Economic & Overseas Game Concepts

[ice2k4]

This may have been suggested before, or even partially incorporated into a mod, and I do not apologize for making another thread like all the other people do when they have ideas

Anyway down to business.

Civ4 as balanced as the economy is, (dont argue this point, that isnt thepoint of this thread.) it's economic game concepts are completely unrealistic and arent fun.

Trading passages, rights, taxes, routes, outposts and influence have all started wars and lead to Global Exploration.

In the spoiler below I will provide a brief history of the First Global Age, The End of Japan's Isolation and some current day info. (Dont read this if you dont want to.)

Spoiler :

The Crusades caused many Europeans to leave their homes to fight in the Middle East. There they were introduced to such foriegn goods as spices and silks. At that time in Europe and ounce of spice was worth much more than gold and silver (although I forget the estimated price.)

Once Crusaders bring home more of these spices and silks that are much cheaper in the Middle East, Europeans begin to demand them.

Based on the geograpghy of the Eastern Hemisphere, European countries if traveling by land would have to go through the Middle East (at the time extremely hostile from the end of the Crusades) to get to China where the spices and silks were coming from. Trvaeling by sea would take long and was uncertain of because of the little exploration of Africa.

Finally ships sail around Africa, and discover a long sea route to Asia and India.

During this time Portugal, Spain, the Dutch, England and France all compete for power in Asia.

The Chinese Empire once meeting these merchants decides on isolationism and only allowed trading with foreign countries in a particular season at only one city and under Chinese officials.

The Koreans are suffering from two recent invasions and "feel like shrimp among whales" and decide to kill any Europeans that land there. They are named the "Hermit Kingdom."

Japan is in a time of shoguns struggling for complete power of Japan. The shoguns welcome European firearms, architecture of castles and Christianity. Once Tokugawa finally unites Japan he believes that Japanese Christians now swear more pledge to the Pope in Rome then to their shogun. He resolves this by isolationism and killing all Japanese Chrisitans. For nearly 300 years (too lazy to look up exact amount) Japan remains isolationists, until American Commodore Matthew Perry sails to Japan with 3 ships. He proceeds to tell the shogun/emporer of Japan to open up Japan for trade, or he'll start blowing **** up. Japan for the first time in 300 years opens trade. It is also noted that somewhere between WWI and WWII (I forget) that it takes an enormous amount of trvel from California to Japan. Many ships cant go that distance without refueling and docking. What if you build harbors and refueling stations in between the journey. Means a lot more trade, and what happens to be halfway between Japan and California. A lot of freaking islands. Looks like these Jimas might be important to control now?

India welcomes European trade under the Mughal Kingdom. However England and France two long time foes and rivals each set up posts and manufacturers in India. Once the Mughal Kingdom falls, the English and French recruit Indians to fight against eachother playing off the major Indian competing factions. Eventually England beats France, and England controls India.

In the Phillipines Spanish (or Portugal) sailor comes in with a few ships. He is asked do you come in peace or war. He responds peace. Three weeks later he opens fire on the town and takes the Island within days.

Another piece of geography and history is the Seven Strategetic Waterways of the World. If you would like me to explain why each one is strategetic jsut ask. They are Panama Canal, Suez Canal, Malacca Strait, Strait of Gibraltar, Bosporus Strait, Bab el Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz. Every few years a ship is hijacked in the Malacca Strait and just left at sea after a week, almost like it is a practice run to hijack a larger ship. This is because the Malacca Strait allows passage through the Asian Islands from Europe/Middle East to China. Theres a lot of Chinese people in China if you havent noticed that all need oil for basic things. Now imagine the Malacca Strait closing and China not getting oil. Uh-oh.

Now that you have/haven't read the spoiler, here are the things that I want to incorporate into the game. Yes this will alter gameplay.

Emphasized importance on trade routes.
-Strategetic waterways and passages.
-Naval travel time.
-The effect of closed borders, closing trade routes.
-Importance of Mid-Passage Islands

Taxes and Tarifs
-Charging tarifs on foreign trade

Isolationism
-Open/Closed Market Agreements between nations

Demand in Goods
-Demand for luxury resources, by populace.
-Graphs that show your people's demand for each good, as well as other civs demand for each good

Government Role
-Government has a bigger role in trade

Islands
-Importance of small Islands

Trading Posts
-Trading Establishments in foreign civs


My modding abilities are pretty limited, so if anyone wants to mod or help mod get busy. Please share knowledge, information, questions and requests here. Open to all comments and ideas. Let's try and make a fun, realistic, important and balanced economic system thats been missing for so long.

