We need a Merchant Marine Capability

[jimc52]

Obviously, moving resources from one place to the next or conducting any kind of trade capability is dependent on cargo vessels. In the real world, if you need titanium and the only place in the world is Russia, you need to have a merchant fleet to move titanium from Russia to the US or anywhere else. To do this, I think that resources should be available to move onto merchant vessels.

A merchant vessel should have some limited capability for self-defense against an attack, a rather weak one. During WWII merchant ships typically had a 3 inch gun or two on board and some smaller caliber firing self-defense capability. I know this from playing WWII Naval submarine and surface ship games.

An important element of trade depends upon sea-going transportation. I think we are missing a huge opportunity here to do more with the game then just fight off barbarian hordes all day long.

I envision:

At least one kind of merchant marine cargo vessel.
Somewhat limited defense capability against attack
Usually needing destroyer escort
The ability to load resources onto a cargo ship and deliver them to a destination (embark, debark capabilities).
Ability to spread deployed resources from their destination to where they are needed in cities elsewhere in the game.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

The harbor's uppkeep probably represent the cost of merchant ship and if an enemy ship is close to a costal city which only got an habor for trade, its traderoute is blocked which represent that the trade ship can't reach the city.

Having trade ship on the map would mean another unit to control which will slow down the game and what would that ship add to the game.

 

[nefloyd]

are you talking about actually picking up the strategic resource off a map tile and depositing it somewhere else or what

 

[jimc52]

What I mean is, if we have a gold mine, the gold mine itself stays put, where it is...but the product, which is the gold, can be moved, from one place to the next, just like in the real world.

So if we have wheat being grown in one area and we have a starving city in another area, we can move the wheat (not the wheat field) to the city where the food is needed. This goes for all the resources.

Obviously, if we pump oil, somehow it is moved to those things which need oil, but we are not told HOW they get there, how that takes place. Obviously, a lot of things happen to oil from the time crude is pumped out of a well and gets put onto an oil tanker, gets shipped from Saudi Arabia to Louisiana or Texas, gets refined in an oil refinery, gets pumped as gasoline into tanker trucks, get transported down the interstate system, gets to the cities where it is stored in huge gasoline bunkers, gets re-distrubuted to airports, ships, companies, gasoline stations, and finally ends up in your gas tank.

Yes, I mean, distributing those resources and how that takes place. Move wheat to where it needs to go, oil, uranium or anything else that is a resource. We do not, logically, however, move a wheatfield to another place or a gold mine or an oil well...right?

 

[nefloyd]

Between this and other threads it sounds like you're trying to add too many layers of complexity for things that aren't needed. So you think we should have to physically ship iron in caravans to other cities if we want them to build swordsmen? Just sounds like a PITA.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

In civ 4 you need to have a road on a resources to get its city bonus, but the tile bonus is not improved by the road.

In civ 5 they wanted to limit road building by giving them a upkeep cost. However maby they should make it like civ 4 that you need a road to get happies from lux resources and strategic resources.

Maybe the could add buildings that refine strategic resources to usefull things that is later used for units. The buildings could have a hugh cost and maybe a limit on how many that can be built to make trade routes more importent.

 

[Polycrates]

In Civ I and II, you had to manually build caravans and send them across the world to establish trade routes between cities. It was a total pain in the behind.
I would love to see some sort of abstracted foreign trade mechanic (that can be blockaded by fleets) but I would never ever want to have actual units involved with it, because that's some serious extra tedious micromanagement.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

I have never played the first 2 civ games, but in civ 5 it seams like the civs invented teleportation in or before 4000 bc but they only used it to teleport strategic and luxural resources.

 

[TPQ]

I envision:

At least one kind of merchant marine cargo vessel.
Somewhat limited defense capability against attack
Usually needing destroyer escort
The ability to load resources onto a cargo ship and deliver them to a destination (embark, debark capabilities).
Ability to spread deployed resources from their destination to where they are needed in cities elsewhere in the game.

It sounds like a similar idea to the old caravans from Civ2/3. I have to say, I'm not keen on adding either unnecessary complexity, or more tedious unit moving actions and this sounds just like that to me.

