Community Feature: Gold!

[Mannu]

I'd like to see foreign trade handled by a "Trade Pact" diplomacy option, similar to "Research Pact". That should keep the player involved nicely. I guess it could be capitol to capitol for simplicity, but it needs to be on the map so it can be disrupted.

This doesn't seem too hard to mod in and it should avoid the CIV4 problem of calculating each turn to find optimal trade routes, plus it gives another strategic decision for a player.

Some other possible features:
- minimum number of turns before it can be cancelled without a penalty
- number of available trade routes based on capitol population?
- obviously need a connection to foreign capitol
- maybe like the research pact boosts science output, the Trade Pact could boost gold and production? Perhaps negotiating the amounts for each CIV could even be a part of establishing a trade pact. Though negotiating anything in CIV has never really been a strong point of the AI.

 

[Mannu]

I also HATE the idea of Trading Post spam. Cottage spam was bad enough, I don't really want a city surrounded by a field of tents. Hopefully there's a limit of one per city or hopefully it's a terrible improvement that you would rarely want to build. Trade routes are a much funner / realistic / aesthetically pleasing source of gold. IMO.

 

[Tatran]

Can you pillage/destroy roads in your own territory to cut down costs? You couldn't in civ4 and that was super annoying,

Let's hope so. Remember the AI workers roading your territory?

 

[City Raider]

Can you sell off already built buildings?

That is, before your deficit cuts into research. If you could that would obviously remove the turn by turn maintaince of that building but could you sell it off and get a sum of

 

[ChristofferC]

Whoops; I thought I had included that in the article. If you are out of gold, and your income is negative, it comes out of your research. Basically for every 1 gold deficit you have, you lose 1 research point.

I really hope there is some kind of additional penalty when your research hits 0. Otherwise you could probably beeline to key military techs and then stop your development and rush-buy to upgrade your army and proceed to pump out units and dominate the world since you don't have to care about the upkeep.

 

[caglejsc]

I really hope there is some kind of additional penalty when your research hits 0. Otherwise you could probably beeline to key military techs and then stop your development and rush-buy to upgrade your army and proceed to pump out units and dominate the world since you don't have to care about the upkeep.

Yeah, I thought the same but remembered there is a unit cap based on resources so I don't think it's practical.

 

[Johnny Be]

When I saw Gold!! in the thread title I thought the game had gone Gold!

Oh well... at leat we're getting a demo before the release date!

 

[Dunkah]

When I saw Gold!! in the thread title I thought the game had gone Gold!

Oh well... at leat we're getting a demo before the release date!

What Demo?

 

[Calouste]

I really hope there is some kind of additional penalty when your research hits 0. Otherwise you could probably beeline to key military techs and then stop your development and rush-buy to upgrade your army and proceed to pump out units and dominate the world since you don't have to care about the upkeep.

I think they should make the conversion rate worse, 2 for 1 or so, to cut out any possible exploits, and when you run out of both gold and science, you should just lose the game. The science to gold conversion is there so you can go negative for a few turns by accident without immediately having to disband units or buildings, but it should never be considered even close to optimal gameplay.

 

[Johnny Be]

What Demo?

Look here

 

[Xzylvador]

I wonder how long it'll take for someone to post a schematic about optimal trade-route placement with redunancy in case of guerilla war and pillaging... would it be concentric circles with a few lines between them, like wheel spokes, but at different distances? Somewhat web-like?

 

[Xzylvador]

Can you pillage/destroy roads in your own territory to cut down costs? You couldn't in civ4 and that was super annoying,

You couldn't? I'm pretty sure you could... not with workers, but with military... are you sure you couldn't?

 

[stealth_nsk]

I wonder how long it'll take for someone to post a schematic about optimal trade-route placement with redunancy in case of guerilla war and pillaging...

Impossible. You need to take in account:
- Sea and impassable tiles like mountains.
- City placement, since there a lot of factors affecting it.
- Different enemy tactics for pillaging.

You'll need to figure it out each game. Probably strengthening the routes near aggressive neighbors and removing unnecessary roads which became far away from borders.

 

[Dunkah]

I wonder how long it'll take for someone to post a schematic about optimal trade-route placement with redunancy in case of guerilla war and pillaging... would it be concentric circles with a few lines between them, like wheel spokes, but at different distances? Somewhat web-like?

Expensive!!!

 

[Jaybe]

Of course you can pillage improvements/roads in your own territory (in BtS)!
Use a military* unit ... you do NOT get any gold for such pillaging.

*Scouts/Explorers have never been able to pillage anywhere.

 

[PieceOfMind]

You can't pillage routes (i.e. roads/railroads) in your own territory in civ4 though. There have been many times I've wanted to, especially to cut off routes enemy spies were using.

 

[Sciguy001]

What I am burning to know about is the mechanics of trading posts. They seem to have the "trading post spamming" factor as we've only seen 1 trading post so far in a screenshot next to an English city.
Is there a limit per city? Does it require a trade route/road? Does it perhaps require to connected to a resource (which would limit the number of them per city)? It seems to be the only gold-improving tile improvement. Does it require more than just worker points to build? Does its bonus increase over time like the cottages in Civ IV? I want to know how economy building in Civ IV will be!
I certainly hope there is some limit to trading post-spamming, one trading post looks pretty in teh screenshot but a ton surrounding a city would look awful.

 

[2K Greg]

International trade is now handled through the diplomacy screen - the player has complete control

No foreign routes includes city-states ? Because it's going to seem abit weird for say Venice to have no trade routes...

No doubt someone will mod more "freed up" trade routes at some point (or atleast I hope they do). It does seem an improvement but it also appears to be so frustratingly close to actually being a "real" feature of the game. To me, you should be able to play either as a builder civ, militaristic civ or a trading civ. It still seems to me that civs are either builder or military styles...

Trading is a huge part of the game, and it's done via diplomacy. You can definitely still be a "trading" focused civ, by focusing on generating gold and using that to do deals with other civs.

Greg, Are trade routes considered an "internal" source of gold for your cities?, and by that I mean are they affected by markets and banks and so forth?, or are they external and are therefore not affected by markets and banks?

I believe trade route income is not boosted by city-specific buildings. I'll double-check.

I'm slightly confused (its not that hard to be fair!!)

its been mentioned that it is possible for a navy to blockade a trade route, and its also been mentioned that there are only trade routes between a capital and other cities of the same empire

so apart from on archipelgio (or similar watery) maps, naval blockade is next to useless..!!

Don't forget that roads cost maintenance now! It's very possible for it to be more efficient to use a harbor to generate a trade route rather than linking a city by road to your capitol.

Can you pillage/destroy roads in your own territory to cut down costs? You couldn't in civ4 and that was super annoying, but for other reasons than cutting down costs (obviously).

Yeah, workers can remove roads in your own territory.

What I am burning to know about is the mechanics of trading posts.

Trading posts are just regular improvements that you can build with a worker. No sort of complicated requirements.

I have an article coming out very soon that details all of the worker improvements.

 

[bjbrains]

i have an article coming out very soon that details all of the worker improvements.

*glee*

 

[Mannu]

Really, really, hope there is a limit to the number of trading posts to be built for a city. Or something that makes building many undesirable.