Caravans can be attacked, so....

Gucumatz

JS, secretly Rod Serling
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Dec 11, 2011
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Since Caravans can be attacked by both barbarians and enemy civs we are supposed to defend them. One problem though. If they constantly are moving from one city to another, it would be a bit hard to have units protect it.

I hope we get the ability to 'put' a unit on top of a caravan/trade ship in order to protect it and order it to shadow the caravan/ship at all times otherwise this could be a logistical nightmare.
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Also, when dealing with other civs if they place their units on a trade route preventing you from reaching your destination this could be just as equally a logistical nightmare. I hope caravans allow for limited stacking
 
If anyone is familiar with Civ 2 caravans, could you explain if any of the following worries I mentioned applied to Civ 2? [I never played Civ 2 so have no experience/idea with this]
 
I'm guessing that they count as civvies anyway.

Also, I think you only have to worry about barbarians for a while. Once the borders start meeting up, getting a caravan from point A to B shouldn't be problem except at war of course.

However, I agree with the potential logistical nightmare. Even though I like that trade is being added, trade being done with units was pretty "eh?" for me. It would be less of a nightmare, more intuitive, and less painful on turn times if automated trade units were replaced with a trade routes overlay that just shows the routes, which try to take the path of least resistance. That way, you get the trade advantages of building roads would have with trade units, but none of the logistical nightmare.

But meh. Besides these, I'm just going to wait and see.
 
Limitless civilian and allied stacking needs to happen, otherwise there's too much clutter on the Immortal and Deity for units to even move around. Ofc if you're ally DOWs you when you're stacked with him it might be somewhat of a problem, but I'm sure it can be solved somehow. Even now when I sell open borders to everyone and their uncle (yeah, a bit cheesy, that), the scout and settler and missionary spam that I get tends to get a bit out of hand. With trade units and possible other extra units added in BNW, it's clear that they need to relax the stack rules a little bit.

As far as the whole trade routes thing, long ocean routes might end up costing you more than you make if you want to protect them well enough. I suspect that the shortest routes may prove the most lucrative - which is a problem because your immediate nieghbors are the ones that usually denounce you and covet your lands. I hope they revamp the whole diplomatic AI while they're at it, otherwise there might be a whole slew of new problems and exploits introduced.

@Gucumatz: The Civ II caravan mechanic was horrible; the caravans (and later freighters) were units that you had to build and move around. They could establish trade routes between cities, after which trade was automatic, but that wasn't their chief use. To this day the most effective strategy in Civ II is the 'Super Science City' strat where you build every scientific wonder in one city and then buy/build caravans there and ship them far away to the biggest AI city you can find. Each caravan adds a huge amount of science when they get to their destination; there's no point in even building libraries in other cities than the SCC. When I learned about this strategy I lost all my desire to play Civ II ever again, because it screamed 'cheeseball!' to me and was an absolute logistical nightmare, horrible enough to scare Freddy Krueger dead in his bed (if he played Civ that is ;)). The third use for caravans was to hurry wonders by their production value - which meant iirc that 5-6 caravans could complete an Ancient wonder. I didn't mind that mechanic too much, but it's better imo that production be moved by trade routes like in BNW.
 
I'm guessing that they count as civvies anyway.

Also, I think you only have to worry about barbarians for a while. Once the borders start meeting up, getting a caravan from point A to B shouldn't be problem except at war of course.

However, I agree with the potential logistical nightmare. Even though I like that trade is being added, trade being done with units was pretty "eh?" for me. It would be less of a nightmare, more intuitive, and less painful on turn times if automated trade units were replaced with a trade routes overlay that just shows the routes, which try to take the path of least resistance. That way, you get the trade advantages of building roads would have with trade units, but none of the logistical nightmare.

But meh. Besides these, I'm just going to wait and see.

I really agree. I wish you could pathmark a trade route and then manage them through a certain interface. Enemy units could still disrupt it and raid it, but it would be better defined without having to rely on a mobile unit
 
Limitless civilian and allied stacking needs to happen, otherwise there's too much clutter on the Immortal and Deity for units to even move around. Ofc if you're ally DOWs you when you're stacked with him it might be somewhat of a problem, but I'm sure it can be solved somehow. Even now when I sell open borders to everyone and their uncle (yeah, a bit cheesy, that), the scout and settler and missionary spam that I get tends to get a bit out of hand. With trade units and possible other extra units added in BNW, it's clear that they need to relax the stack rules a little bit.

Especially on Deity where every AI spams a thousand units. A major problem is that your civilian units can't stack or go beneath military/civilian units from other empires.
 
In Civ2, the units weren't automated and you could stack (although if one were killed, you'd lose both). So the concerns didn't apply.

I agree this is, in fact, concerning. We'll have to see how it plays out.
 
As far as the whole trade routes thing, long ocean routes might end up costing you more than you make if you want to protect them well enough. I suspect the shortest routes may prove the most lucrative - which is a problem because your immediate nieghbors are the ones that usually denounce you and covet your lands. I hope they revamp the whole diplomatic AI while they're at it, otherwise there might be a whole slew of new problems and exploits introduced.

"We share trade routes!" should be a stackable positive modifier.

I really agree. I wish you could pathmark a trade route and then manage them through a certain interface. Enemy units could still disrupt it and raid it, but it would be better defined without having to rely on a mobile unit

I actually wouldn't want pathmarking, but only because I think it opens up in-game choices to build strategic roads and harbors to get a trade route through your cities. That would be a lot of fun really since right now, the only thinking that goes into road building is "connect cities, maybe road to fort".

