Trading problems: Can't trade away my resources?

[applied]

I am running Civ3 Game of the Year Edition (1.21g, or something like that) on Mac OS 9.2.2. The game I started a few weeks ago won't let me trade Strategic Resources (at all) or one of my Luxury Resources.

There are half a dozen civs in the game; four others are known and I'm connected by multiple roads to ALL of them and not at war with anyone -- and I have ALL of the ivory: four squares that have had roads on them since about fifteen minutes into the game. No other civ has any ivory.

I also have two wine resources and two (originally; now one) iron resources and one horse resource, all with roads on them and between them and my cities.

This is great: since we're not up to Gunpowder yet, I can build whatever I want.

But I can't trade away any ivory or iron or horses (not that I really want to trade away the iron or horses).

I CAN trade the wine -- sometimes, to certain countries -- and I can trade tech to other countries to get their Dyes, Furs, and Spices. I've never had any problems importing luxuries, so I know that we're connected. During some turns, the diplomacy negotiations screen will list the wine, but usually it doesn't. And it NEVER lists the ivory, iron, or horses.

Please note: The ivory, wine, horses, and iron are all visible in all of the city screens' resource boxes (ALL of my cities are connected to each other, and ALL resources have roads on them).

Also: The ivory, wine, horses, and iron are ALL visible on the trade advisor's screen (I am connected to and -- according to the trade advisor screen -- can supposedly trade with ALL other known civs).

But when I open the diplomacy screen to unload a little of this excess ivory, it lists Agreements and Maps and Gold and Tech on my side of the screen -- but NEVER any ivory, and usually, the Luxuries item isn't in the list at all. (Sometimes it's present, but only lists the wine.)


In another forum, we made a little progress; we verified that there are green "potential trade" lines between me and each of the rest of the civs and that the Trade Advisor screen still shows four ivory and two wine.

The Trade Advisor, however (based on the comments/advice in the box by the animated face) seems to *believe* that I have neither ivory nor wine. She tells me that I only have 1 iron (true enough), 1 horse (true), 1 [imported] spice, and that I should acquire more luxuries and strategic resources.

The Foreign Advisor has the same opinion: He says "unfortunately we do not have any surplus goods to trade to" the other civs (except for those rare days when I open the same file -- I've stopped playing it for now and only open to check screen shots, and never save any changes -- when it will allow me to trade wine to the Greeks, but never anyone else).

I opened the diplomacy screen again, just to see what was offered, and neither Resources nor Luxuries is listed -- not even "Resources: Iron (0 extra) and Horse (0 extra)", even though the trade advisor admits that I have one of each of these.

So we have narrowed down the problem: it believes that while I'm capable of trading, I have nothing available to trade. I still don't know how to fix it.

I know that something like this was reported as a bug in an early PC version of Civ, but Atari's support folks only say, "Unfortunately we do not answer game play questions."


The best advice I've received so far was:

> Take a screen shot of all those screens, and then post them on civfanatics.

so that's what I'm doing. Any ideas for me?

Please note that the question here is not "Why can't I trade with Civ X?" -- it's "Why can't I trade Ivory with ANYONE, especially since I have no trouble getting resources from each of them?"


I have screen shots of all of these, but the files are pretty big, so I thought I'd ask before I posted them. Just let me know...

 

[Turner]

How big are the screenies? You could upload them to photobucket or some kind of image server and link to them (without the img tags) and how big they are....

A save would be helpful too. Good thing you said 'mac'.

I'm tempted to move this to the Civ3 Mac forum, but we'll leave it here for now....

 

[rysingsun]

im going to guess you cannot trade away (for example) ivory because everyone else already HAS ivory, either on his own land or through a trade route with someone else.

 

[Turner]

He says in his second paragraph that he has all the ivory.

Applied - have you done a 'Clean Map' to make sure there's not a city on top of the ivory?

 

[ybbor]

and when you say connected roads, you mean your capitals are connected right? not just two cities with a orad tha passes through the ivory?

 

[Grille]

im going to guess you cannot trade away (for example) ivory because everyone else already HAS ivory, either on his own land or through a trade route with someone else.

Would have guessed that, too.
But since there are apparently 5 or 6 rivals in total on the map and 4 sources of ivory connected to one civ only, there should be rivals w/o ivory.
Of course, I'm assuming here that the game was launched as a default game, i.e. no scenario/edited map in use.

Btw, there's no wars taking place?

Screenshot (use jpg format, since they are ok in size) or better yet a save game (mac-civ counts me out, though) would be good indeed.

 

[applied]

Let's see: I've only got a few seconds, but here's the first few details:

1) I've got all the ivory. Or, at least, I can't see any more ivory, no ivory ever shows up in anyone else's trading list (not even grayed-out), and it's extremely unlikely that every single civ has ivory on a moderate-to-large size map. (Luxury resources are limited by a map-size formula, and four or five is about the top quantity on this size map.)

