Drug crops

[Idiodyssey]

I realize that there is little chance of drug crops being added since there would be a lot of controversy, but I really think they should be added as they have played a significant role in history. This thread is about how I envision drug crops being handled in game.

First, the drug crops would be Opium, Cannabis, and Coca. They would mostly grow in jungle tiles and require plantations to get their benefit. The base tile yields would be:

Opium: 2 food (if grassland) / 1 hammer / 4 commerce
Coca: 2 food (if grassland) / 1 hammer / 3 commerce
Cannabis: 2 food (if grassland) / 2 hammer / 2 commerce

Plantations with Calender would give the drug resource tiles -1 food / +1 hammer and +3 commerce, giving final yields of:

Opium: 1 food (if grassland) / 2 hammer / 7 commerce
Coca: 1 food (if grassland) / 2 hammer / 6 commerce
Cannabis: 1 food (if grassland) / 3 hammer / 5 commerce

Opium is now the most valuable crop to work with an improvement instead of a gold mine. Coca is equal to a gold mine. Cannabis yields the same number of hammers as a grassland mine, but also yields 5 commerce. You can see these resources are very valuable to work with plantations. With Chemistry, Opium and Coca yield +2 commerce.

Plantations also cause happiness and sickness. With a plantation, the resources give:

Opium: +2 happiness / +3 sickness
Coca: +2 happiness / +2 sickness
Cannabis: +1 happiness / +1 sickness

So you can see there is a trade off with building plantations on drug resources. You get happiness, but at the expense of potentially losing food. This also applies if you trade for one of these resources. Chemistry gives opium and coca +1 happiness and +2 sickness.

There would also be civics associated with drug resources:

Unregulated (No Upkeep): base civic

Universal Ban (High Upkeep): Available with Code of Laws. Plantations cannot be built on drug resources, although the tile can still be worked. Existing plantations are destroyed. Drug resources can not be obtained through trading. All cities get +25% production and +1 free specialist.

Legalization (Medium Upkeep): Available with Liberalism. Plantations can be built on drug resources and tiles can be worked. Each drug resource gets -3 commerce. Each city gets +1 trade route.

Medicinal Use (Low Upkeep): Available with Medicine. Plantations can be built on drug resources and tiles can be worked. Drug resources give no happiness or sickness, but instead yield +2 health. Drug resource tiles get -2 commerce.

Decriminalization (Low Upkeep): Available with Economics. Plantations cannot be built on Opium or Coca tiles and those two resources cannot be traded for. Plantations can be built on cannabis and cannabis tiles can be worked. Every city gets -25% maintenance costs.


That's all I got. I don't know how this would affect balance, but I think it would be interesting to have a powerful resource available with civics that limit their use. Tell me what you think and if you have any suggestions to make it better.

 

[Commander Bello]

Apart from thinking that such a proposal will (and should) never make it into the official game, I see certain weaknesses in your concept:
1) I am not going to dispute personal likings
2) You propose to have natural ressources boosting both, production and commerce
3) You propose to make use of these ressources by plantations (calendar)
4) You propose to have 3 additional civics based on these ressources

Comments:
1) ...
2) As these "ressources" are crops, the boost of production is contradictory to the way all other crops are handled. Additionally, I don't think it is in any way near to a realistic approach, as I don't see why a given city should be more productive because of the presence of one of these, whilst no production is gained from wheat, corn, rice. About the commercial effects one could debate (for the ressources, that is). Nevertheless, your proposed values are incredibly high.
Even Incense would require a plantation to only give +5 commerce. Now compare this with your +4 commerce for Opium (without plantation).
Completely unbalanced
3) Making these "ressources" available by plantations would make the Calendar technology even more powerful, as it now would give access to 6 + 3 ressources. Even more unbalanced.
4) Finally, you add a whole new set of civics based on these ressources to the concept. As I said in my comment to pt.1 "...."
But you seem to be a bit biased regarding these things.

Conclusion:
Bad idea, bad concept, bad balancing. For me, a clear and complete no-go

 

[Quechua]

I like the idea of making drug plantations high commerce tiles, and having a happiness/health tradeoff in using drugs. But I agree with the Commander that the production bonus and new civics is a bit much.

Here's a half-baked idea:

You can improve a drug tile (not with Calender) getting a very high commerce tile, but then each turn the cities with access to the drug have a small chance of getting "addicted," which adds significant unhealthiness to the city. You can't trade drug resources normally, but an addicted city can build a "smuggler" which acts like a missionary, spreading addiction to another city. The first city to be addicted to a drug acts like the founder of a religion. In that city you can build a "cartel" improvement that gets 1 gold for each city addicted. Getting a foreign city addicted carries a severe diplo penalty with that nation.

Existing civics could affect this. For instance, police state could stop the spread of addiction, and negate the unhealthiness penalty (like a temp suppression of drug use). Another civic, maybe free speech, could give a happy face for each drug a city's addicted to.

The idea is to make the unhealthiness and diplomatic penalties severe, so it usually doesn't make sense to spread addiction, but make the commerce from the improved tile very high.

 

[ljofa]

Certainly mankind has been influenced by certain hallucinogenic and carcinogenic products for use as stimulants, for certain spiritual exercises or for general recreation. Whereas "incense" could be seen as cover for some drugs, there is, in my opinion, a gap which could be explored further.

I've argued for the (re)introduction of tobacco as a luxury resource - increased commerce, negative effect on city health.

I think that your idea of having coca plants or cannabis plants has merit and could be better tweaked. As things stand, it seems like you'd encourage a nation of drug addicts to be the supreme civilization.

