Should Internal Trade Routes Drain Resources from Origin City?

[jacer21]

I voted yes because there should be a cost for every bonuses - to enhance decision-making and consequences of action.

The cost is the gold you are losing from not going international. Remember, trade routes are limited.

 

[Bobert13]

No. The gold from international trade routes is a net gain (for both sides nonetheless) so the food/production from internal trade routes should also be a net gain.

I am somewhat worried as 4 food/production is valued around 12 to 16 gold (in a cost to cost ratio) and we'll only be getting that much gold from a land trade route if the resource disparity from our city to the foreign city is quite large. There are all the other factors to consider as well but I think it's safe to assume that just enough international trade routes to keep you gaining some gold with the rest being devoted to internal trade is going to be the way to go in the long run.

 

[Gucumatz]

I voted yes because there should be a cost for every bonuses - to enhance decision-making and consequences of action.

This ^. Even if it didn't transfer say (8 food), but say the city you were sending the food away from would then have 4 less would be fine. Adds a level of complexity. Right now I fear you can use trade routes to create a super city/capital and just dominate that way while the AI can't catch up. As it stands, I fear internal routes will really only be used if you want to have the best advantage

 

[Aristos]

I have brought this point up some two weeks ago, with not much of a reaction. This subject follows the general trend of civ5, that is, to fade away the concept of trade-off from most, if not all, its systems (to cater to the instant-gratification generation as their new market, I guess...).

No, I don't like that. Trade-off should always be present in a strategy game. No, opportunity cost is not the same as trade-off.

 

[Buccaneer]

I have brought this point up some two weeks ago, with not much of a reaction. This subject follows the general trend of civ5, that is, to fade away the concept of trade-off from most, if not all, its systems (to cater to the instant-gratification generation as their new market, I guess...).

No, I don't like that. Trade-off should always be present in a strategy game. No, opportunity cost is not the same as trade-off.

I'm glad you said that and not me, even though I agree with you.

 

[Camikaze]

There would seem to be a pretty massive trade-off, though; you are losing a gold route. That could be quite a substantial cost.

Ideally, it'd be nice if it were a transfer rather than a creation of food/production, but if that were the case, they may as well leave internal trade routes out of the game, because no-one would ever use them.

 

[Avatan]

I have brought this point up some two weeks ago, with not much of a reaction. This subject follows the general trend of civ5, that is, to fade away the concept of trade-off from most, if not all, its systems (to cater to the instant-gratification generation as their new market, I guess...).

No, I don't like that. Trade-off should always be present in a strategy game. No, opportunity cost is not the same as trade-off.

It's a trade off in term of opportunity cost. To move hammers is not as good as to win gold/science/influence/pressure. It has to be incentive enough.

It would be more interesting if it scaled with the city size. It would add a level of complexity and encourage city specialization.

 

[PhilBowles]

Of course they should drain - it makes no sense to be able to trade food from a starving city or production from a gold city. Doing otherwise seems bizarre (although is consistent with the way gold via roads works, both in Civ V and prior Civ games), and seems to make the identity of the origin city for domestic trade wholly irrelevant.

No. The gold from international trade routes is a net gain (for both sides nonetheless) so the food/production from internal trade routes should also be a net gain.

However, in this case the amount of gold is dependent on the identity of the origin and destination cities (or at least the origin and destination civs), because of the resource disparity mechanic, with the side that has more unique resources getting the better of the deal. This is moderately realistic, and more importantly presents interesting gameplay decisions missing from past incarnations of Civ (in which all that mattered was distance to the other city, and the identity of the receiving civ not so much except insofar as you wanted a diplomacy modifier). Currency can, ultimately, be created from nothing - physical resources like food and production materials can't be. It also means there's no reason not to indefinitely renew your trade routes once they expire.

But most importantly, you have interesting game decisions to make if what you trade costs you local production - as for example with switching a citizen working a tile to become a specialist. I started a game today where I had a good production city in Karakorum and founded a good food city, and thought "it will be great to be able to siphon production to Beshbelik when necessary". Removing that decision-making removes a lot of the interest of the domestic trade system. I'd go so far as to say it feels dumbed-down, a charge I'd be hesitant to lay since the word's thrown around so liberally here (though in this case not dumbed-down in relation to previous instalments - only Civ I's food caravans actually worked this way. All other Civ game trade routes have produced free commerce, however they didn't produce free food or production), since there appears to be no opportunity cost.