Trade routes already simulate the idea of trade moving between locations and are a good passive bonus that also works across seas with little effort. Trading luxuries like gold is already done between Civs without the need for moving units around and internal trade of luxuries is unnecessary as every city gets access to a luxury once the luxury is acquired.

Moving food from a city with an excess to a city that is starving is unnecessary, as there are many existing ways to provide food for a city, including buildings and city states and at the very least good city placement in the early game should ensure a sufficient amount of food will be available for each of you cities.

 

[Drawmeus]

As far as realism is concerned, the unrealistic thing is the number of turns it takes military units to reach their destinations. It should be "Much less than 1 turn" in virtually all cases and all eras. In that sense, resource trading taking effect is actually much more realistic than representing them on the maps (it's not teleportation, it's an abstraction of a continuous supply of caravans for extended periods of time). It's much more realistic than having single concrete Iron shipments would be, also - while of course those Iron shipments are happening one truck at a time, any individual truck that you could seize would be a drop in the bucket compared to the scale of resources we're talking about.

Really what we need is a good, streamlined and abstracted but important world economy/trade system. It shouldn't be moving units around on the map, but it should be an important consideration which can be managed easily, have a huge impact with different approaches and strategies, and be interacted with via espionage and warfare/commerce raiding.

 

[Barghaest]

Obviously, moving resources from one place to the next or conducting any kind of trade capability is dependent on cargo vessels. In the real world, if you need titanium and the only place in the world is Russia, you need to have a merchant fleet to move titanium from Russia to the US or anywhere else. To do this, I think that resources should be available to move onto merchant vessels.

A merchant vessel should have some limited capability for self-defense against an attack, a rather weak one. During WWII merchant ships typically had a 3 inch gun or two on board and some smaller caliber firing self-defense capability. I know this from playing WWII Naval submarine and surface ship games.

An important element of trade depends upon sea-going transportation. I think we are missing a huge opportunity here to do more with the game then just fight off barbarian hordes all day long.

I envision:

At least one kind of merchant marine cargo vessel.
Somewhat limited defense capability against attack
Usually needing destroyer escort
The ability to load resources onto a cargo ship and deliver them to a destination (embark, debark capabilities).
Ability to spread deployed resources from their destination to where they are needed in cities elsewhere in the game.

This reminds me of the trade routes in Galactic Civilizations II... after you establish a route tiny versions of the original trade ship move along it and are subject to attack by other empires and if enough are destroyed the route is abandoned.

 

[PhilBowles]

In civ 4 you need to have a road on a resources to get its city bonus, but the tile bonus is not improved by the road.

In civ 5 they wanted to limit road building by giving them a upkeep cost. However maby they should make it like civ 4 that you need a road to get happies from lux resources and strategic resources.

Maybe the could add buildings that refine strategic resources to usefull things that is later used for units. The buildings could have a hugh cost and maybe a limit on how many that can be built to make trade routes more importent.

That's closer to the way the RTS Cossacks did things, and is too detailed for Civ-scale. The need for roads connected to resources can be circumvented - they should just make it so that a city has access to all strategic resources within its own borders, but those resources can only be shared with cities that have a trade route to the capital (since trade routes in Civ V are only with the capital - it can be imagined that the capital acts as the distribution centre for imported resources).

I have never played the first 2 civ games, but in civ 5 it seams like the civs invented teleportation in or before 4000 bc but they only used it to teleport strategic and luxural resources.

Yes, and in Starcraft the Protoss invented teleportation but only use it on minerals and vespene until you research the appropriate tech...

 

[Zaimejs]

I want faster movement. Thank you.

 

[Oregano]

Physically tradable, raidable resources and transport units with an automation option (like workers) and waypoints (pick up and delivery).

Running an empire is a resources game. Having them actually IN the game would ad such a wonderful strategic layer. Unnecessary? I disagree. The whole economic side of CIV is woefully neglected to the point of not being there. If that's not your play style, fine - automate it/skip the mod. But at least let's have it as an option.

 

[Lord Kid]

I would agree that resources being restricted to the city they are found in and only accessible to other cities that are connected via the trade network would be a cool addition, however I dislike the idea of having physical units transporting said resources. The trade network, be it roads or harbors, would be perfectly realistic, at least IMHO. I would however, like to see the ability to transfer excess food from one city to another. I believe it would make city specialization much more interesting and dynamic. Say for instance, there were a number of lux's and strat's in a barren desert or tundra. You could then set up a city to take advantage of those and ship food from a lush flood plain/grassland city to them to keep a population going.