2) It's just a plain old game, not a scenario.

3) Screenshots are defaultly PICTs on a Mac, and I don't have time to convert them and post them tonight. But I will take your JPEG suggestion when I do.

A copy of the game is easy. It might even work on Windows boxes, if the programmers decided to use a standard file format. What file extension is usual for the Windows games?

4) No wars. No wars anywhere at the moment, I *think*, but certainly none with me.

5) There are lots of roads everywhere, but more usefully for the diagnostic process, the Trade Advisor says that I'm connected to all other civs, and in practice I can import luxuries from other civs -- and I'm sure that I couldn't do that if our capitals weren't connected. Roads are two-way affairs, after all.

And a while ago when I opened the file, it decided that it would let me trade the wine with the Greeks -- but nothing else.


Thanks for your help -- I'll try to get those files converted and posted soon.

 

[Grille]

and nobody applied a welcome yet...

so... welcome, applied!

[dance]



While I'm spamming your thread, here's a quick comment on point 1)
- AFAIK the numbers of resources on a map is dependent on the number of civs participating, so at the most just indirectly depending on map size; but 2) clears up the topic anyways (# of ivory sources cannot be greater than # of civs at game start).

 

[applied]

I've posted .jpg screen shots at Photobucket per the above response.
The link is http://photobucket.com/albums/v511/applied/ and both full-screen and "cropped" photos are posted.

Here, I provide for your viewing pleasure the smaller (cropped) versions; the first is a composite .JPEG showing that the resources exist and are properly connected; then the Foreign Advisor admitting that trades are possible (all green lines); then the Trade Advisor admitting that everything is connected; and last two diplomacy screens: One of the rare times that it will allow me to trade wine (Greeks) and the more usual can't-trade-anything (Egypt).

I hope that this doesn't upset anyone's Internet connection.

 

[MikeH]

The reason you can't trade the iron is that according to your screen shots you only have one source, you can only trade if you have additional sources. I don't know about the ivory, but it looks as if the other Civs are getting it from somewhere else. It won't show up on the other civs' trading list because you already have it and it only shows stuff you don't have. I notice that you don't have contact with two other civs, could they have the ivory?

 

[applied]

The reason you can't trade the iron is that according to your screen shots you only have one source, you can only trade if you have additional sources.

In the first place, this is not true, and even if it was true, it should still list it as "Iron (0 extra)."

I don't know about the ivory, but it looks as if the other Civs are getting it from somewhere else. It won't show up on the other civs' trading list because you already have it and it only shows stuff you don't have.

That, of course, was my first guess, but we have already determined that none of the other civs have any ivory, and that furthermore it is impossible with the game's programming to have 9 sources of ivory on the map for this game. (Since I have four, and there are five other Civs, it would take a minimum of 9 sources for everyone to have Ivory.)

I suppose that if I wanted to triple-check this issue, I could establish embassies to get a look at the other Civ's capital cities.

I notice that you don't have contact with two other civs, could they have the ivory?

Actually, I don't think that there are two more civs. It's a little early in the game to be certain, but I *think* I've made contact with everyone, and I've certainly made contact with everyone that anyone else knows about (because if I hadn't, then "Communications" would be in their trade lists).

I don't know about the PC version, but the Mac version shows the same number of "faces" on the screen no matter how many civs there are (or aren't). It's a source of frustration when there are a dozen civs in the game.

 

[Grille]

In the first place, this is not true, and even if it was true, it should still list it as "Iron (0 extra)."

Yep, that's right.
You could trade away your last source just by clicking on that "iron(0)", as long as the other civ doesn't have it and there's a trade route... (so I'd normally assume they have iron/horsies).

City investigation might be a good idea.

Despite of F4 lines, can you see a possible route yourself?
(> rival harbor symbols should always be seen, at least in the PC version)

If a route crosses third party territory and there's wars going on, it might get problematic. But since you're not involved, this shouldn't influence your exports, though. (AFAIK a civ blocks route if their enemy tries to access it for exports, but imports from neutral civs are not blocked, so ivory transport should work).


I'm not 100% sure about the facts the F4 lines tell and about the capital-connection rule (only relevant for import abilities I think).
*IIRC* it is possible to export a resource which is not connected to your capital, but to the importing civ's capital. Maybe the F4-lines are present in such a case, just indicating that one-way option. Thus, your rivals might be able to make an offer, but can't import stuff (> no capital-capital connection).
If you spy their capital, the resource in question shouldn't show up on their city screen.


As for the wine-trade with Greece which sometimes works and sometimes not, maybe there's barbs on top of all that... (logically, Greeks must have other access to ivory then).