The main argument for non-drain is flexibility. There are going to be many situations where trading with a neighbor just isn't possible or viable and with zero-sum internal trade routes (that are strictly inferior to external trade routes) you're screwed in that situation. Plus the game is more interesting when the player actually has a real choice between internal and external trade routes.

I'd say the reverse. Choosing between an option that costs you free income when you need production or food siphoned to a particular city is a real choice. It's something you actually have to weigh against what you're losing. It's much more of a choice than "I'm getting something for free - do I want that something to be hammers or gold?" As a 'fire-and-forget" internal trade route, there seems to be nothing stopping you from just moving all a city's food producers into universities and research labs and making free-food trade routes to let you turn all your cities into Great People factories without hampering production or gold generation.

I didn't know this was how it worked. If so, then I agree that draining wouldn't make sense. However, shouldn't amount vary based on the origin city, just as it seems to with gold trade?

The way it appears to work, the actual "trade route gold" is identical whatever the origin and destination city. The difference comes from the different resources available in the origin and destination. It hasn't been made clear how this resource calculation works - if these are just resources in tiles the city has access to, or whether a city is considered to have access to all resources the civ does, as in Civ IV (assuming a typical full road network). However it's calculated, the more resources you have that aren't shared with the other civ (and presumably vice versa), the more gold you get from the trade route.

 

[JSMCAG]

Of course they should drain - it makes no sense to be able to trade food from a starving city or production from a gold city. Doing otherwise seems bizarre (although is consistent with the way gold via roads works, both in Civ V and prior Civ games), and seems to make the identity of the origin city for domestic trade wholly irrelevant.

I wouldn't say it necessarily makes the identity of the origin city irrelevant - in fact, i think we have proof of the contrary!

In this snapshot, having Lodz as the starting point can only generate +4 or +4.
In this one, Lisbon can create +9 or +9. Lisbon is also a much bigger city with 17 Population, versus Lodz's 5 Population.

I think we can safely rule out era bonuses, since those two snapshots are taking place around the same time, at turn 200~ish, and units and city graphics reveal them to be in the same era.

Therefore, we can safely assume, from these photos, that bigger cities do indeed produce better trade routes, even domestic ones! I'm not sure exactly how, however...

So, unless I read it wrong and you were refering havy-production cities and heavy-food cities as being their identity, I think we can rest assured the starting point of the route does indeed influence the outcome.

 

[PhilBowles]

I wouldn't say it necessarily makes the identity of the origin city irrelevant - in fact, i think we have proof of the contrary!

In this snapshot, having Lodz as the starting point can only generate +4 or +4.
In this one, Lisbon can create +9 or +9. Lisbon is also a much bigger city with 17 Population, versus Lodz's 5 Population.

I think we can safely rule out era bonuses, since those two snapshots are taking place around the same time, at turn 200~ish, and units and city graphics reveal them to be in the same era.

Therefore, we can safely assume, from these photos, that bigger cities do indeed produce better trade routes, even domestic ones! I'm not sure exactly how, however...

So, unless I read it wrong and you were refering havy-production cities and heavy-food cities as being their identity, I think we can rest assured the starting point of the route does indeed influence the outcome.

I think the difference there is that the first shot is of a land trade route, and the second is of a sea trade route, and we've been told that both domestically and internationally sea trade is more lucrative than land. There's no difference among any of the Polish cities that can be connected by land, and there's no difference among any of the Portuguese cities that can be connected by sea.

Although even if there was a difference linked to city size, I wouldn't say that makes the identity of the city particularly important - indeed, I was thinking more of the specialisation. A city size-based difference would be like the Civ IV and earlier situation in which all cities are identical for trade purposes at any given distance (say, 10 squares, or 20 squares etc.). The identity of the city isn't important, only its location/size is.

As trade is a big focus of this expansion, rather than just a core mechanic as in Civ IV, I would have hoped for a more detailed trade system rather than one that, at least for domestic trade, seems somewhat less (not even city distance makes a difference).

