Possible disadvantage to roads on every tile

[apatheist]

...which is why I like the roads & Commerce 'hands-on' commerce model, I build a road, I work the tile, I get Commerce.

And I aspire to have something with a cause and effect as visible and transparent. Imagine a section of the city screen with the city's trade described:

Local Economy: 17
Osaka: 11 commerce (3 turns)
Tokyo: 8 commerce (5 turns)
Edo: 4 commerce (8 turns)

It would tell you exactly what trade you had. Telling you the distance would also enable you to look at the map and see, for instance, that the city is across a narrow strait from Edo, but the trade is taking a roundabout overland route because of the absence of a harbor on either end.

It made for an odd yet fun trading model with caravans, ZOC required the player to make clever unit placement decisions and of course building roads effected your economy .

Caravans were ridiculous. That's not because they were too powerful, but because they were too weak. The idea that you had to build a caravan to establish a trade route was too much work. Then there was a limit to the number of trade routes, which was also lame. Imagine my model as being like being able to have an unlimited number of trade routes, but without having to micromanage a bajillion caravan units.

I apologise for being obtuse, but it seems that in your model, the amount of Commerse generated for a lone city is pre-defined by the cities population size etc, and apart from building banks (for example) it does not require any active thought by the player. Did I mention I like the 'hands-on' approach to commerce?

It requires some thought. You would do things that boost culture. You want to connect cities to luxury tiles rather than using colonies. You want to make sure that your cities are connected by the shortest routes possible.

But yeah, compared to the existing model, it does require less thought. That's by intent. Trade is something that just happens. It should flow like water. Governments can influence it, sometimes significantly, but it doesn't happen by fiat, at least not in any efficient economy. Capitalist economies merely acknowledge the laws of economics and attempt to work with them, but those laws exist in any type of economy. Trade is something governments harness, not something they control. It should be like the air we breathe. We can block it, blow it, filter it, etc., but we can't make it behave against its nature. It moves and flows naturally by its own rules.

 

[th0mas]

And I aspire to have something with a cause and effect as visible and transparent. Imagine a section of the city screen with the city's trade described:

Local Economy: 17
Osaka: 11 commerce (3 turns)
Tokyo: 8 commerce (5 turns)
Edo: 4 commerce (8 turns)

I absolutely agree, presenting this type of information in the city screen in a suitable format would really improve the feeling of being part of a 'global' trade network, and would also allow the player to make strategic decisions regarding improving trade routes, Trade wars, embargoes etc..

Caravans were ridiculous. That's not because they were too powerful, but because they were too weak. The idea that you had to build a caravan to establish a trade route was too much work. Then there was a limit to the number of trade routes, which was also lame. Imagine my model as being like being able to have an unlimited number of trade routes, but without having to micromanage a bajillion caravan units.

Yes they were irritating and unrealistic, and yet having lost them in CivIII, I kind of miss the 'challenge' of getting the caravan through the enemy terriory and to the city.

It requires some thought. You would do things that boost culture. You want to connect cities to luxury tiles rather than using colonies. You want to make sure that your cities are connected by the shortest routes possible.

The actual commerce generated by a city is a function of the quality of its position in the trade network and the quality of other cities in the trade network......snip.... The commerce (as in double-arrows that get converted into gold/science/luxuries) generated by a city is the sum of its local economy and all of its trade relationships with other cities.....
Economy(city) = population + culture + resources + luxuries.

I agree that all those elements describe the relative wealth of a city and would inform your decision on which cities you would strive to improve trade with and even how much wealth is generated by the trade with nearby cities.

However from your model for calculating commerce/wealth how do you calculate the amount of luxuries a city generates (it is currently a circular formula)? Are you proposing that we should remove the commerce (double arrow) concept all together?

In the old model for a lone city, the tax revenue is generated by calculating the commerse/trade generated by worked tiles. As your population increased you could choose to have your people work tiles that generate more or less commerse, this would improved by investing in the road network. How do you arrive at an amount for luxuries, science and tax if this is not present? I am missing something here.

P.S. I like your water analogy for trade, and although I am not qualified to judge whether it is accurate, it certainly sits in my 'that sounds about right' box.

 

[apatheist]

I absolutely agree, presenting this type of information in the city screen in a suitable format would really improve the feeling of being part of a 'global' trade network, and would also allow the player to make strategic decisions regarding improving trade routes, Trade wars, embargoes etc..

