The Unified Economic Theory

UET would be a great addition to the game....for the "modern age" (I hope they change the name of modern age) but maybe each age would have its own economic system. For modern it could be the UET, Industrial could have a mercantilist system, medieval ages could have a trade or merchant guild like system and ancient times a very simple bartering system with no gold existing in the game until currency is discovered. I wouldn't complain, however, if the UET system was used for the whole game in all ages. I agree strongly that terrain shouldn't produce trade, I also say terrain shouldn't produce shields once in the Industrial age since production occured in completely inside the city. I guess the point is that industrial age production and wealth/trade (for the whole game) shouldn't be produced but instead rely on a degree of city infrastructure to exist. In the case of wealth it should also rely on internal and external trading. I am sorry this isn't very clear I never did have a way with words. :(
 
I think this is a good thread... but without getting into nitty gritty, introducing economics can't be too complex in a game that already too much micromanagement needs to be done cautiously. I think we can simplify it while still capturing the nuiances of economics that make the game's strategy more interesting.

For example, with military, you don't choose the size of each army unit. They're a fixed size and they "heal up". Not exactly realistic, but for simulation purposes, it does the job if you have imagination.

I think the same approach should be applied to economics -- internal and international.
 
@rcoutme:

:eek: And I even thought my own posts to be rather long... ;)

Anyway, I would like to clarify that the UET does lean heavily towards production for economic success (seeing that economics is the distribution of goods), but actually it is perfectly possible, even easy, in some circumstances to become very wealthy without actually participating in the trade of production. This is possible due to "trade-route trade," which is generated when by any roads that are being used to complete a transaction. This can be utilized to a great extent, particularly if a civ builds a city near a "Silk Road" type of trade route, where many transactions depend upon a particular route to occur. This greatly increases the economic value of trade routes (accordingly with reality) and allows for interesting economic strategies through controlling trade routes, as well as simulating the "middleman's profit" of many long-distance routes.

As for a wealthy but production-poor civ going to the international market for shields, I see every reason for it to be perfectly possible--if enough shields are on the international market! :)

Next, to your Trade Route unit idea. I have read your thorough descriptions, and everything seems very logical, but unfortunately I wonder as to whether units that carry out trade are a good idea. Early criticisms of the UET, before everything was clarified, often mentioned the annoyance of "caravan-type" units for many players. I fear that this stance remains fairly strong, so having these units to carry out the fundamental functions of the UET may not appeal to a number of these players. Of course, I find the idea to be quite sound, and have no problems with it myself, although I would suggest that an abstraction that would remove the actual existence of units but induced the same effects would be best. I suggest the following to begin with:

1. Trade routes will exist and be visible on the map ("physical").
2. Trades that require traversing a distance greater than that of a limit (please refer to the UET summary) will simply not occur, as opposed to occurring over more than one turn. This simplification takes into consideration the probable spoiling of food and rotting/rusting of various "shield" commodities.
3. Any unit with attack and defense values may block a trade route by occupying a square that forms a section of the trade route. Therefore blockades and sieges are very viable options.
4. Any successful transaction will be "instantaneous." Products will reach the seller and gold will reach the seller immediately upon successfully completing a transaction.

In addition, I think any civ that imposes an embargo on, or simply has no contact with, a particular civ means that trade will not be possible between them. Although it should be possible for smuggling to exist, eliminating trades as physical units makes simulating smuggling difficult and abstract at best. As for pillage, I regard trade routes as using independently existing roads, so it is not possible to "pillage a trade route" unless the player decides to simply pillage every road that forms the trade route (although trade routes can also occur without roads, albeit with severe limitations).

In addition, I do agree that RoP ought to be changed in the way he describes (although for my post, that note is somewhat off-topic).

Finally, I will simply say that your physical trade units approach is a clever and logical one, in fact one that I would like myself. In my opinion, however, it does seem possible to remove the physical trade units aspect and compensate elsewhere to produce about the same effect; in addition, such a "rather fun 'cat and mouse game'" may not appeal as much to some players. Mostly, I suppose, this is an issue of priorities, so please feel free to offer clarifications and suggestions regarding this matter.
 
@Dr. Broom:

The UET is designed in modeling economic principles to such a fundamental extent that it can probably apply to different time periods and still be distinctive. For example, early trade is mostly local, and the UET models this with the limits on trade due to distance traveled between the participating cities. As the eras progress, mercantilistic trade becomes more important as the world's markets become accustomed to large volumes of "local" products, therefore seeking "exotic" products and providing the incentive for nations to seek out colonies with special resources. In more modern eras, the markets of the world will become increasingly intertwined, almost into one giant world market, and trade will thus play increasingly important roles in diplomacy.

