Should You Be Able To Trade Units?

[sir_schwick]

It would creat hell-a lot of exploits, but most players are above those shinanigans.

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

Of course you should be able to sell/gift units. I would impose only 2 limitations. The first would be you can give/sell only x amount of units over y number of turns, this would be dependent on the size of the other civ's military and perhaps the era you are in. Otherwise, you would have exploits such as the one below:

India has both incense and gems and will not sell you any, because they are mad at you. So, you call up Persia, who is your buddy, and is right next door to India, and give them 50 Modern Armors. Then you get them to declare war on India. 5 turns later, Ghandi is bawling in one of his three remaining cities, and your luxury box now has incense and gems in it courtesy of a happily grinning Xerxes.

The second limitation I would impose is on nuke trading. This should be severely frowned upon by all nations, though it can occur. If you do it, and the civ uses the nuke, there is a chance you are discovered as the supplier. Severe diplomatic and military consequences follow for you. Only 1 nuke may be traded to a given Civ every 20 turns.

 

[Rubruk]

Of course you should be able to sell/gift units. I would impose only 2 limitations. The first would be you can give/sell only x amount of units over y number of turns, this would be dependent on the size of the other civ's military and perhaps the era you are in. Otherwise, you would have exploits such as the one below:

India has both incense and gems and will not sell you any, because they are mad at you. So, you call up Persia, who is your buddy, and is right next door to India, and give them 50 Modern Armors. Then you get them to declare war on India. 5 turns later, Ghandi is bawling in one of his three remaining cities, and your luxury box now has incense and gems in it courtesy of a happily grinning Xerxes.

Whats wrong with this? In this scenario you have to give away 50 modern armor and have to pay for the incense to Xerxes. It would be better to sign a ROP with Persia and take the luxuries by attacking India yourself.

The important point is to distinguish between WEAPONS and UNITS . IMO if a civ doesn't has the technology, they should get only conscript units resp. any regular unit sold gets conscript status. This modeles the small states fighting the wars for the superpowers. Upkeep should be included in the initial price. This would be the same thing as ressources are only needed if a unit is build. Since the seller has already build the unit, he has "payed" this price and is free to claim it from the buyer or not.

Then a traded unit should count for the upkeep the buyer has to pay like normal units, not like slave worker.

Selling nuklear arms must have severe consequences. I see the danger of disbalancing the whole game. If the player sells some nukes at a very high price, he can take all the money of the AIs.

Human players will definitely find possibilites, strategies relying on unit trading with AIs that are disbalancing. E.g. AIs should refuse units they don't need.

One more question: does unit trading make gameplay easier on Emperor? Already now the player uses the superior researching speed of the AI (tech trading). If units can be bought and sold, can we then use the production bonus of the AI?


Summarizing: in single player games I can live without the possibility to trade units. I wouldn't give units to AIs. They can't handle them more efficient than I do. I can imagine to buy units if they aren't too expensive. Unit trading could be interesting in multiplayer games.

 

[h4ppy]

If this is implemented I would hope that it involves not only the stuff in the capital but other things as well. But if it does then you would automatically know what your opponent has. I can't think of a good way to implement this.

 

[sir_schwick]

What if you support Xerxes and your big opponent nuclear power supports Ghandi. The only way to get what you want is by selling arms. bEsides, its better than wealth for generating money and keeping other nations from developing.

 

[Globetrotter]

I would say that all foot and mounted units should be leased and will eventually return to their owner if they survive, after some 20 turns (like the luxuries and resources), unless the seller accepts to extend his deal, whereas all weaponry (arty, armor, navy and planes) would be sold once and for all.

In the first case, it would be like mercenaries, and they could be veteran, regular or whatever (of course, they would be much cheaper if they are less trained) whereas a veteran unit would cost much more.

Whereas in the latter, it will be as selling equipment, all conscripts (since it represents the fact that the people operating these equipment lack some training), even if the buying civ does not have the tech for it. You could also buy the equipment from some civ, and sell them for another one if it is fighting a potential enemy.