It's a trade off in term of opportunity cost. To move hammers is not as good as to win gold/science/influence/pressure. It has to be incentive enough.

Food is more important than hammers, and can be more important than gold. Only two buildings in the game (other than Wonders) produce excess food, so gold can't substitute for food as it can for production. Excess food lets you use specialists and produce GPs, and food trade lets you target specific cities (generally your science cities) to maximise population growth.

As for the 'cost' of weighing this against international trade, international trade only gives you science if you're scientifically behind. If you're ahead, international trade is a liability because it leaks your science to other civs. Religious pressure travels along domestic trade routes, and for most religious beliefs it's more important to maximise domestic believers than foreign ones. So you already have very strong incentives to trade domestically, and unless you're short of gold it will be a no-brainer when you're scientifically ahead (since food trade = free food = free science) without a siphoning mechanic.

I have brought this point up some two weeks ago, with not much of a reaction. This subject follows the general trend of civ5, that is, to fade away the concept of trade-off from most, if not all, its systems (to cater to the instant-gratification generation as their new market, I guess...).

No, I don't like that. Trade-off should always be present in a strategy game. No, opportunity cost is not the same as trade-off.

This is not new to Civ V, it's been an increasing trend in all recent Civ incarnations. In fact in most if not all Civ incarnations until Civ V placing a road gave free commerce on the tiles where the road was located; in later instalments, including Civ IV, connecting those roads to other cities gave a free, permanent trade route which generated commerce out of nowhere and had neither tradeoff nor opportunity cost. Civ V was actually the first game since Civ I's food caravans (which did remove food from the origin city) to add a cost to trade, by adding a maintenance cost to roads and railroads.

 

[Aristos]

There would seem to be a pretty massive trade-off, though; you are losing a gold route. That could be quite a substantial cost.

Ideally, it'd be nice if it were a transfer rather than a creation of food/production, but if that were the case, they may as well leave internal trade routes out of the game, because no-one would ever use them.

Wow! Phil Bowles and I agree for once!!! That has to make BNW the best expansion ever...

What you say is OPPORTUNITY COST, not trade off; exactly my point.

Do you remember when in Civ2 you could build a settler, then send it to another city, and add a pop there? That's trade off (you may debate as to how nice the feature was, but there was no magic population appearing from anywhere...

 

[steveg700]

No. The gold from international trade routes is a net gain (for both sides nonetheless) so the food/production from internal trade routes should also be a net gain.

I think this is a case of false symmetry. To some degree at least the gold provided by trade routes fills a hole that a civ is likely to actually need (at the very least, all the gold will be gone from terrain). The food and hammers aren't being touched.

At any rate, "drain" is an unfortunate choice of words. People won't be inclined to vote for a drain. Drains tend to go nowhere useful. "Transfer" is really the concept under discussion.

 

[steveg700]

I wouldn't say it necessarily makes the identity of the origin city irrelevant - in fact, i think we have proof of the contrary!

In this snapshot, having Lodz as the starting point can only generate +4 or +4.
In this one, Lisbon can create +9 or +9. Lisbon is also a much bigger city with 17 Population, versus Lodz's 5 Population.

I think that's a very good point. Well worth takiing into consideration.

 

[PhilBowles]

Wow! Phil Bowles and I agree for once!!! That has to make BNW the best expansion ever...

What you say is OPPORTUNITY COST, not trade off; exactly my point.

Do you remember when in Civ2 you could build a settler, then send it to another city, and add a pop there? That's trade off (you may debate as to how nice the feature was, but there was no magic population appearing from anywhere...

The more I think on it, the more I think generating free food in particular is going to be a serious issue. This is because of the fundamental difference in the way Civ V works compared with the previous Civ games in terms of the way science is generated.

In Civ IV and earlier games, there was no opportunity cost or trade-off to creating a trade route. A road had no maintenance cost and took 1-2 turns to construct, it produced free commerce when connected to other cities, and it gave a free (and ever-increasing) passive diplomacy bonus when trade was international. This doesn't seem altogether dissimilar in principle to what seems to be happening in Civ V.

But older Civ games had the notorious slider - the trade-off didn't come with establishing the trade routes, it came in terms of what you traded, and in what proportions.