I am glad you agree that Civ economics needs a major overhaul, preferably in the UET's direction. Any further thoughts or suggestions are welcome!


@dh_epic:

I have often had to defend against charges of overcomplexity in this thread, and I hope you will not find the UET too complicating once everything is worked out. You may notice that the UET summary, part of the first post in this thread, is gradually becoming a little more abstract in many aspects. Whether this trend will continue is not certain, for overabstraction would water down some features to the level of losing their substance. I am, nevertheless, curious of any suggestions you might have as to the "simplfying" of the UET. :)
 
OK, based on what I've read here, I'd like to post a NEW summary of how I see economics working in Civ4. Please feel free to make any comments and/or suggestions (though no flames please-I bruise easy :mischief: !)

1) Shields and Food can be split into 'productive' (or 'raw') and 'non-productive' (or 'finished'). The player (or AI) determines the allocation of 'raw' and 'finished' goods.

2) Conversion from 'raw' to 'finished' goods would probably occur at a 2 to 1 ratio.

3) Each city will require a minimum # of 'finished' goods in order to sustain current happiness and growth. This minimum would depend on both the city's population and the current government type.

4) Each city earns an income, per turn, based on its wealth-and the # of food and shields it produces each turn.

5) A city's wealth is based on city size (and/or population), city demographics, resource access and # of active trade routes passing through it.

6) Shields and food can be 'vectored' to a central pool, in the capital-with the value of each shield/food unit being based on the city's wealth, the relative 'scarcity' of the commodity, and its distance from the capital.

6a) Shields and food, once in the central pool, can be traded to other civs-just like luxuries and strategic resources currently can be.

7) In order to form trade deals, you need to build a 'trade unit'. However, this trade unit is not moved around like a caravan, but is 'used up' when you make a trade deal.

8) Trade routes can 'improve' with time and increased technology. Depending on the system used, this can either relate to how many turns pass between 'trade arrivals' (based on Rcoutme's 'speed' suggestion) or its value as a result of increased volume and speed of trade (my suggestion). Trade routes also improve in their ability to 'resist' pillaging or destruction.

9) Pillaging a trade route either (a) Earns you money based on the value of the resource or (b) gains you access to the resource (or food/shields) for X turns.

10) Corruption, Crime and Waste can reduce income and shields/food production. Waste can also effect the number of shields/food you lose when 'vectoring'.

11) The chance of a resource disappearing will now depend on the SIZE of that resource, the total number of cities that are 'using' the resource (i.e. that share it through the trade network), the number of improvements/units you build with that resource, in a single turn, and the number of units/improvements that use the resource on a consistant basis.

12) Each city contributes X% of its income to the national treasury, and this % can be adjusted by the player, but also naturally increases with each new age. The rest of a city's money is used to pay for maintainance of improvements, and for the funding of the Local PW budget.

13) The national treasury obtains the rest of its income from taxes, this can take the form of individual taxes (income tax), company taxes (based on private sector investment and # of commercial improvements), industry tax (based on the # of industrial improvements OR the number of shields you produce) and pollution tax (based on the level of pollution you're producing)

14) It should be possible to click on the 'personal tax' icon, and bring up the rates of all the different 'social groups'-so that you can adjust their tax rates individually.

15) National income can be allocated to 'Defense', 'Industry and Resources', 'Science and Education', 'Health', 'Infrastructure' and 'Law and Order'.

16) Rights of Passage need to be reformed, as does the population model, in order to incorporate even SOME of the changes listed above.

Anyway, thats a VERY quick summation, and not neccessarily complete, but I hope it helps you guys to understand my ideas-as they've been shaped and moulded by the great ideas I read here :)! IMHO, I think my system is high in playability, whilst still increasing realism-and also keeping micromanagement reasonably LOW!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
 
@Aussie: I believe that I understand what you just summarized/proposed, however there are two points of clarification that I would like to see.

12. What does this mean? Will tax rates automatically go up with a new age? Would a new age automatically change how the economics were going? God! I hope not! This would lead to one of the most unrealistic Civ quirks ever! Anyways what did you mean here?

