Trade routes???

[Sildo]

Hm, I don't remember thatm
Trade routs would definatly be an improvement.

 

[Dark Savant]

The cool thing about trade in Civ 2 was that each city had their own supplies and demand. Sure the resources meant nothing in terms of gameplay, but it felt so real. Now because of the streamlining of resources and such, I don't think we could ever go back to the Civ 2 dynamic of each city with it's own pseudo economy.

Specific trade routes in Civ 2 are cool. Supply and demand are cool; although I agree, it's not something I expect in Civ 4.

Not-so-cool things about caravans in Civ 2:

* The bonuses you get upon establishing a trade route are too large. Expert Civ 2 players routinely abuse initial caravan bonuses.

* You can stockpile them to build instant wonders; this is unfair, especially when it comes to multiplayer.

* You have to manually move them across the map -- this sort of micromanagement isn't very fun. It makes sense to have spy units move like this, but not caravans -- the AI's in Civ 1 have trade routes that are instantly formed upon caravan completion, and that works just fine (apart from the fact it's not the way the human player does it, cheating AI's!)

* War has absolutely NO effect upon the ongoing value of a trade route, once you've established a route.

 

[Mewtarthio]

I seem to remember reading that you used Great Merchants to establish trade routes...

You misrecalled it. They establish trade deals which net you 1000 gold and give the Merchant an early retirement. The deals are mostly abstracted; in hard, numerical terms, you sell your Great Merchant for 1000 gold.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

My guess is that connecting a city to another city-within your nation-will start an automatic trade route between those cities, with the value to each city probably based on factors such as distance and relative city size.
Between nations, I am guessing that when ever you establish a new trade deal, you probably get 1 or more 'trade routes' forming around the same time-though which cities would be connected by such a route is unknown. Again though, the value of these routes will, I suspect, be based on distance and size factors-if not also culture and wealth factors.
As I said, though, this is nothing but speculation in my part. Soren certainly suggested that trade routes were an important part of diplomacy, which is why he was seemingly so annoyed with himself for not mentioning it in the GameSHOUT interview. Guess we will all have to wait and see just HOW important they are.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[apatheist]

Well I think the ideal system would give each city the ability to make a limited number of 'trade routes' to Nearby cities. Long range trade routes would go along the network of 'trade routes' and cities and split up their $ among all the trade routes they passed over (so the silk Road would generate a fixed amount of $ based on consumption of silks at the end and each of the routes that were passed over would take an amount of that $...so a City on the 'Silk road' would get $ from all the silk going through it, but once it began braking up into seperat routes, north to Germany South to Carthage, those routes would not get as much since there is not as much trade going over them.)

How is that ideal? I mean, I mostly agree with you except for the use of "limited number" and "fixed amount."

 

[Mewtarthio]

I think that trade routes should be automatically formed between all connected cities, including foreign ones, assuming you have Open Borders. That would also put a little pressure on the player to sign Open Borders even when not actively trading.

 

[brown_mudante]

We'll know when we play it.

 

[Lewsir]

What I would like (but haven't seen anyone mention yet) is trade routes that must be defended, and the ability to cut these off during war as a strategic option. It could be done without much micromanaging if there is simply a line connecting cities (indicating a functioning trade route) that you can break by sitting a unit on one of the squares of that line. So, I hope it works that way...

 

[Emp. Killyouall]

RE thorsr (even though this is kinda off topic):
I think AOE 3 has trade routes back to your home city already there because I would imagine once you got off the boat you would know how to get back home... (AOE 3 out on 10/18!)

 

[bio_hazard]

"What I would like (but haven't seen anyone mention yet) is trade routes that must be defended, and the ability to cut these off during war as a strategic option. It could be done without much micromanaging if there is simply a line connecting cities (indicating a functioning trade route) that you can break by sitting a unit on one of the squares of that line. So, I hope it works that way..."

CtP had this- you could pillage a trade route just like any improvement, but if I remember you couldn't do this anonymously. Their trade system I thought was actually kind of interesting- a city got more profit the more duplicates of a luxury it controlled (to simulate having more of a monopoly). The same way that your 7th and 8th different resources were super expensive in CivIII, buying that 4th duplicate from another civ was pretty pricey.