We could say that the selling civ should place its "merchandise" in its capitol, and have a link to the buying civ. And the buying civ would receive the newly acquired units in its capitol, and these will only arrive one turn later to the buyer, so that in case the buyer's capitol is being attacked, the units just send can't yet participate in the defense. If the capitol meanwhile falls, then the units go to the new capitol.

Just some thoughts..... so many of these have been mentioned at the time there was a forum for Civ3 PTW ideas
Hopefully this time our thoughts will be accounted for

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

My example was a bit extreme, but my point was, if the player has the ability to give away anything they want, they will be able to manipulate the game in a way that the AI cannot. If say, India was getting near the end of the spaceship race, and you had a large military, but could not complete Conquest or Domination Victory in time, you might choose to send a large part of your military (that you will not use anyway) off to possibly end India's competition for Spaceship Launch, without taking the rep hit that war would bring. Being able to sell or give away half your military would be unrealistic anyway. Limiting number of units traded off still lets the player weaken other civs, but not catastrophically so.

I think anything can be traded, regardless of tech, IRL the advanced nations have sent plenty of hi-tech AA defenses, planes, tanks, and what have you to nations that could not produce these things for themselves. Maybe gifting units would allow for tech breakthroughs, as in Civ2, this would be another way to make the player think twice about sending too much stuff abroad.

I would disallow the trading of obsolete units, the player would not be permitted to trade anything less than units at least 1 tech ahead of the most advanced units the other civ can build, period, unless the other civ is at tech parity or ahead, in which case it would refuse anything less than the latest stuff in its arsenal. (I can't imagine wanting to give/sell units in this circumstance, anyway.) Certainly no UU trading! Otherwise you might see hordes of spearmen/warriors getting traded to the AI, weakening it and wasting its gold support for useless military tech.

 

[Globetrotter]

A tech difference limitation is quite good to limit such abuse of weapons and units trading. We could also add a maximum number of how many units can a civ buy/sell/offer per turn + add some small wonder that allows you to trade units, provided the opponent has it as well... etcetera...

 

[sir_schwick]

Make the AI smarter. The point of this is so you can manipulate world events without being the warmonger. Also, this would allow you to sell to BOTH sides in a conflict, prolonging the conflict and increasing your coffers. UU trading is a must, since nations with their UU at the time could make a fortune. This concept should be as unlimited as possible to open up all kinds of possiblities. You cannot stop a good idea because of AI stupidity.

 

[dh_epic]

I think there are ways to clog the exploits without nixing an idea altogether. Just make it against the rules to trade half your army. Or let the limit be determined by transportation routes.

Or let it be limited by the city that "trains" the unit. e.g.: I'm France and I want to help America against the British. I trade a unit to America, which they must designate as being "trained" in a particular city. In other words, they need enough cities to handle the bandwidth of training their American soldiers with French weapons. The benefit to America is technology that only the French have, and a boost (50% of the production?) towards completing that unit. The benefit to France is money, loyalty, and potentially nailing those dirty Brits!

 

[Globetrotter]

There are in fact lots of possibilities. But what you mention here dh_epic is some sort of pre-order of units... that's also a new development concept, a bit more complicated that trading existing units (which is a similar engine as the worker trading when it comes to development)

 

[dh_epic]

I think you really just need to do the following things.

After the trade is concluded:

- Permit any city to build the traded unit (X times, where X is the number of units traded)
- The traded unit is built with an "artificial" 50% head-start
- The traded unit can be built in a way that defies any technology or resource constraints

Not exactly easy, but not exceedingly complicated either.

 

[sir_schwick]

That could also lead to the idea of 'pre-fabrication'. Imagine you make a 'pre-fab' of a building in an industrial city, and ship it out to a smaller city. The smaller city then gets that artificial head-start. There would of course be tech requirements. You could also sell pre-fab buildings. Imagine you want to give Korea nuclear power plants without giving them the tech for nukes. You pre-fab some nuclear power plants and sell or give it to them.

 

[dh_epic]

Now THAT is a very interesting idea.

 

[Matternich]

Yes. As most agree in this thread its good idea but needs some fine tuning.