13. Income Tax? As far as I can tell, the United States didn't even have an income tax until the early 1900's and they were near the first of the bunch. Taxes had almost always been either on goods or persons (i.e. everyone paid x silver because they existed). Here in the colonies in the 1760's and 1770's the colonists rebelled against the "Intolerable Acts". These were a series of 'taxes' imposed on the colonists in an attempt to pay some of the debts incurred during the French and Indian Wars. The British tried taxing documents (The Stamp Act), tea, and all sorts of other commodities. What, according to US historians at least, Parliament did not seem to get was that the American colonists were opposed to ANY tax without representation. As a consequence, Parliament figured, "Oh well, if they hate a tax on sugar and molases, let's put one on tea instead" etc. No one at that time had ever even considered an income tax!
 
Hi Rcoutme,

First up, #12 refers not to tax, but more to a 'tithe'. i.e., each city contributes a % of its total per turn income to the 'greater national good'. Obviously, in the ancient age, the default % would be very low, as each city represents more of a city-state: each one looking out for its own interests. As your civ develops a greater sense of 'nationhood' then this % will increase. However, you can go in and lower/increase this %, above/below the default setting, manually-either through the economics screen or through the individual city screens.

Secondly, #13 's 'income tax' is, IMO, a neccessary abstraction-as it refers to general taxation on individuals and their activities and, later, it refers to personal income tax.
Anyway, hope this clarifies things for you.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
 
Actually, to use your real-world example as a working example of point #12. Imagine that England has some colonial holdings on another continent. At this point in the game, each city is contributing about 50% of its total per turn income to the national treasury. In order to pay for its large army and navy, however, England decides to go into its colonial cities, and lift their 'contribution' to about 65%. This will piss off the residents of these cities NO END-especially if your 'Suffurage' settings are quite low (i.e. low levels of representation ;)!)
The personal taxes in #13 are more akin to 'Poll Taxes' and the like-you know, the one that caused King Richard the II and, much later, Margaret Thatcher so much trouble!!
Hope this clears things up for you.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
 
A number of you have asked for how I would build the interface of the UET. That is a question I cannot yet answer completely, but here are a few starting points:

The current locations of the buttons in Civ 3 for ordering units and for options should be kept where they are. The addition, however, will be a sidebar (somewhat similar to Civ2, perhaps) that displays all city information--essentially eliminating the "city screen" and replacing it with this sidebar. The advantage is that there aren't two parallel worlds of the physical Civ world and the city screen world. Combining the two would probably streamline gameplay, as well as allow physical representation of population (please read the last few statements in the UET summary on the first post of this thread, if you are not sure what I am referring to).

As for controlling trade, I have decided against the use of the sliders I described in my original posts. Instead, the player will be allowed to "influence" the prioritization of resource distribution in the entire civ, or particular provinces. Depending upon government, this may accomplished through command economics (with nonrepresentative governments) or with monetary incentives (representative governments). With command economics, the central government can simply "prioritize" certain production sectors more than others. For example, a central (monarchy) government could be preparing for a war, and therefore demand that cities purchase x% more industrial shields than other commodities. On the other hand, a central (Republic) government could want to stimulate population growth, and therefore offer incentives (x amount of gold or x% cost paid) to encourage cities to buy x% more food than other commodities. In a sense, these monetary incentives are similar to subsidizing certain favored products to encourage more cities to buy them.

I am sure some features of the UET are missing form this interface, but I do not have time at this moment, so please ask about the missing features in a later post!
 
:blush:
Ok, to restate my TR unit. The physical unit would not exist! It would be a line on the map! The owning player would know that he had a certain quanitity of Trade Routes available. I call it a unit because it is a unit. Unit means one particular item. Thus, two trade routes are needed for two entirely different trades. I apologize :wallbash: for not specifying that this would not be micromanagement (or at least would not need to be). The only reason that I gave a limited distance was to add flavor, but since everyone else seems to disagree, I withdraw that suggestion. As Trade-peror said, a route would be accomplished in one turn or would not exist. Each TR would still have a limited distance that it could go.

1. The distance that a TR could go would be tech dependant. How it gets there would depend on the infrastructure. Thus, if a TR went across the sea from a harbor, it would use the same movement bonus that the ships of the owning player would use (i.e. we assume that 1 square is 1mp, but galleys move 3 so over the water you get 3 squares/mp, just as over roads you get 3 squares/mp).

In the early AA, TR's may only have 5 or 6 mp (also will depend on map size). In the late Modern Age, mp may not even be necessary due to instantaneous travel of airports (although I would contend that stuff should not be routable by air due to the near-impossibility of shipping such huge cargo this way, basically, the speed of transports would need to make the tech of TR's go around the world in one turn).

