You don't want it to be bribable either ?
Leaders should be bribable to stop a war (a civ with a strong military might start a war against a weaker enemy just to force a very unfair "deal"), but not armies bribable to stop their march.. Doing so would be considered treason.
Some kind of army should not have to equal overwhelming military force, though.
A weak army usually comes in hands with the lack of excuses
That's not how I envision deals working, is the thing.
I sell the AI 50 or 100 shields' worth of iron from a qualitative iron resource, that's not a "trade route for 100 turns", that's one or two caravans of iron that have to be delivered to the AI. (With caravan-type units upgraded for greater capacity as the game progresses.)
Okay, I was thinking a trade deal more of a "we lack oil. Supply us constantly with 1k tons/turn of oil in exchange for money" kind of deal. The model you describe could be used for weapons deal. You are more towards having unique dedicated units on specific jobs
, whereas I am more towards presenting trivial tasks through logistic screens
.
A scenario of a trade route attack as I envision it:
Civ A is in war with civ B. Civ A knows that civ B is constantly supplied with x tons/turn of oil from civ C from the trade route Athens-Bourgas, so it orders a small fleet of subs to attack the route. When the order is issued, the trade ceases to be just a graphics represantation and we see actual trade ships (different kinds according to the goods they carry -tankers here-) with hit points moving in between the 2 harbours. Then the attacker has the choice of which ship to attack, and sinking it wins the submarine a small amount of xp. But it isnt always sure that the submarine will be able to intercept the trade ship, thus a chance of interception is added (which depends on the length of the route, the number of the attackers, the type of attackers and the capacity of the trade route). The owner of the ships in the trade route, has the choice of applying convoy tactics to reduce the chance of interception -and when intercepted, a standard defender vs attacker battle sequence begins, with the attacker having a slight bonus due to the element of surprise- in the expense of reducing the trade route capacity, or just assign x destroyer to guarding the trade route, without reducing the chance of interception but with the
chance of a battle sequence between the defender and the attacker. Sounds confusing I know, but also a lot of fun. It could also become more simplified. Notice that this whole process can be automated (reduce micromanagement), with both parts involved sitting back and enjoying a series of battle sequences -the results of their strategies-, or getting their feet wet and issueing direct commands to units. The attacker tries to find weak pray and the defender adapts his strategy through convoys or changing the route's destination (lenghten the route->interception chances go down, capacity goes down as well). Espionage can come to play here too, by missions such as "uncover trade routes" when the defender changes the destination harbour.. Interesting naval strategies emerge. Anyways many ideas come as I write
The civ in demand of oil has of course made the choice of ordering a little more oil than he consumes, in order to build up a strategic reserve. That last bit is a showcasing of the strategic elements introduced through quantitive resources. It may become a little more of a numbers game but it is definitively worth it.