While the removal of the slider didn't remove trade-offs from Civ V, since the same trade-offs were migrated to different systems of the game (slower production and teching times, and the existence of maintenance costs, that limit what you can build where, for example, forces choices between investing in science vs. maximising gold output), a Civ IV trade model doesn't work without something like the slider.

In the case of food production, as Civ V currently stands investing in food = investing in science, because there's a fixed beaker output per citizen. This works because food has to be earned - while in Civ IV you devoted someone to working commerce and that commerce was then divvied up between science and gold using the slider, in Civ V you generally either work food (=science) or you work gold. As Aristos points out, Civ V handles this decision as an opportunity cost (the food you're not harvesting when farming gold or vice versa), whereas Civ IV offered a trade-off.

Now add free food trade routes. You already have no trade-off, because Civ V handles science vs. gold as an opportunity cost instead. Here we run into a problem, because allowing your city to harvest free food without hampering its gold or production removes any meaningful opportunity cost to science generation. And unless there are controls in place, without this cost I don't see any incentive not to do as I described - set up a bunch of (either production or gold) cities supporting science specialists on the back of a free food trade.

 

[Gamewizard]

Gold is likely going to be a rarity if they did indeed ax trading posts, and on higher difficulties where the AI gets gold bonuses you are going to NEED to set up international routes to remain competitive in army size and buying CS favor.

Also, it is likely that in order to trade luxuries you will need to set up a trade route first. All that free food is 75% worthless if your citizens are unhappy.

 

[AriochIV]

While I don't especially like the idea of free resources appearing out of nowhere, I think doing it the other way would probably be too complicated, and require too much micromanagement.

 

[Seek]

Even if the TR took a small proportion of the resources generated (25-50%) from the origin city the mechanic would feel a good bit more realistic and would make for much more interesting gameplay imo.

@Aristos, PhilBowles - Agree with all comments above, your arguments are more convincing and eloquent than I am capable of. Cheers!

Gold is likely going to be a rarity if they did indeed ax trading posts, and on higher difficulties where the AI gets gold bonuses you are going to NEED to set up international routes to remain competitive in army size and buying CS favor.

I do expect that gold's value will rise dramatically with BNW's changes, but will it be enough to come close to food or production? At least in the early and mid game?

Also, it is likely that in order to trade luxuries you will need to set up a trade route first.

Though I'd love that, it seems doubtful to me.

 

[kingchris20]

Wow! Phil Bowles and I agree for once!!! That has to make BNW the best expansion ever...

What you say is OPPORTUNITY COST, not trade off; exactly my point.

Do you remember when in Civ2 you could build a settler, then send it to another city, and add a pop there? That's trade off (you may debate as to how nice the feature was, but there was no magic population appearing from anywhere...

I think you're looking at it a bit wrong. When you get that one available trade route. the trade off is right there, do you want to send it off to a foreign land and generate gold, or do you want to keep it internal and generate food and production?

This is a trade off and NOT an opportunity cost, because once you choose, that trade route is locked down for the next 30 turns regardless. So in essence your trade off is internal growth vs diplomatic wealth/relations

 

[Seek]

I think you're looking at it a bit wrong. When you get that one available trade route. the trade off is right there, do you want to send it off to a foreign land and generate gold, or do you want to keep it internal and generate food and production?

This is a trade off and NOT an opportunity cost, because once you choose, that trade route is locked down for the next 30 turns regardless. So in essence your trade off is internal growth vs diplomatic wealth/relations

That sounds exactly like opportunity cost. Trade-off is when you lose one thing to gain another.

 

[kingchris20]

That sounds exactly like opportunity cost. Trade-off is when you lose one thing to gain another.

Yes, exactly you are losing the ability (for 30 turns) to use that one and only trade route (at the time) to garner diplomatic relations and gold if you choose to go internal

"Trade Off: An exchange of one thing in return for another, especially relinquishment of one benefit or advantage for another regarded as more desirable."

You are exchanging your ability to garner diplomatic relations and gold for the ability to increase production and growth in your own empire. Especially the relinquishment of gaining diplomacy points and wealth for production and growth in your own empire if you see that as more desirable for that period of time (30 turns)