2. The mp of a TR will determine if more than one commodity can be picked up via the TR. Thus, in order to get silks from one place and iron from another, you may need two TR's or you may be able to do it with one because your TR has sufficient mp's to reach. Keep in mind: no unit will exist on the map. You will have a TR order system which will ask, "Where do you want to go?" The computer will show you the fastest route there. You will have the option to say, "Don't go through this or that tile!" and the computer will redraw the route automatically for the fastest route.

3. TR's going through terrain will automatically update the terrain through which they travel (i.e. you get the maps free).

4. TR's can not (different from my original post) go through civs that have forbidden them.

5. TR's will have a load capacity for combat units that are assigned to protect them. Note: these units will exist along the entire route EXCEPT in sovereign territory for which the owning civ does not have RoP. Thus the TR will be protected on each border square, but not inside.

6. Due to #5 above, a limited RoP will exist: Protect Trade Routes.

7. Land combat units can not travel over sea routes without a sea unit capable of carrying it. (In other words, you protect the TR right up until you reach the shore. Unless you assign a transport ship to the TR, the combat unit ceases to protect the TR any further than that.)

8. TR's are assumed to consist of land and sea components (i.e. the merchants already have wagons and ships incorporated into the TR).

9. TR's have no inherent defense but will not show themselves except as mentioned above.

Edit: for more clarification

10. Any naval unit can be assigned to a TR provided that it is on/near one of the continents on which the TR moves.

11. Ground combat units can be assigned provided that the route travels the square on which that unit resides.

Basically a route that is being set up will have a 'box' that allows one to put units into it and take them out. Each unit will return to its original spot unless the route has been altered after the unit was uploaded. In the latter case, the unit will go to any allowable owned city square on which the route travels. If a ship has no port to return to, it will show up on the coast nearest the civ's capital.

Please give any further suggestions/criticisms

:spank:
 
@Trade-peror: Your population model will not work. Civ has always used an abstract model and the reason is a good one. Take any value you like. It will not work for the entire game, no matter what.

If your population suggestion were implemented then a country such as mine would have no fewer than 300,000 population heads to place on various tasks! If you change the value from 1000/pop to 10,000/pop, the US would still have 30,000 heads to manage. I am not even sure a computer could do this efficiently.

Note, even if you used 100,000/pop, that would leave the US (not the most populous country by any stretch) with 3,000 population heads to direct.

In addition, not all the population is working--certainly the children under 16 are not supposed to. Further, many of those who are working work only part time. In addition comes unemployment, the problems of assigning entertainers (you can't just point to somebody and say, "Go make people happy!" and have it happen).

You really need to rethink your population model.
 
@rcoutme:

Ah! Your clarification was most helpful. As it turns out, I actually agree with most of your points. There are a few details, however, that I see as slightly complicating:

First, I find it very interesting how a TR could potentially carry more than one commodity. The TR thus seems to function more as a "merchant" who travels between cities trading commodities. In addition, guards may be assigned to protect this "merchant" as he goes about his trading. Have you ever played Eidos Interactive's Trade Empires? This "merchants and guards" system sounds incredibly similar to the system used there. In addition, the possiblity of assigning combat units to preset trade routes is reminiscent of 1602 A.D., produced by Sunflowers (?).

My only problem with this TR system is whether, and how, the player determines these routes. You mention that a computer would show the fastest route and the player could approve that, as well as possibly specify certain tiles to be avoided. Does this mean that the player must set up every route? If not, would the player at least have to set up the guarding of every potentially dangerous route? Unfortunately, that might be some additional micromanagement. Or, I have misunderstood--please correct me if necessary! :)

In the UET, however, a trade route is actually nothing more than a path for a commodity to reach from one city to another. Nothing is preset or laid out ahead of time. In fact, the trade route does not even physically exist, except for a line that shows its path. Therefore, units cannot be assigned to protect it, although they can "happen" to be occupying the squares that the route runs through, in effect guarding it. In addition, trade routes are not actually manually set up; in fact, they do not even exist unless a transaction has actually occurred between two cities. It is possible, during an embargo or war, to see that many "trade routes" disappear all together, as trading ceases and commodities stop flowing. I am not sure whether the trade routes set up with your system are actually predefined and therefore would remain, to resume once trade resumed. Any further comments or questions are encouraged!
 
