not to the same extent as 'normal' luxuries.

4) They also are a factor, along with raw shields and food, in determining the income of that city.

5) Raw and Finished food and shields should be tradable-both within your nation, and with foreign nations. Raw shields and food would have a much lower value, in trade terms, than their finished counterparts-and relative tech levels between nations would have a greater impact on the value of 'finished goods', in foreign trade, than on raw goods (which are more effected by 'relative scarcity')!

As an example, if you have a city that produces 15 shields per turn, you might decide to turn 8 of these, per turn, into 'finished goods'. This means that the city now only has 7 shields left for 'raw' industrial production. However, where your 15 shields may have only contributed 30gpt to your city's income, your 'finished goods' contribute 32gpt, whilst your remaining 7 raw shields generate 14gpt. As an added bonus, your 8 'finished goods' increase the happiness of your city's inhabitants by 8%. In trade terms, this city could send some of these 'finished goods' to the central 'trading pool', where they can be later distributed to any of your other cities-or traded to a foreign power. The amount the city in this example recieves for vectoring its finished goods to this pool would be based on its 'relative' distance from the capital. So, if the city producing these 8 'finished shields' was 8 hexes away from the capital, then vectoring 5 of them would earn the city a grand total of 160gpt!! Of course, doing so would cost them 5% happiness!
Anyway, please note that all of the numbers used in this example are ARBITRARY, and would need to be refined for gameplay balance.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Please have a look at this thread:

Above link was inserted since the discussion arising from the question whether the Coloniziation model would fit to Civ4 just went into the same direction.

I agree that basic shields should be converted or at least be convertable to finished good. Those should be very generic, so a certain number of shields could be transformed into a lesser number of "hammers" (just to give an example). Hammers than could be tradeable, as Aussie_Lurker proposed.
As for the military aspect of the game, shields could be transformed into swords (generic for early ages weaponry) and later into rifles (generic for weapons after invention of gunpowder).
In both cases, those finished goods would be tradeable around the world, meaning that cities of the same nation could assist one another in their production, or could be sold to foreign nations either.
This even could lead to the introduction of an "international exchange" in industrial or modern ages (maybe after the invention of stock markets or whatever) where the price for those goods could be determined based on the concept of offer and demand. In the later case, trading of course could only happen between nations not at war. Maybe even not between nations which are furious at the other one.
Comments?

And naturally, the more awesome your civilization, the more value placed upon your goods... and a hated nation, while having valuable finished goods, might experience a boycott just to fight hegemony!

And if your people are all about "French hammers", and you live in Belgium, your people would be pretty wary about going to war with France... let alone should one of your cities defect.

dh_epic said:

And naturally, the more awesome your civilization, the more value placed upon your goods... [...]

Click to expand...

Sorry, but this would just make the "hammers" NOT being generic. They really should be some kind of transferring production capacities and / or finished goods to some other place in the world.
As such, they would have a certain value which in early times could be calculated by gold_per_shield/hammer_per_shield and later by some kind of international auction at which any nation could release an offer and the other nations (not being at war with the offering nation, as stated above) would offer money (gold) for it. If some nations have a demand for improving their production capacity on a short-term basis, they would offer more money than calculated by abover algorithm, if all nations would have sufficient production, the hammers would go for cheap.
The hammers per se would stay anonymous, so that after the trade the buyer just has some hammers more and some money less.

Well said. In our recent experience there is no "good" and "bad" oil.(although I prefer olive oil and ours is the best )

Factors which should determine the value of generic 'finished goods' would be:

1) Relative Culture values of trading civs.

2) Distance between Capitals of trading civs.

3) Relative Wealth of trading civs.

This would mean that a city trading 'finished goods' to a far off and wealthy civilization could expect a very good price for its product, wheras the latter civ would get less for theirs UNLESS they had a much higher culture than the former civ.

Factors which would determine the value of 'raw goods' (commodities) would be:

1) Distance between capitals.

2) Relative wealth of civs.

3) Scarcity of the commodity type within the purchasing civ.

So, a poor island nation, with lots of 'fish' could trade its food to a wealthy desert civ for a fairly good price. For the latter civ, because the food type is so scarce within their nation, then distributing it would cause a minor 'happiness boost'!
In addition, applying a tarrif to trading could limit the number of finished goods (and raw commodities) that a civ could trade (as each shield/food unit traded would end up costing THEM X gpt). For instance, lets say a civ was trading 10 'finished' shields a turn for about 300gpt. The recipient nation could impose a tarrif of 10%, say, which would cost the trading nation 30gpt, and earn the recipient nation a similar amount. However, tarrifs also make shields and food more expensive when vectoring them from the 'central pool' to other cities. So, to continue the above example, if the recipient civ wanted to distribute the 'finished' shields to any of its cities, the cost to those cities of recieiving these shields would be 10% greater than normal.
Anyway, I hope this explains my own perception of the model a bit better!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

I voted yes in the poll, but in the abstract sense - not hammers or cars, but "Finished Goods" as a concept in itself, like another luxury but one that is production based, rather than 'lucky I put my city here' based.

And also Aussie Lurker, this island nation when it gets dates from the desert nation would experience a similar happiness boost while oil of course would be a necessity.

I like those factors you mentioned.

Yep, you've hit the nail on the head. The more scarce a commodity is within your society, the more you'll value it and the more like a 'luxury' it will appear!
For instance, in places like Indonesia and South America, wood is fairly abundant as a 'raw commodity' (i.e. forest based shields). Yet, to someone living on the Tundra or in the desert, this wood would be seen as a LUXURY of sorts, and will pay through the nose for it-especially if they are wealthy!!
As for finished goods, I've also been thinking about what Commander Bello said previously, and I do think that the conversion from raw to finished should not be a 1 to 1 ratio, but most likely a 2 to 1 ratio instead! Also, I agree with what Trade-Peror said in his UET thread, that your cities would need a minimum # of 'finished goods' in order to sustain the citizens current mood! If you have less than the minimum, then unhappiness will result but, if you have MORE than the minimum, then any extra will increase happiness according to the model I suggested above!
On a final note about scarcity. I'm thinking of an 'inverse proportional' relationship between # of shields/food and the happiness boost it will provide. For instance, if we accept that anything more than 10 shields/food, of a particular type, is not scarce, then each two points LESS than 10 will boost happiness by 1%. To illustrate, say a city has food, but has none derived from a 'marine source' (eg fish etc). If the capital of that city's nation vectored 5 'marine products' food units, then it would boost happiness in that city by 3%! If only 3 were sent, though, then you would see a 4% happiness boost!
Anyway, hope that has clarified my position !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Geez, I should just let Aussie speak for me from now on

I should add, of course, that the calculations wouldn't need to be obvious to the user -- strictly an advisor thing who would tell you when you've hit a "fair deal".

Naturally, embargoes would be done to:

1) prevent cultural hegemony (preventing someone's cultural victory because just having the name of that country on its goods gets people excited ... culture points could be accumulated through trade)

2) prevent economic prosperity (fish is your top export? let's create an international tarrif on fish. sucker!)

3) leverage a position (nobody on my side will trade with you until discontinue production of riflemen)

Hi dh_epic! Wow, I have to say that I am flattered that you feel I articulate your ideas so well! You know what they say about 'great minds' though?

Anyway, I just wanted to say that I agree with ALL of your additional points-especially about having finished goods counting towards your 'Culture' if you trade them to other civs! Excellent idea !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.