what specifically happens when you trade a resource?

[jray]

Let's say that you have two Fish resources, both with Fishing Boat improvements built on them. You also have no Wine resources yet. What exactly happens if you trade one Fish resource to another civilization for a Wine resource?

1. Do you lose the +1 Food benefit that one of your Fish was providing to one of your towns?

2. Do you lose one of your Fishing Boat improvements (or at least the bonus health provided by it)?

3. If the answer to #2 is yes, then what if you had a Fishing Boat on only one of your Fish? Would the AI choose the one without the Boat to trade, or would it be random?

4. Will you receive the Happy +1 benefit of Wine? If so, in which city (the one you gave up the Fish from)?

5. Will the Wine appear somewhere in one of your cities where you can build a Winery on it (and if so, which city, the one that lost the Fish)?

I've read all the docs and tried searching the forums, but I can't seem to find an adequate explanation. And I'm new to the game and not good enough yet to reliably figure this out on my own. Thanks in advance for help!

 

[warpstorm]

1. No

2. No

3. NA

4. No, you get it in all cities.

5. No.

 

[AlazkanAssassin]

The resources on the map are left entirely alone.
The production of the square will stay the same.
You will not lose your fishing nets.
You will not gain any source of wine in your empire.

The only effects are in the city screen.
You will gain +1 happiness from the wine in citys connected to your capitol.
You will lose your +1 health if you only have one fish with nets built on it.
If you have multiple nets, then you will lose nothing at all.

I hope this helps.

 

[jray]

Awesome, thanks for the detailed answers. I thought of a couple related questions too:

a. If I switch to Mercantilism (thus "losing foreign trade routes"), will all my resource trades be cancelled? Will new ones be disallowed?

b. Some of the other civilizations don't have any resources showing up in the trade dialog, even though we have Open Borders and I can see they have lots of resources on their map. Are there any other possible reasons for this besides the lack of an unobstructed trade route, or should I simply assume that I can solve the problem by constructing a path to their civ?

 

[Fragment]

Awesome, thanks for the detailed answers. I thought of a couple related questions too:

a. If I switch to Mercantilism (thus "losing foreign trade routes"), will all my resource trades be cancelled? Will new ones be disallowed?

b. Some of the other civilizations don't have any resources showing up in the trade dialog, even though we have Open Borders and I can see they have lots of resources on their map. Are there any other possible reasons for this besides the lack of an unobstructed trade route, or should I simply assume that I can solve the problem by constructing a path to their civ?

1) "foreign trade routes" counts for city trade routes (upper left in the city screen) only, not traded resources. Foreign trade routes get you more commerce than local ones.

2) The resources are probably traded to some other civs already or they really have only one of them, and the AI will not trade those. For the first case, try to get the AI to stop trading with other civs, then immediately trade for them.

3) You can see if trade is possible by looking at the list of civs (where you can see the scores, too) on the lower right. If the trade symbol (the three arrows in a circle) is there, you can trade resources, and your cities can install foreign trade routes.

Regards.

PS: Hah! A question even I could answer!

 

[jray]

2) The resources are probably traded to some other civs already or they really have only one of them, and the AI will not trade those.

Ah, I see. I figured I would still see them and they'd be colored red, but I guess they just don't show up at all. Seems like a bug to me.

 

[Thyrwyn]

Check the resource tab on the F4 screen (Diplomacy). If it says "not connected to trade network", then that is why you do not see any of their resources in the trade window.

If both parties already have a given resource (either native or through trade) then you will not see it in the trade window.

If either party has traded or is using all of a given resource, then it will not show up in the trade window.

Red selections in the trade window indicate that the AI is unwilling to make any trade involving that selection: not that they can't, but that they won't..

 

[Jason Fliegel]

The thing to remember about resources is that they have two effects:

1) They provide a hammer/food/income bonus to a city that works them. For you to get this bonus, the resource must obviously be within the 21 sqaures a city can work. The bonus only applies to that particular tile. Thus, for example, a regular grassland tile gives you two food. A grassland tile with a cow on it gives you three food (without a pasture) or three food and two hammers (with a pasture). Other grassland tiles are unaffeted, and you obviously don't get any bonus if you don't work the tile.

2) Separate and apart from point 1, resources give you bonuses to health, to happiness, or allow you to build things you couldn't otherwise build (or to build them quicker). To get this bonus, the resources must have a road conencting it to your cities and must have the appropriate improvement (pasture, quary, etc.). To continue with the cow example, if you have a cow with a pasture and it is connected to your cities by road, you will receive one health point in every city (except for cities that are not part of your trade network). Water-based resources don't need the road. These bonuses do not stack for a given type of resource, so you only get one health bonus regardless of whether you have one cow or five. But if you have one cow, one pig, one corn, one wheat, and one rice (all with the appropriate improvement & road), you will get five bonus health.

When you trade a resource, you are trading away attribute #2, but not attribute #1. Thus, if you did have five cows, you could trade away up to four of them without losing the cow related health bonus.

Or, to use your example, you've got two fish. Let's assume both have fishing boats and both are within a city radius. Also, assume that cities are working both fish. Each fish gives three bonus food to the city that is working it, and fish give a bonus of one health to all your cities. If you trade one away, you will still get the three bonus food from each fish, and you will still get the bonus health. If you trade the second away, you will still get the three bonus food in each of the two cities that are working the tiles, but you will no longer have the health bonus.

