apotheoser
Prince
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2006
- Messages
- 336
In the early/mid 90s there was a series of games called Merchant Prince (aka Machiavelli The Prince), set in the years 1300-1492. The UI was sort of similar to Civilization - you had a top-down grid map of the world with a bunch of cities and terrain features:
However, instead of controlling a civilization, you controlled a Venetian merchant family. The game was primarily about trading. You owned/bought various kinds of ships and caravans, which you used to (surprise) buy goods at one city and sell them at another. Obviously the whole market economy thing was the core of the game: find goods cheap at point A and sell them for more at point B. On the Earth map, naturally the most profitable trade routes involved getting goods from China in to Europe. There were also random maps, so exploration was always a big part of it. The world starts out obscured, so you have to explore to find the good ports (and some extra goodies).
There was a lot more to the game as well: an interesting military angle, a fairly robust random event system, and, most importantly, the political layer. The political stuff was huge.
So I'm wondering if there would be much interest in contributing to, or just playing, a Merchant Prince-style mod for Civilization 4. It would be a radically different mod. The way I see it, the AI would control the normal civilizations. In original Merchant Prince, the cities did occasionally fight one another, but the cities didn't expand or get destroyed or anything like that. So here, you would playing in a much more dynamic world (a Merchant Prince mod would obviously have to use a late start so there are people to trade with).
The merchant civilizations in Merchant Prince would start in permanent alliance with their home civilization, but wouldn't be able to build cities or military units: just buy and upgrade naval units (if the mod were to continue in to the modern era, we'd have to add more cargo ships than the transport). The biggest hurdle, obviously, would be designing how the market works. I think it could be tied to local squares; the price of a good could be inversely proportional to the distance from a square with that bonus. (Eg, City A is right next to a wheat square, so the price of wheat is low. City B is 20 tiles from a wheat square, so the price of wheat is higher). But you'd also have to alter the price based on how recently wheat had been bought/sold in the city.
There could be some interesting interaction with civics, as well. Most notably Mercantilism would prevent you from importing things in to the civilization (but not exporting from. Of course is two civs are both mercantilist, you can't trade between them). State Property might result in the nationalization of some goods.
I was thinking you could do some interactions with buildings, as well. Some buildings could help merchant players (Markets and Grocers might increase demand/availability in a city), so you'd want to trade with the larger, more developed cities. Maybe the player can build warehouses in home and friendly cities, which can store goods.
Obviously there's a lot to think about with this, so I want to know if the mod sounds interesting to people before I do anything past the "thinking about it" stage. Does it sound like too much of a change for one mod? Would it not be fun? Would it not work for some reason I'm overlooking (without drastically rewriting the game)? Et cetera. I'm interesting in whatever comments people have.
(If you'd like to try out the original Merchant Prince, you can get it from abandonia.com. You'll have to get DosBox as well, and disable EMS memory).
However, instead of controlling a civilization, you controlled a Venetian merchant family. The game was primarily about trading. You owned/bought various kinds of ships and caravans, which you used to (surprise) buy goods at one city and sell them at another. Obviously the whole market economy thing was the core of the game: find goods cheap at point A and sell them for more at point B. On the Earth map, naturally the most profitable trade routes involved getting goods from China in to Europe. There were also random maps, so exploration was always a big part of it. The world starts out obscured, so you have to explore to find the good ports (and some extra goodies).
There was a lot more to the game as well: an interesting military angle, a fairly robust random event system, and, most importantly, the political layer. The political stuff was huge.
So I'm wondering if there would be much interest in contributing to, or just playing, a Merchant Prince-style mod for Civilization 4. It would be a radically different mod. The way I see it, the AI would control the normal civilizations. In original Merchant Prince, the cities did occasionally fight one another, but the cities didn't expand or get destroyed or anything like that. So here, you would playing in a much more dynamic world (a Merchant Prince mod would obviously have to use a late start so there are people to trade with).
The merchant civilizations in Merchant Prince would start in permanent alliance with their home civilization, but wouldn't be able to build cities or military units: just buy and upgrade naval units (if the mod were to continue in to the modern era, we'd have to add more cargo ships than the transport). The biggest hurdle, obviously, would be designing how the market works. I think it could be tied to local squares; the price of a good could be inversely proportional to the distance from a square with that bonus. (Eg, City A is right next to a wheat square, so the price of wheat is low. City B is 20 tiles from a wheat square, so the price of wheat is higher). But you'd also have to alter the price based on how recently wheat had been bought/sold in the city.
There could be some interesting interaction with civics, as well. Most notably Mercantilism would prevent you from importing things in to the civilization (but not exporting from. Of course is two civs are both mercantilist, you can't trade between them). State Property might result in the nationalization of some goods.
I was thinking you could do some interactions with buildings, as well. Some buildings could help merchant players (Markets and Grocers might increase demand/availability in a city), so you'd want to trade with the larger, more developed cities. Maybe the player can build warehouses in home and friendly cities, which can store goods.
Obviously there's a lot to think about with this, so I want to know if the mod sounds interesting to people before I do anything past the "thinking about it" stage. Does it sound like too much of a change for one mod? Would it not be fun? Would it not work for some reason I'm overlooking (without drastically rewriting the game)? Et cetera. I'm interesting in whatever comments people have.
(If you'd like to try out the original Merchant Prince, you can get it from abandonia.com. You'll have to get DosBox as well, and disable EMS memory).