It would even add some sense behind long trade routes if they go through multiple cities contributing value to them.
 
This whole thing smells like the the 'caravans-trade routes' in Test of Time, whereby you spent big bucks to build a caravan, moved it to another city, established a trade route, and then within a few turns had the trade route destroyed utterly by a lousy barbarian trireme/galley. As a result, in ToT trade routes never made money, they cost you in terms of caravans built and military units committed to trying to protect them. In this case, it looks like you will spend a great deal of time protecting the caravan unit as it travels back and forth, and when (inevitably) you get attacked and have to pull the protecting military unit to cover your cities, or the attacking army runs over your caravan, you're back to 0 on the trade route.

A much better mechanic would be the on-map trade route overlay, in which the 'caravan' (or ship, or truck) represents one turn of income and moves along the route. Barbarians, privateers, or raiders could take out one of the caravan icons, stealing one turn's worth of income from the trade route, but NOT destroying the route itself. If a barb or enemy unit parks on the route, after X turns it would automatically re-route around the unit, which would cost some per-turn income, but maintain the route.

This would keep trade routes profitable, and reflect the historical reality that once a profitable trade route was established, it took major disruption or changes in the situations of the trade partners to eliminate it. Simple raiding by 'barbarians' would never do it, unless they were barbarian armies camped right across the only pass/strait choke point on the route - and even then the route would just relocate, unless the demand for the trade goods disappeared,

From the description, the proposed system does not sound promising at all...
 
I have to say remembering back to the Caravans from Civ II, I'm really wary of this mechanic. I'm guessing they'll make it more fun/less clunky than in Civ II. It sounds like you don't so much build the caravans as you just get a certain number of them, in which case I'm less wary of it; I don't want to have to build caravans; between managing happiness, culture and military protection there's already quite enough to keep my cities busy as it is.

My big worry is the 1UPT problem. Unless this is dealt with effectively, this mechanic could be a nightmare.
 
Since Caravans can be attacked by both barbarians and enemy civs we are supposed to defend them. One problem though. If they constantly are moving from one city to another, it would be a bit hard to have units protect it.

I know especially with Zulu warriors about. They are truly very scary. How could things get any worse? :)
 
Don't the interviews directly state this is the choice players need to make?

Longer trade routes carry more risk but will yield more lucrative supplies, and trade routes can also be used on players' own cities to distribute supplies internally.

It sounds similar to settling cities. You spam the map right from the start, but it usually backfires. I think trade routes will be similar. If you try and exploit them as quickly as possible, you will probably end up worse off.

I don't think it is much of a problem on land since they are not going to get attacked unless they are passing through enemy borders. Water may be trouble depending on how the system actually plays out. Anyone remember Civ5 vanilla? A surprise DoW and all the enemy city-state's random caravels across the map would go around one-shotting any of your transports currently in the water.
 
I dont know what you guys worry about i think its just great if they were just like "units" moving automatically around the map so you really have to contrive how you could defend this route efficiently, but even more interesting in wartimes where you can crush traderoutes with battleships or subs :D


i wonder if there will be traderoutes via Planes? but how would one break such a route?
 
Would it make more sense to make the TRADE ROUTE mechanic more similar to SHOGUN: TW 2 where there was a dotted line connecting cities and you could just put a unit to attack the trade route line? That way, you could attack the trade route and steal some money but not all. The more ships attacking the line, the more money you make.
 
I dont know what you guys worry about i think its just great if they were just like "units" moving automatically around the map so you really have to contrive how you could defend this route efficiently, but even more interesting in wartimes where you can crush traderoutes with battleships or subs :D


i wonder if there will be traderoutes via Planes? but how would one break such a route?

This is really interesting . More micromanaging yes but more fun also yes . WW2 was started for America at least partially because of trade route interupption by German U-boats . Also Pirates still capture booty today :lol: . So armed gaurds all very important still today . Like it has been said . Will be interesting to see how this is done. I trust the dev team in putting in the right way though .
 
Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but I think we're dismissing a key possibility: that caravans have defense.
 
Would it make more sense to make the TRADE ROUTE mechanic more similar to SHOGUN: TW 2 where there was a dotted line connecting cities and you could just put a unit to attack the trade route line? That way, you could attack the trade route and steal some money but not all. The more ships attacking the line, the more money you make.

That would be harder to defend than the roving Caravan, no?
 
Since Caravans can be attacked by both barbarians and enemy civs we are supposed to defend them. One problem though. If they constantly are moving from one city to another, it would be a bit hard to have units protect it.

I hope we get the ability to 'put' a unit on top of a caravan/trade ship in order to protect it and order it to shadow the caravan/ship at all times otherwise this could be a logistical nightmare.
Yes, this is something we also urgently need for civilians/embarked units.
 
That would be harder to defend than the roving Caravan, no?

I am also very skeptical about caravans being actual units going back and forth...It sounds like a logistical nightmare. I like the mechanic of SHOGUN: TW2 as described, makes more sense. To make it as easy to defend as an escorted unit though, we could use a new mechanic such as an "Escort" mission for ships/units a la "Intercept" missions for planes, where a unit is committed to escorting a trade route and automatically defends from attackers.
 
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