:blush:

OOPS! Please allow me to clarify my population model:

Although I am not entirely sure what you mean by Civ's "abstract model," I interpret it as referring to the fact that one population point in Civ does not equal a particular number, instead varying due to population density. That is actually what I would like my population point system to be similar to, except with a larger scaling of numbers! Clearly I should change that one statement that defines one population point to be 1,000 people, but what I meant was that the first population point should be about 1,000 people (compared to the Civ population point starting out at 10,000 people, I think). In effect, nothing has changed about the population point representation, other than that one population point in the UET is "less" than one population point in Civ3. The objective was simply to allow smaller increments of population change, to more reasonably model unit population draining. I hope that clears up this detail (if this was even the detail you were criticizing :crazyeye: ).
 
I hate to be negative, but I have to say that I will NOT be sad if they abandon the WHOLE 'population head' model in CivIV! It really took the introduction of plagues, population costs for units and bombardment of civilians to really highlight how inadequate the model really is! I still think that a small number should remain under the city, but should refer to a 'city size', rather than a population number. In addition, your enemies should only EVER be able to see this number, NOT the actual population.
This could create some interesting game play, as your enemies forces approach a 'size 6' city, perhaps expecting as many as 1,000,000 people-only to find that you have largely abandoned the city, and instead left behind a HUGE military force ;)!
OK, so aside from determine how many people, roughly, a city of a certain size can fit, this number might also reflect the number of improvements/wonders you can build in a city and how many units you can station in a city with or without a barracks. In addition, if your city is larger than neccessary than the current population, then it should allow you to put more of something else in that city-as I alluded to in my above example! i.e., if you pull out the bulk of your population, you can the station more troops in that city than would otherwise be possible!
Anyway, just a thought!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
 
@ Trade-peror: No I have not played any of those games (I came up with this on my own).

Sort of. The TR would, in effect, be a group of merchants picking up and dropping off goods. The idea is similar to, but wholly different from, CTP's trade routes. In CTP you had trade routes. Everybody could see them. You could not (realistically) protect them (since you would have to garrison each and every tile that the route went through). You had no control over them (they took whatever path they wanted, didn't matter if you wanted a different path).

In my system, the reason that units could be assigned to protect the TR is that bandits, pirates, etc. (e.g. those evil Mongol Hordes) might try to disrupt the route. Unless you assigned half your army to protecting just one route, having combat units along a route would do little to protect the merchants. Thus, the idea of 'uploading' combat units to protect the route. I actually came up with the idea from two board games (along with CTP) Avalon Hill's 'Rise and Decline of the Third Reich' and another called (I think) SPI's World War II (which encompassed the entire thing: Japan, Germany, and anybody else you chose to fight with).

I realize that my trade system would not fit into your model for the UET, however, I also realize that navies from about 240 B.C. to, well really, today, were used to protect mercantile shipping from pirates.

One of the first skirmishes that the fledgeling U.S. got into was a problem with the Barbary Pirates (read N. Africa). Since the Brits, French, Dutch, Spanish and just about everyone else were paying off the pirates to leave their ships alone, it came as an awful shock to the U.S. when their ships started getting attacked (apparently they hadn't gotten the memo telling them to pony up). One of their new frigates was captured and taken to Tripoli. In a daring raid, a U.S. navy officer boarded the ship and blew it up in the harbor. Meanwhile, the U.S. were sponsoring the brother of the ruler of Tripoli to unseat the slimeball. While the brothers' troops were marching up from Benghazi (so I'm told, anyways), the U.S. made peace with the pirates and the whole thing just seemed to go away. The U.S., as a consequence, were one of the first nations :goodjob: not to pay off the Barbary Pirates.
 
Hi again rcoutme,

Just some summarising thoughts about the trade route model as I feel it should work.

1) Just like CtP and Civ3, trade routes would work 'automatically'. I don't see this as a problem given the length of the turns.

2) Each trade route would have a 'visibility', 'strength' and a 'value multiplier'. The first value would represent how hard it is for enemy units to 'find' the trade route (i.e. how close a unit needs to be to see where the route lies). The second value represents how difficult it is to pirate or break the trade route, and the third value represents, in an abstract fashion, how much volume of trade you're doing, per turn, and how fast the merchant vessel is travelling.

3) When an enemy attacks a trade route (to pirate or break it), the TR's 'strength' rating also determines the chance of an unsuccessful attack causing damage to the attacker! This would then make piracy of trade routes a calculated risk!

4) In addition, the act of pirating/breaking a trade route occurs BETWEEN turns, so there is also a chance for the TR's owner to respond to the attack by sending out more powerful units to defend it!