A picture is worth a thousand words... There's a lot you can do with a well-designed interface to effectively communicate a concept that sounds complicated in words. Of course, UI is not a panacea, either.

Yes they were irritating and unrealistic, and yet having lost them in CivIII, I kind of miss the 'challenge' of getting the caravan through the enemy terriory and to the city.

It would be one thing if the caravan was a one-time boost. Then it makes sense. The problem is, you'd go through this challenge once for a recurring effect. How did subsequent caravans travel that dangerous trade route? Teleportation?

I agree that all those elements describe the relative wealth of a city and would inform your decision on which cities you would strive to improve trade with and even how much wealth is generated by the trade with nearby cities.

However from your model for calculating commerce/wealth how do you calculate the amount of luxuries a city generates (it is currently a circular formula)? Are you proposing that we should remove the commerce (double arrow) concept all together?

The double-arrows produced by working land should disappear.

In the old model for a lone city, the tax revenue is generated by calculating the commerse/trade generated by worked tiles. As your population increased you could choose to have your people work tiles that generate more or less commerse, this would improved by investing in the road network. How do you arrive at an amount for luxuries, science and tax if this is not present? I am missing something here.

The local economy comes from several components. Each citizen generates 1 double arrow. Having a coal deposit nearby generates 2 double arrows. A gold deposit generates 5. Each cultural building generates 1 double arrow per culture point. Perhaps each unit of food generates 0.5 double arrows. Then there might be improvements like a marketplace or a bank that have a multiplicative effect. You add all of those together to get the local economy.

The beauty of this model is that it makes a civ's economy an increasingly broad function over time. Your economy starts off dominated by the local factors. As your technology level and infrastructure progress, the network becomes more important. Eventually, the commerce generated by a city's local economy is dwarfed in significance by the commerce generated by being part of a greater trade network. It's still important, as you cannot have trade without local economies, but local economies increase in size linearly, while a trade model like this increases the national (and international, eventually) economies much faster.

Of course, I'm leaving out the part where I want to modify how shields/hammers work as well. I think it's stupid that those come out of the ground. Those should a function of labor. In my view, you don't assign your workers to tiles or as specialists. You have 4 classes: farmers, resource gatherers (iron, spices, etc.), laborers, and specialists. The first two get assigned to tiles, but the second two do not. Shields/hammers are produced in proportion to the number of citizens you have allocated to labor, with modifiers like Smiths, Factories, etc. Trade double-arrows are produced according to the model above. The only people who work the land are people who produce products from the land.

 

[th0mas]

It would be one thing if the caravan was a one-time boost. Then it makes sense. The problem is, you'd go through this challenge once for a recurring effect. How did subsequent caravans travel that dangerous trade route? Teleportation?

Also because of the cash bonus for completion of a trade route, in the late game players would continually send armies of caravans (horrible MM!)

The local economy comes from several components. Each citizen generates 1 double arrow....Snip... ... Shields/hammers are produced in proportion to the number of citizens you have allocated to labor, with modifiers like Smiths, Factories, etc. Trade double-arrows are produced according to the model above. The only people who work the land are people who produce products from the land.

you model, on the surface, is sounding more like the approach taken in Sid Meier's Colonisation. or maybe even Imperialism with it's heavier emphasis on supply chain dynamics, which to be honest hasn't been a focus in the Civ series.

 

[apatheist]

you model, on the surface, is sounding more like the approach taken in Sid Meier's Colonisation. or maybe even Imperialism with it's heavier emphasis on supply chain dynamics, which to be honest hasn't been a focus in the Civ series.

I can see the resemblance. However, those games had far more commodities and at least Colonization had specialization of citizens. I'm trying to keep it simpler and more limited than that, while attempting to address the parts that lessen the dynamism and realism of the game.

 

[ThePersian]

Modern roads distroy the soil. So maybe the presence of the road would decrease food that the tile has?

 

[apatheist]

I believe Civ3 had tiles that worked out to be roughly 100 miles square. Civ4 seems to have smaller maps, which implies that the tiles are even larger. Modern roads might not be that friendly to the environment, but their negative effects aren't so great as to affect that large an area.

 

[th0mas]

Modern roads distroy the soil. So maybe the presence of the road would decrease food that the tile has?

I agree with apatheist on this one. This is a scale thing.