For a start the buyer has to be in the same age as the seller but also must have a prerequisite tech and the resource needed to build unit in the first place.

So to buy an ICBM you must have fission.
Modern Arm. can only be bought if you can already build Mech Inf.
Buying Cavalry?- you need gunpowder and horses.
And so on.

And yes, yes increased maintenance.

I liked the idea that this kind of trade would reduce all the units to conscript or at least regs. Pay for the difference maybe?

This kind of trading actually enables that perfect dream of hitting other nations without culpability previously only possible with the privateer.
Giving away free units to various other civs and sitting back and watching the catastrophic results while you grow rich in peace can only be a good thing.
How much rebalancing would be needed though?

Not sure about this but what about instead of trading a unit you pay for the capacity to upgrade a unit of your own? You send your troop to the capital or designated city and pay the other civ to upgrade it for you. Simple and doesn't exclude outright buying of stand alone weapons like nukes or cruise.

This way would at least prevent the giving away of massive armies to nations you want to do well for your own purposes.
But that might mean taking the whole point or at least the fun of military trading

 

[dh_epic]

What's the point of selling a unit to somebody if they already have the ability to make it themselves?

I think the point of it IS selling nuclear weapons to people who haven't learned or earned the right to have one. Messing with the order of the world, for fun and profit.

 

[sir_schwick]

The idea is that you can finally sell your industrial capacity to the world and make a profit from being a neutral party in a war.

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

I see no point in requiring the recipient civ to have the tech or resources necessary to build the unit. IRL, less developed nations clamor for stuff like jet planes, tanks, etc. they cannot build themselves. These are the sought after items. You should be able to ship limited quantities of anything you like to less developed nations, who may not have the techs, resources, or industrial capacity to produce these things themselves.

Maybe a realistic approach would be to allow 1 unit per every 5 military units already owned by the civ to be gifted over time, with a max of 2 units traded/gifted per turn. After that, when the cap is reached, no more units can be sent, the option will not appear, unless the civ builds more military units. The units you send cannot be counted in the total, even if they are lost, they are still counted as a traded unit.

In this way, you can effect world events, but not to an extreme degree. Say as in the example above Xerxes has a middling sized country, with an army of 80 units, Infantry, Mech Infantry, a few Artillery, a few Tanks, and a complement of older units. You can then gift him a max of 16 Modern Armor over 8 turns, enough to put a hurting on Ghandi but probably not enough to destroy him, given the way the AI fights and thinks about strategy.

Also, there should be another diplo option. Once Ghandi figures out it's you sending the Modern Armors, he can call you up and ask you to stop sending Xerxes the stuff that is being used to pound him. You now get the opportunity to ask for a luxury in return for this favor and some gold. Maybe you get it, maybe not.

I will reiterate here that the trading of more advanced units should result in a possible tech breakthrough for the other civ, if they aren't as far along as you, this will help to limit unit gifting/selling if the player has "other" long term plans for his erstwhile ally.

 

[sir_schwick]

In real life the world arms market is a very lucrative business that does incredible amounts of trade and money. Israel produces almost none of its heavy military equipment, its sold to them by the American's. Africa is another lucratic market where non-state groups buy as much guns, vehicles, and explosives as the governments. This military expenditure has helped keep the region poor and add to instability. Also, this gives small countries a special defense mechanism:

A small 8-city nation is mostly in hills with a couple large food squares. THese cities produce 60+ shields a turn. It does not generate many trade arrows so it cannot maintain a large military. However, thanks to many trades and goody huts this nation has the tech parity military wise. It cannot support enough units to defend itself. However, it can build a ton of units other countries would like to buy. This nation starts selling to many many powers. As the main supplier to these nations, who can spend their shields elsewhere, these nations will protect their arms supplier. If a neighbor gets greedy, it will have to expect a strong response from the clients.

 

[dh_epic]

I just like the idea of having an interventionist foreign policy without necessarily having to declare war. The idea that I can really mess with another part of the world and promote the government, ideology, ethnicity, or even religion I want -- without having to pick up a weapon myself.