5) You SHOULD be able to assign a unit to 'patrol' a trade route-although I'm not certain that this should exist alongside the TR strength system I'm advocating, as it could make it TOO difficult to commit piracy!

6) As you achieve new, appropriate technologies, the 3 values for your trade routes (both new and existing) will increase! This means that a modern trade route would have absolutely NO CHANCE of being successfully pirated by a galley, and little chance of success from a Frigate or Privateer!

Anyway, hope this explains my thoughts OK!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
 
@rcoutme:

No matter. Perhaps, if one day you have an opportunity to play those games, you might understand what I am referring to. Anyway, your ideas regarding trade routes are very logical and feasible. By the way, I myself have never played Call to Power, so references to the "CtP system" have no meaning for me.

Also, I am perfectly aware of the U.S. historically unprecedented dealings with the Barbary Pirates. U.S. history is one of my specialties (I took my first SAT II on it, and got an 800 [dance] )

In addition, I do understand your point regarding the (possible) impracticality of guarding every square the trade route runs through. Unfortunately, that is reality! The Silk Route has always been dangerous throughout the history of its use, and that owes primarily to the fact that it runs through many regions with its great length. Before I am criticized for placing too much emphasis on reality, however, allow me to clarify that it would probably be more fun if Silk Route-type trade routes existed, and civs with plenty of mercenaries or hired bandits (or whatever) could disrupt trade routes without necessarily engaging in combat! Although I do understand that merchants often brought along escorts, note that being able to "load" units onto a trade route to protect merchants means that the central government is providing troops to protect essentially private merchants! This probably does not fare well compared to the historic use of hired mercenaries to guard merchants.

Furthermore, your TR model almost assumes only a single group of merchants traveling along a trade route. In history, this was obviously not the case--there was no coordination such that an assigned escort could always guard all of the merchants traveling the route at a given time.

Therefore, in the UET, it is incredibly difficult to completely safeguard a long trade route that goes through many lands, for every square would have to be guarded to achieve maximum security. That, however, models reality quite well, besides also serving to limit trade routes to levels reasonable for gameplay balance.
 
@ Trade-peror

The chance of the troops "assigned to the trade route" would not be 100% interception. They would have a certain % chance to intercept a pirate/bandit attempt. This should depend on the relative techs and status (how many hp and are they conscript/regualar/vet etc) of each unit. Exactly what these should be should be playtested. My generic thought is that the length of the trade route should determine the % chance that the individual square in which the attack takes place is 'defended'.

Thus, if the route is 30 squares long:

1. You have a warrior guarding the route: He has maybe a 10% chance to intercept a TR pillaging attempt (only because 10% will be the lowest chance)

2. You have 3 warriors: still 10%

3. You have 2 galleys (and the route is completely water), they have 3mp each so there is a 20% chance to intercept.

4. You have 6 modern armors: the chance is 60% (since they have 3 mp)

How the # of hp and the training status should affect this, I have no idea. Maybe give +/- 5 % for each training status off of 'regular'.

Note that if the trade route were only 10 squares, then the 3 warriors would have a 30% chance to intercept the attack.

Also note: this is just an example, maybe in playtesting it is determined that the intecept chances should be double what I just posted. Since there is no possible way for me to playtest this, I am only giving a feel of how this would be implemented. All numbers would have to be playtested to determine what would work with game balance.
 
@rcoutme:

Ah! That makes very much sense. I am sorry I did not pick that up in your previous explanations. However, this "intercept chance" concept would add another statistic to all units, maybe (and maybe not, of course) unnecessarily increasing complexity.

In addition, the troops would be "used up" to defend the trade routes and become unavailable for other purposes (please correct me if this is wrong! :) ). Whether this is realistic is unclear to me, but my main point, I suppose, is that troops historically did not have a particular "function" of guarding trade routes. What I mean is that guarding trade routes was essentially the same as guarding a fort, or a strategic mountain pass, or a particular war front. The troops were simply deployed along the area to be guarded. I doubt any government troops accompanied any private merchants. Therefore, troops would only be able to guard the portion of the trade route they are stationed near, probably quite thoroughly, as opposed to being able to guard the entire trade route, but not as effectively.

If assigning a unit to guard a trade route means to split that unit up along the length of the trade route, then that would make sense. For purposes of gameplay theory, however, this is not very consistent with the fact that one unit should be considered the smallest unit of a particular type of troop. This possiblity could as well allow that units be split up along a particular long border for the purposes of guarding, and so forth. Whether this is a good idea is actually not entirely clear to me. Any clarifications or suggestions would be welcome!
 
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