Advise on Caravans

[Chiyu]

Hello all,

I'm wondering if anyone can just give me some advice. (Don't need any coding help this time ).

I would like to bring back the Caravan unit from the other Civ games. A unit that you can send to a foreign city in exchange for a small sum of money. Of course, they'll be a national unit (like 3 at the same time max.). But even then, I'm worried that they might be overpowered.

What would the right proportion between 'Cost' (the hammers it takes to build one) and 'Revenue' (the coin they get from the furthest city) be to make them just worthwhile, but not overpowered? I want it to be just a little bit better than building commerce in your city, balanced by the fact that you can only have three at most at the same time, and they take a lot of turns to travel and there's a risk of them getting captured. I'd assume cost=80 hammers and basetrade=50 gold (so 100 in a very far city) would be fair? Or doesn't it work that way? I'm not too sure how the game mechanics work in that area.

Please give me some insight .

For comparison, here is the xml code snippet from the Great Merchant.

Spoiler :

<iBaseDiscover>1000</iBaseDiscover>
<iDiscoverMultiplier>2</iDiscoverMultiplier>
<iBaseHurry>0</iBaseHurry>
<iHurryMultiplier>0</iHurryMultiplier>
<iBaseTrade>500</iBaseTrade>
<iTradeMultiplier>200</iTradeMultiplier>

 

[Greeneyedzombie]

You could check out the Rise of Mankind mod.
They have caravans already in their mod wich you can either use to hurry some production, or for a trade mission.

 

[tsentom1]

I have something similar in my mod that uses a cost of 50, base trade of 25, and trade multiplier of 3. It seems to work pretty well, but no one has ever actually given me feedback on the unit so I really have no idea. If someone knows really good values, I'd like to hear as well. I always figure it has to give slightly more than just building wealth directly (which is 100% hammers converted to gold) since it's not instant like building wealth.

 

[GoodGame]

The TAM mod (ancient med mod) also has a trading ship that functions the same way. Might want to check out the balance they use.

 

[Willem]

But even then, I'm worried that they might be overpowered.

I tried to add a Caravan, using the Charlemange Suppy Train graphics, that could conduct a trade mission just like the Great Merchant but the AI didn't build a single one. So yes, it probably would be overpowered.

 

[tsentom1]

I tried to add a Caravan, using the Charlemange Suppy Train graphics, that could conduct a trade mission just like the Great Merchant but the AI didn't build a single one. So yes, it probably would be overpowered.

That can be fixed by adding a high FLAVOR_GOLD to the unit or increasing the aiweight.

 

[Willem]

That can be fixed by adding a high FLAVOR_GOLD to the unit or increasing the aiweight.

Oh really! What values do you think I should go with?

 

[Willem]

I had a look at the units file and none of them have any Flavour/AI Weight value, so maybe anything will do. It also occured to me that one way of finding a value for the trade missions would be to reverse what happens with Universal Sufferage. There you exchange a certain amount of gold in order to create some Hammers. Using the same formula, you just assign a Gold value for the Hammers invested in originally creating the unit, plus a small multiplier for city distance. Unfortunately I don't have a clue what that formula is. Anyone have an idea what the rate is?