Trade outposts/trade port

[tech9374]

I would love to see this feature in a future civ game or a mod for civ iv....

sometimes when u need a certain resource only available on some remote island or the new world for instance, instead of having to build a city to send the goods back to your homeland, you could jsut build a small trade outpost and port.

so i propose a buildable trade outpost/port that can be built anywhere by a military unit or worker..

what do u people think?

 

[rysmiel]

I would love to see this feature in a future civ game or a mod for civ iv....

sometimes when u need a certain resource only available on some remote island or the new world for instance, instead of having to build a city to send the goods back to your homeland, you could jsut build a small trade outpost and port.

so i propose a buildable trade outpost/port that can be built anywhere by a military unit or worker..

what do u people think?

I don;t like it because it weakens one of the core parameters of how the game works; if you want a resource, just build a city already.

 

[Naokaukodem]

What do you mean rysmiel? I think this idea is good.

Cities should be also able to build a port even if they are not directly in contact with water. Like if their culture reaches ocean, they can build a small port in a coast square and build sea units.

 

[rysmiel]

What do you mean rysmiel? I think this idea is good.

Cities should be also able to build a port even if they are not directly in contact with water. Like if their culture reaches ocean, they can build a small port in a coast square and build sea units.

I mean that I do not like ideas that basically boil down to "build a small thing that does some of the functions of a city to get the benefits of a city from a site that it's awkward to put a city on."

I don't like ports, I don't like Civ III colonies. I don't like outposts. Civ is not just a game about building an empire; there are loads of those. It is a game about building an empire out of cities. If putting a city somewhere is difficult or awkward, that's not a bug, it's a feature of the way the thing works, and you should just bear with it, or work around it at other levels - make your empire more efficient in order to afford the city, cope with having awkward overlap of worked tiles, whatever. Ports and colonies all seem to me to be ways of asking the game to give you something without having to make the effort to get it.

 

[Colonel]

I like the idea because it allows for a true empire to be built. I see the point of it being a bit of balance issue, if you want a resource in a wierd spot you should have city there. However there is very simple way to balance this idea, if you put a "colony"/"port" in an area, you would only get that square and if an opponent put a city in the region and it overlaped a "colony" of yours then you lose the "colony"/"port". However with that I would say that we should also say that if a port survives for say 30-50 turns then it becomes a city with all water improvements built already. This could really simulate colonization of the 16th 17th and early 18th century in America. Small ports that were established in new world eventually turned into major cities. Before you ask yes colonies were the same way however it would be far to over powering for both ports and colonies to eventually advance into cities. Also it should cost a bit to build a port, either by number of workers needed, amount of gold it costs, or something else.

 

[rysmiel]

Small ports that were established in new world eventually turned into major cities. Before you ask yes colonies were the same way however it would be far to over powering for both ports and colonies to eventually advance into cities. Also it should cost a bit to build a port, either by number of workers needed, amount of gold it costs, or something else.

That really sounds to me like "this non-city thing that is not a city is problematic because it's not a city, so let's make it more like a city", and I do not see how the answer "then why not just make it a city ?" is less than optimal here. A "small port" in that sense really feels like it could as well be a size-1 city.

 

[Onionsoilder]

Okay, what about this:

What if there is a resource you really need, that is on a one-tile island within 2 squares of another city? What do you do then? You can't found a city on the island, and even if you build an improvement on that one tile, it will not be connected to the mainland(so you don't get the resource). Perfect use for this trading post.

 

[rysmiel]

Okay, what about this:

What if there is a resource you really need, that is on a one-tile island within 2 squares of another city? What do you do then? You can't found a city on the island,

How about, don't found cities within 2 tiles of a 1-tile island ? How about, if you find that out later, disband the city you founded in a stupid place to begin with ?

I don't like the notion that the game should include mechanisms for allowing essentially low-cost fixes or workarounds for not making the effort to figure out where best to put your cities in the first place; nor do I like the notion that there should always be a low-cost fix for any geographical problem, because working around the imperfections of the geography is a large part of the appeal, IMO.

 

[UWHabs]

A Trading post/port wouldn't be bad, although I think if it survives for at least 25/50 turns, instead of turning into a city, it just turns into one square that you own, so even if an opponent builds a city next to it, it's still yours, as long as you can keep it culturally. If it was long enough next to an opponent's city you'd lose it, but I always though that the civ3 colonies were too weak.