 

[bigk89m]

i think its a great idea. Ive always felt the game lacked in this department.

 

[darkedone02]

Yeah, I like this idea cause it's part of the realism life we have now for trading things as well.

 

[ice2k4]

Now does anyone know how to accomplish these things. Some of these things would be pretty hard to incorporate since the game bases trade more on the government then on mercants.

 

[Red Door]

Very good idea.

For the naval travel time, you need to decide the amount of turn time, the circumfrence of the map, and the boat's speed. (i.e. 100 kilometers per hour) Also, you need to decide how many tiles, and what each tile represents in kilometers/miles.

The earth is 924,375,700 kilometers across, so you divide that by 2400, assuming the ship goes all day and night, so it would take 385156.54166 days to circumnavigate the globe, or 1055 years, or 1055 turns to circumnavigate the Earth. You can do this for any scale to model how far a ship should go. I would suggest looking at TeThurkhman's mod for Civ 3 on how he did this, I think one of my calculations is wrong. Because I know it never takes 1055 years to circumnavigate the Earth.

To summarize it, the Naval time idea needs a lot of math.

 

[ice2k4]

Well I was thinking about it and naval time could be done a different way. You could break down ocean tiles into different gorups. Something like

Off-Coast Ocean
Shallow Ocean
Medium Ocean
Deep Ocean
etc.

(or you could simply name them ocean type a, ocean type b, etc.)

Then you would modify each naval unit to be allowed to enter certain ocean tiles.

The map would have to generate ocean tiles like how it generates coast. X distance to land tile defines ocean tile type.

This also creates the need for more (variety) naval units and eliminates the unreality of ships being able to go a whole game without ever touching land once (dont you think the crew would die of starvation, or the ship would sink for need of repairs???)

-or-

You could make it where all ships must resupply in a city every x amount of turns or it sinks. This would probablly be easier and still maintain the easiness of circumnavigation.

 

[ice2k4]

A current list of proposed ideas to solve the problems of the first post.

Emphasized importance on trade routes.
-Strategetic waterways and passages.
-Naval travel time.
-The effect of closed borders, closing trade routes.
-Importance of Mid-Passage Islands

-Not sure.
-Require naval units to restock at a city every x amount of turns. (Yes the x will vary depending on the unit. The restock would work like a worker action. If the ship fails to restock it will sink.
-Closed Borders will be broken down into two different agreements.
1. Rights of Passage (for units, acts as the current game's open borders.)
2. Merchant's Rights of Passage - Creates trade routes between the two civ's capitols and also creates a trade route with civ's capitols that land routes are blocked by borders (as long as civs have a Merchant's Rights of Passage.
ex. Canada wants to trade with Mexico via land. To do this they must first get a merchant's rights of passage with the United States, then they must get a merchant's rights of passage with Mexico.

A merchant's rights of passage will also allow tariffs to be set and all resources between the civs with the agreement will be shared.
Im not sure how hard the above will be to mod since I dont have an understanding of how trade routes work in-game.
-Mid-passage islands will become important due to the restocking for naval units.

Taxes and Tarifs
-Charging tarifs on foreign trade

-Tariffs will be allowed through Merchant's Rights of Passage Agreement. You may alter how much gpt it will cost for each resource you share with the other civ that they don't have. This will be done through a section in the diplomacy screen. We will also have to set a limit so the ai or the human doesnt exploit this. However taxing too high may want to cause a civ to close the agreement or find other trade routes.

Isolationism
-Open/Closed Market Agreements between nations

WIth the economic civic Isolationism enabled civs can not make rights of passage or merchant's rights of passage agreements. No foriegn trade routes.

WIll post more later.

 

[Red Door]

Okay, I see where you're going with the Naval thing. You could also, to make it more realistic, have points of deep harbors that would be the only way for galleons and caravels to enter cities, or let off settlers, or etc.

If you do the resupplying, make sure that you make it so that you have to spend gold to allow a passage to take place, and that barbarians (to represent Natives) would be allowed to help resupply ships.