There's an exploit in this point. Many trade deals last 50 turns on standard, but trade routes aren't bound to how long your deals last. You can exploit with a trade deals by gaming with trade route duration. For instance:
- Ask another civ to trade their luxury for a WLTKD or City State quest, when your only trade route with them is going to finish next turn or so. Practically a free luxury.
- Similarly, you could easily bribe a civ to go to war with ludicrous gpt offers ("here's 200 gpt and three different luxuries for going to war with this guy") when your only trade route with them is going to end next turn.
Even if the intention isn't to exploit it, you have the issue that your trade routes are likely going to finish trade deals in the middle of it simply because the trade routes rarely last 50 turns. To keep the trade going, you'd need two trade routes at least with different timings between them. There's no guarantee that the other civ will send a trade route to you as well, and there's no real way to coordinate the timings with them. And if you are sending two trade routes of yours to prevent the premature end, you tie multiple trade routes to one trade deal and have to deal with extra micromanagement.
yes this is good point -- I had considered this but not extensively. I figured valuation of resource could be pro-rated to remaining TR duration; this would probably eliminate most of the concern, as then you'd need 3 full-deal-length's worth of resources to achieve the war bribe scenario above, and this should be just a matter of applying a scalar to existing valuation. It still leaves some wonky corner cases to figure out, perhaps, though I imagine these could be adjusted as well.
On the other hand, the WLKTD and city state quest wouldn't be so easily mitigated -- there has been some discussion about WLTKD changes but i don't know where those are at. Maybe a turn counter on these objectives... ie CS quest wants you to obtain resource for 20 turns, and it counts down each turn you have it. WLTKD could be similar, though i don't know if this is palatable.
Ultimately, most of the issues outlined strike me as solvable through rebalancing, AI adjustments, and further congress proposals, though I agree getting everything ironed out completely won't necessarily be free from some complexities. The added gameplay depth might be worth it if we ever got there, but would be up to devs whether they are willing to make ongoing commitment to this end.
When you have bad situation with your neighbours, you cannot start any trade route with them, then you're out of possible resource deals, then you just die? Because if triple Alliance will start a ride on you, you cannot ask for help (strategic resources) from you more distant ally, because you have no TR with him?
i think this dynamic would be desireable to some here. Added geopolitical element of the gameplay to strategize over. A matter of taste I guess. Note that proposal includes request for an option to disable the TR requirement via advanced setup.
Maybe focus should shift to
@nekokon suggestion as we discuss further -- that one would eliminate most of the balance and AI concerns I think, while still adding interesting gameplay element.