Alternatively, perhaps it can be setup so that you only receive benefit from resources when the city is working them, such as the pop working mines or plantations.

 

[StormEye]

I see CiV as trying to be as simplistic as possible while adding some depth into it.

The idea of open ocean physical trade route / cargo vessels. However, it would seem to go against the design philosophy of CiV trying to keep each elements as simple as possible.

It should be mod's job to be able to fill in the gap that player needs that expands upon the existing feature. Not sure if it should be a standard feature.

 

[Tantor]

It was a visible trade routes in Civ: call to power if I remember correctly. I think it would be too much micromanagement to move resources manually, but I miss the possibility to exploit resources in unclaimed territory.

I want more terrain improvements like they had in CIV 3. Watchtower/radarstation, airfield and colony should be brought back. The colony should simply be a "city" with a fixed population of 1 and with a fixed one hex culture-radius, but it makes it possible to aquire resources far away.

 

[grandad1982]

Sounds like the trade caravans from civ2. I loved those trade caravans. You could not only trade resources but food as well. Income was based on the distance between the cities in question.

 

[rsadiwala95]

Go play Civ 4: colonization, The thing u ask for is the most imp aspect of that game, even more imp than combat....

 

[PhilBowles]

Physically tradable, raidable resources and transport units with an automation option (like workers) and waypoints (pick up and delivery).

Running an empire is a resources game. Having them actually IN the game would ad such a wonderful strategic layer. Unnecessary? I disagree. The whole economic side of CIV is woefully neglected to the point of not being there. If that's not your play style, fine - automate it/skip the mod. But at least let's have it as an option.

I agree that there should definitely be more of a focus on economy in Civ, but this can be done without the need for physical units. Some ideas from other games:

Total War: Enemy units blocking roads, railroad stations, blockading ports or raiding sea trade routes cost you trade income (and you can raid to gain income). However there is only one trade unit in the game (in Shogun 2), a trade ship that can be sent to specific target points to trade internationally (sea trade routes are demarcated in advance). Overland trade has miniature graphics representing goods being transported, but these are not actual units and there's no need to attack them to block trade. Trade itself is automated; in Shogun 2 the AI decides which resources to trade based on what each faction has available, and the effects of roads and ports on trade income is represented as a (small) percentage increase in trade income. In older games, resources were scattered around the landscape and could be harvested by merchant characters, which directly added a set value to trade income every turn - imports and exports between provinces were otherwise automated.

Distant Worlds: Trade is entirely automated - you can build stations that act as trade hubs and refuelling stops which can shorten trade routes, improve income (represented as taxation on trade), and provide areas for the traders to offload their resources, but while trade is represented by units that can be attacked, all trade units are 'privately owned' units that are built and operated by the AI, and the AI determines which available resources to import/export and where to send them (which you can only influence by building stations around worlds that particularly need resource X, encouraging traders to invest there).

Ways to implement in Civ: Add a 'Raid' icon to the unit interface for military land units - in the same way a unit can pillage an improvement if it does nothing else that turn, it can Raid a road or trading post, which leaves the improvement intact but steals income. If my suggestion of limiting resource access to cities with trade routes is implemented, raiding a road will also block access to that resource to other cities (and units built there) for that turn.

Add a 'Blockade' icon to the unit interface for military naval units - this can be activated by an enemy ship within the city radius of a city with a harbour and does essentially the same thing, but does not provide the player with any gold from 'raiding'.

Foreign Trade: Change the GM's Trade Mission function so that (a) the ability can be used with either a CS or a foreign civ's city, and (b) sets up a permanent trade route that provides income while the two powers are at peace (if they're at war it's broken, but is reinstated automatically when peace is declared).

This introduces most important aspects of trade while, like TW, doing away with the need for pointless management of caravans or cargo ships. Distant Worlds has much larger maps, smaller units, and isn't restricted to a real-time equivalent of 1UPT, all of which make the automation approach much more appropriate to that game than it would be to Civ.