Perhaps there could either be specific crops or a generic crop - and by harvesting them, you could siphon money from other civs. Certainly the CIA and the KGB made some of their money by exporting crops and Britain went to war with China over keeping the Opium markets open so this isn't without precedent.

What about having a new type of option for drugs? If you have whatever resource in your borders you can build a plantation on it. This plantation opens up a further set of options: You can harvest the crop for medical research which gives a bonus point to city health per city but takes money from the treasury to pay for such research. You can sell the crop on the black market to your enemies siphoning off gold directly from their treasury but this will cause a diplomatic fall. However, their people will get +1 happy citizen per city so they'd think twice before automatically protesting. You can choose to deregulate drugs on your territory giving you an +1 happy citizen per city and boost in gold production but hammer productivity, culture and science all suffer because of it.

Don't forget that military research brought about Esctasy (MDMA) and LSD in the quest to help soldiers - the whole drug concept is no different from "Thought Control" from Alpha Centauri.

 

[Sebiche]

Hmmmm...

i dont like the idea of these drugs things.

i'd just rather cities getting crime rates.

 

[T.A JONES]

Ya I heard the brothers who were a major source of funding starting up Yale, where heavy into opium profits(multi millions). Yale being where a majority of Feds and CIA boys plus presidents come from I'm not surprised US had their hands in drug deals the last century or so.
To cut off funding from those they don't like, they had to undermine their abilty to conduct war by cutting into their drug income, all in the best interests of national security.

Drugs are in the foundation of the most powerful to the weakest countys and will always be a major part of politics and conquest.

They are also frownd upon by parents so can't be put in a game kids play. On direct interest of making profits, Firaxis will never consider a drug implimentation idea but a modder would be smart to

 

[LucyDuke]

Although on the surface I like the idea of adding new resources, the way you propose to implement these ones doesn't seem quite right.

The biggest weakness in your proposal is that it's based on the current status of these crops in most societies today. They're illegal. Now, we don't need to get into the inevitable discussion of what people think about that, but the fact is, there is a demand for these products, and thus a black market to meet that demand. That legal status is the only reason there is any money in drug trafficking. It makes very little sense, outside that framework, to associate drugs with commerce. It also makes very little sense to assume that the current model of prohibition is the only reasonable way that a civilization should approach the use of psychoactives.

Most people's understanding of these plants are horribly convoluted. Even a carefully researched and realistic implementation would probably prove unpopular simply because of people's misconceptions.

 

[Swein Forkbeard]

Tobacco
Cocoa
Salt
Cotton
Coffee
Tea

It would be nice to add more or think about these.

 

[Sebiche]

hmmm salt?

I agree with the rest, but Salt? i think there should be a

CAMEL

resource, so that knights require either horse or camel, to allow the Ottomans, persians and arabians that unit.

 

[Swein Forkbeard]

If we agree with camels, than there will have to be these units.

Camel Rider - Same stats as knight, just looks like, well, a camel.

Mameluke - Arab unique unit if they find horses instead of camels. Same stats as camel archer, just looks more like a horse rider.

Camel Conquistador - I'm sure you can guess what this is.

And by the way, salt was actually an early form of "currency", that's why it's in my list.

 

[Sebiche]

wow i did not know that.

thank you.

(who the hell uses currency out of something so very abundant?)

 

[LucyDuke]

(who the hell uses currency out of something so very abundant?)

It wasn't so abundant when it was used as currency. The word "salary"? It's no accident that it's similar to "salt".

 

[Sebiche]

wow. where was it used? (salary. salary. SALARY. is it england or any english-speaking territory?) salary.

you know it sounds alot funnier now that i know the root of the word. thank you LucyDuke.

(people can use the funniest materials for currency)

in other news, im thinking we should add a CITRUS resource and then a FRUIT resource and take out the banana. Citrus stops our guys at sea from getting scurvy! (and banana is too specific I think with fruit it will suffice)

(once more, im preparing to be dazzled with just how contrary everyone else's opinion is )

wait don't answer that. it was the wage romans would pay their soldiers, so that they could buy salt. god bless wikipedia

 

[Swein Forkbeard]

It wasn't so abundant when it was used as currency. The word "salary"? It's no accident that it's similar to "salt".

I read somewhere that the word "salary" comes from the word "salt".

I think this is now officialy a thread about new resources. I never played Civ3, but I saw the website and saw that that game's final expansion pack included new resources, so why can't there be any new resources in the next expansion pack for Civ4?

Another change I thought of: the current wine resource should be called grapes and the winery should be a city improvement that provides +1 happy face with the grapes resource. That would make me a bit hungry though, as I LOVE grapes. There used to be a time when all I had for breakfast was muffins and grapes. Ahhh... those were the days.

 

[Swein Forkbeard]

wow. where was it used? (salary. salary. SALARY. is it england or any english-speaking territory?) salary.

you know it sounds alot funnier now that i know the root of the word. thank you LucyDuke.

(people can use the funniest materials for currency)

in other news, im thinking we should add a CITRUS resource and then a FRUIT resource and take out the banana. Citrus stops our guys at sea from getting scurvy! (and banana is too specific I think with fruit it will suffice)

(once more, im preparing to be dazzled with just how contrary everyone else's opinion is )

wait don't answer that. it was the wage romans would pay their soldiers, so that they could buy salt. god bless wikipedia

Citrus Fruit, heh? Good decision, and keeping in bananas would make me a bit hungry when playing. I LOVE bananas. I have one almost every day.