Proposal: Bonus Resource Trading and New Effects

[Don Senglar]

I'd like to make a couple of comments.

When the player sells any goods to the natives he receives from them the Europeans money. This is wrong. Trading with natives must be based on the simpliest exchange goods (barter).

Sample.

The players sells in a native village 10 tools.
These tools cost 8x10=80 coins.
The native player buys these tools but instead 80 coins returns to the player, say, 80/4 = 20 furs.

Thus, to improve the trading with natives we have to add a some correction on the stage when 80 coins transforms in 20 furs.

How difficult to realize such correction? Any ideas?

The variant with "trading contracts" realized in Dawn of a New Era (DoaNE) could be the next step in trading with natives, when both - the human and native players - at least know each other a number of turns.

The variant proposed by Nightinggale with permanent "trading stations" outside the player territory could be the much more advanced step in trading with natives, when both - the human and native players - not only know each other very well but have rather high level of relations.

In such form the trading with natives looks much more close to reality.

I know that the source codes of DoaNE is not available (why???) and at the moment the ideas of Nightinggale are just ideas to dicsussion. But how about to make a first step (see, my sample) in the improving the trading with natives?

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Well, in M:C they are not actually natives anymore, they are closer to tribal or minor nations, coinage would be a more or less 'global' (in the medieval scope) as more or less everyone dealt with the romans, and for some reason everyone loves gold. So these minor nations have their cheiftains sitting on piles of gold (probably taken from the afore mentioned romans when it all went belly up) so trading for gold is not that unusual, as these are not isolated natives, but old school tribes (much the same as the player at the start).

DoaNE do not want to share their code, I think because they do not want people 'stealing' it, which I think is a slightly sad stance to take on a community website with such a great history of cooperation, but there ya go. Maybe one day when they finish their work they may well be willing to put it out there to everyone (much like firaxis did eventually).

Changing to a barter system is obviously doable, because it has been done.

I just don't think it is really necessary for M:C. Especially when you can sell something and then turn round and buy something. The problem with a pure barter system is getting deals that match up nicely, it is much easier to just make up a deal with some coins, rather than tramp home half your stock, or take a big profit hit. Also in the beginning it is your only way to get gold and all the goodies that go with it. These is not necessarily a bad thing to lose, as gold is generally just a shortcut to things. I quite like the shortcut though as often I am too lazy to do it the hard way!

 

[Nightinggale]

In medieval times (as well as most other historic times), people traded in metal. To make trade easier, people made coins telling how much metal it contained. It didn't lose value if you melted it down since the weight of the metal didn't change. With that in mind, it makes perfect sense to trade in gold with all players.

The Roman empire was once short on money and they came up with the solution to put less metal in the coins. They then had the problem that "the primitive tribes didn't understand the value of money" because they insisted on sticking to the metal value rather than some random number somebody had written on the coins.

The people behind DoaNE completely ignores any talk about shared code, which mean their reasons for hiding their code will have to be pure speculations. Personally I think it is to ensure DoaNE to be unique, but for all we know it could be due to hiding variable names like TAC_sucks or something. Before you laugh at that one, that was actually an issue in a group I was in at the university. The others insisted on prank names like (name of teacher)_sucks and (name of teacher)_eats_banannas and other really silly names. The group decided I was the weird one for caring about variable names in an assignment, which should be handed in
(btw that was the first and last time I handed anything in together with those people, but I couldn't move group at that point)

One interesting twist regarding DoaNE is that their block goes both ways. I wrote to them about some code optimization I had done on vanilla code and said that they could benefit greatly from that as well. No answer
I have shared plenty of code (particularly performance boosts) between RaR and M:C and nobody would claim those to be even remotely similar.

 

[Kailric]

Like they say, for M:C at the moment trading in Gold isn't that far fetched. I would like to add a barter system to M:C for the WHM at some point though, so it would be a good idea then.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

The DOaNE team did once upon a time say why they were not sharing code, and it was basically their code and they wanted to keep it that way. (A combo of keeping unique and 'people will steal our ideas as their own')

It is a shame because they do have some interesting elements that would be at home in all manor of settings, not just the colonial one.

Their trade route system is interesting, their trade contract barter system, the ability to upgrade and plant bonus resources up to a certain level depending on terrain and global position. (although I think with the prospecting system we may already have a mechanism that is very similar and could possibly be expanded to improve tiles into the future from ancient to modern. (although this can also be achieved using improvements, you just build a better one.)
Also their era system is interesting, where you have to achieve certain mile stones to reach the next era, and i think the change in era effects available buildings, units and yield prices. Although I have only made it through one era so far I think.

Cab we trade goods for goods at the minute in diplo. screen? I honestly can't remember, is it just you have to put up yours take the money then buy theirs?

 

[Nightinggale]

It is a shame because they do have some interesting elements that would be at home in all manor of settings, not just the colonial one.

I have looked at the code for C2C a few times and found a few features I like. However I have more or less reimplemented the code to make it more efficient or modder friendly. In theory that can be done without reading the code.

However while I don't mind being inspired, I would say that just copying their ideas seem a bit lame... at least for the most part. We should be able to do better and come up with solutions, which are better suited for our needs, which are different fro DoaNE needs.

Having said that, I totally love the waypoints and the concept of having multiple yields in a cargo hold is interesting too. 2 lumber and 2 food currently takes up twice as much space for us as 100 lumber or 100 food. That makes very little sense.

Cab we trade goods for goods at the minute in diplo. screen? I honestly can't remember, is it just you have to put up yours take the money then buy theirs?

I can't remember either, but I do remember that I don't like the interface. The big question is how should it be made instead? Currently I have no idea.

 

[Kailric]

Can we trade goods for goods at the minute in diplo. screen? I honestly can't remember, is it just you have to put up yours take the money then buy theirs?

Yes, I changed it so you can trade Goods for Goods. It hasn't been tested extensively but yeah, it works. So, in general you can Barter.

Off Topic: I think the DoaNE team should be banned. They are hypocrites, they expect everyone else to release their code, graphics, and such for them to use, but they want release theirs. Hypos!

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Hypos!

How much cooler would life be if they were actually a team of coding hippos!

Like there they are sitting at their desks coding a way and... it's a hippo! It would be amazing.

Back on topic, So we do have bartering? Hooray problem solved let's all go and have a cup of tea! Job Done!

@Night (you can see the moon)

I guess the first question to answer is:

What about it do you not like?