Trade--a subtle change has fixed a 30-year-old problem

[gamemaster3000]

Still impressed by how 80+ hours in to the game, I'm still making major revelations in to how subtle changes can have huge consequences.

The way that trade works in Civ 7 (you send a merchant, you get the resources in the city, they get gold per turn) seemed very simple. In a game with such a steep learning curve, it was one of the simpler changes.

Or so I thought.

But this change fixes a problem that has been happening since I was ten years old, endlessly staring at yellow square cities, covered-wagon settlers, and putting a fur skin rug in my throne room. The problem: The computer's garbage cities.

In every Civ from 1-6, if a tile had saltpeter on it, that meant that one civ and one civ only was getting saltpeter. If you wanted it, you either had to get a settler there first or take it from whoever did.

Not anymore.

Because trade now gives you a COPY of that resource. And what's better...they can't even stop you from taking it! Well sort of, if they block your trade route negotiations you'll only get the one trade route...but once they agree to increase that limit, for the rest of the age, you get a copy of another city's resource that they can't do a whole lot about.

This has huge implications, because now when the computer builds a garbage city on a 1, 2, or 3 tile island...GREAT! More resources for ME! All it takes is a trader and a little friendly diplomacy and I now most the benefits of that garbage city with none of the overhead.

It also opens up avenues to win the game without just conquering everyone, which is both realistic and can save a lot of time. And although resources aren't nearly as powerful as they were in some previous civs, getting a copy of an entire empire's resources definitely adds up!

And maybe it's a bit much to say that it "fixes" the problem, because the computer puts garbage cities in the way of other stuff than resources, but it is another example that if you're playing Civ 7 with a Civ 6 mentality, you're missing out!

 

[Yzman]

I think you also get gold per turn for a trade route...which i realized way too late. There are even policies that increase gold from trade and treasure ships.

 

[gamemaster3000]

You get gold when another civ sends a merchant to you.

 

[Tanel]

I would also add that the previous system where you had to check 1 by 1 who offers the most for your excess resources was really tedious. Thankfully there was a mod to help with that.

 

[CliffCo]

The link to CivFanatics isn’t relevant as I checked and it’s related to Civ5 and from 2019. I believe everything else is related to Civ7.

 

[UWHabs]

I wouldn't hate if there was a little more control about what I give away - I wouldn't mind the ability to have a monopoly on a certain resource, or to have a bigger market choice such that the 3 camels on the map cost more to trade for than all the pearls.

But yeah, as much as I miss some of the other trade discussions from the past, the current merchant+copy method does ease a lot of pressure. And at least you have to pay in influence to get everything from someone else.

Although I will say, more than once, I have a trade route with a neighbour, and I am just begging them to develop that camel or gold tile. Come on, please?

 

[Yzman]

You get gold when another civ sends a merchant to you.

When you look at a trade route and mouse over it, it will say this trade route is worth 9 gold. I think I then did this and my gold per turn went up.

 

[Siptah]

I wouldn't hate if there was a little more control about what I give away

I would like a sanction to reduce the trade limit with another leader. And reducing it up to 0, so that there is no trade with this civ.

 

[Yzman]

I would like a sanction to reduce the trade limit with another leader. And reducing it up to 0, so that there is no trade with this civ.

Doesn't Napoleon get something like that?

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Doesn't Napoleon get something like that?

Napoleon's "Continental System" was, in fact, an attempted Embargo on all trade with Britain - but similar actions had been going on since at least the 8th century CE, when Charlemagne temporarily stopped merchants from Mercia (the biggest Anglo-Saxon kingdom at the time) from trading in his ports to get political leverage over them (it worked!).

But note that in both cases trade did not completely stop: smuggling remained pervasive and rampant, so that English goods in 1805 CE (or Mercian in 796 CE) remained readily available on the continent regardless of government decrees and enforcement. This is also common to every attempt to control, throttle or stop trade between groups - if there is money to be made, someone will be working very hard to get around any restrictions.

That makes the current system both realistic and useful in-game: you cannot really stop resources and goods from being traded without devoting more resources to stopping it than it is usually worth - as in, deploying your entire army to the Rhine - Danube border to interdict any traders or building a Long Wall across northern China to control trade with the 'northern barbarians' - either method requires expenditures on a vast scale and still doesn't completely work, as Roman wine kept going into Germany and German amber and furs kept coming south, while central Asian horses kept coming into China and Chinese silk and porcelain kept showing up in barbarian tents.

 

[sixty4half]

Although I will say, more than once, I have a trade route with a neighbour, and I am just begging them to develop that camel or gold tile. Come on, please?

I found out there was founder XP for paying influence to a Suzerain to grow 5 times. I discovered this by accident because the Suzerain would not grow out to the Camels!

 

[Krikkit1]

I would like a sanction to reduce the trade limit with another leader. And reducing it up to 0, so that there is no trade with this civ.

I think that sanction is war.

 

[sixty4half]

I would like a sanction to reduce the trade limit with another leader. And reducing it up to 0, so that there is no trade with this civ.

There is a leader that has that ability

 

[Ornen]

There is a leader that has that ability

ok but maybe they should have straightforward features such as this & map sharing be just part of the game, rather than saving all this for specific leaders or civs

 

[sixty4half]

I could see them putting those kind of things as Mastery Tech Unlocks. Like Cartogrophy Mastery unlocks map sharing..... Anti-trade routes could be.... Isolationism Civic?!?

However; that will make Battuta and Napolean less unique.

 

[JNR13]

Fyi, the Gold you get from others sending trade routes to you is the number of resources traded, capped at 3, multiplied by (1 + age) and doubled if it's a sea trade route.

So it ranges from 2 Gold for an antiquity age land route trading a single resource (1 x (1+1) x 1) to 24 Gold for a modern age trade sea trade route trading three or more resources (3 x (1+3) x 2).

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Fyi, the Gold you get from others sending trade routes to you is the number of resources traded, capped at 3, multiplied by (1 + age) and doubled if it's a sea trade route.

So it ranges from 2 Gold for an antiquity age land route trading a single resource (1 x (1+1) x 1) to 24 Gold for a modern age trade sea trade route trading three or more resources (3 x (1+3) x 2).

They made a nice start on making trade, and sea or bulk trade, more valuable as the Ages progress.

I'm not certain they are all the way there, yet, given the huge profits the first of the "Sea Powers" (Britain and Netherlands) made at the very beginning of the 18th century. Those two relatively minor military powers (with total combined armies less than half that of their opponent, Louis XIV's France) had the cash to hire virtually the entire armies of Prussia, Saxony, Denmark, the Palatinate and underwrite a good part of the Holy Roman Empire's forces in the War of the Spanish Succession. That's a massive imbalance of gold almost strictly from Sea Trade compared to the income of much larger states relying on internal production and economy.

Right now, I think the Mughuls with their Gold Uniques is the only civ in the game that can come close. It would be nice to see such largess dependent on in-game emphasis on trade, resources, sea routes, port and harbor infrastructure, etc.