If you only had the fishing boat on one fish, you would only have one fish to trade away. The other fish would not be a tradable resource (and you would only get one bonus food for working that tile instead of three). If you traded your fish, you would lose the fish-related health bonus.

If you trade the fish for wine, you will get +1 happiness in each city on your trade network. I believe (but I'm not certain) that ability to trade is calculated based on your capital. This means that if Washington is you capital, Atlanta has fish, and Atlanta is not conencted to Washington, you will not be able to trade the fish. If you connect Atlanta to Washington and trade for wine, but now Seattle is not connected to your trade network, you will get the +1 happiness in Washington and Atlanta (and all your other cities that are connected to Washington), but not Seattle. But the wine will never appear anywhere on your map, and you won't get the food/hammer/income bonus that you would get from working a tile with wine on it.

Hope that helps!

 

[jray]

Thanks for the excellent explanation, Jason! It really helps to know all that.

I'm curious how you learn stuff like that-- is there some "expert manual" I just haven't found yet, or do you learn by gameplay experience, or reading forums, or what?

 

[BeefontheBone]

Resources which you both have already (whether domestic or from another trade) don't appear in the trade diplo window, to save confusion and space. The AI will definitely trade its only supply (as can you) but less often than spares since it is losing the benefit - they can be redded out just like other options (for example, wonder-speeding and strategic resources are rarely traded in the early game for obvious reasons, but a friendly civ may well swap a spare iron for your horses, or similar).

We mostly pick these things up from experience, or I certainly do. The first sentence in this post was also true in Civ3 when resources were first introduced, though

 

[Perugia]

Another point to remember is that per turn deals expire after 10 turns unlike the 20 turns in CivIII so you can cancel or renegotiate the deal sooner. You are not allowed to cancel the deal inside 10 turns except by war or agreeing to an embargo.

Another useful deal, which has been described in several strategy threads as a means to pay for maintenance costs when maximising the beaker/culture sliders, is trading resources for gold per turn once you have the enabling technology.

You won't get the huge gpt's you could on Civ3 but there's no downside for cancelling a deal when allowed. So after 10 turns, if you see the AI has spare gold per turn and they haven't got the resource you are selling from another source you can cancel the deal and then immediately renegotiate for more gpt.

For example if you have been selling the fish for 5gpt for a while and you see on the Diplomacy Resources screen that AI now has spare income of 2gpt but you don't have any resource they need, go the the active deals screen and cancel the fish for 5gpt deal. Then contact the AI and sell the fish for 7gpt.

You can mix resource and gold per turn trading in a single deal. This can be useful as the AI values strategic resources higher then health/happiness, eg in a fish for iron deal the fish trader will normally have to throw in some gold.

 

[Nieldo]

Is it a case of you shairing your resource? So say you have one tile of gold, and you trade it, you still get the gold bonus but so does the guy u traded it with?

 

[_alphaBeta_]

Is it a case of you shairing your resource? So say you have one tile of gold, and you trade it, you still get the gold bonus but so does the guy u traded it with?

The happiness and health bonuses are separate from the production/commerce/food bonus that your city can work. You're only trading the happiness and health bonuses. Also keep in mind that if you have two fish resources, you only get one health. Duplicate resources do not have commutative happiness and health bonuses.

In your example - If you have one gold tile with a mine that gives +1 happiness and a big boost in commerce if you work that tile. If you trade the gold resource, the +1 happiness will go to your trading partner, but the commerce boost remains with you. If you had two gold tiles, you would not lose the +1 happiness since you're trading a duplicate, and you gain whatever is being traded to you.

 

[SlipperyJim]

Also keep in mind that certain buildings double the effect of certain health/happiness bonii. That can be a small, but significant, reason to trade away your only resource.

For example, You have one Cow resource. The AI has two Fish. If you trade your only Cow for a Fish, you'd expect to "break even" on the health bonus. Lose 1 for the Cow, gain 1 for the Fish, right? However, if most/all of your cities have Harbors, that Fish is really worth +2 health.....

 

[Perugia]

Good tip SlipperyJim. I hadn't thought of that!

 

[lbhhh]

I'm curious how you learn stuff like that-- is there some "expert manual" I just haven't found yet, or do you learn by gameplay experience, or reading forums, or what?

The best way to pick up things is through hundreds(thousands) of hours of gameplay. Reading the forums(especially the strategy guides/articles) is a close second.

 

[BeefontheBone]

Reading forums is also the best way to pick up the tip that there's no need to resurrect months-old threads if you have nothing to add to them.

 

[Perugia]

Reading forums is also the best way to pick up the tip that there's no need to resurrect months-old threads if you have nothing to add to them.

This thread is not closed so what's the problem?

Anyway I've not seen the resource arbitrage method posted by Slippery Jim before and I'll be using it in my own games from now on so I think it's worth flagging up in case anyone else missed this tactic first time.

 

[Isileo]

The thing to remember about resources is that they have two effects:

1) They provide a hammer/food/income bonus to a city that works them. For you to get this bonus, the resource must obviously be within the 21 sqaures a city can work. The bonus only applies to that particular tile. Thus, for example, a regular grassland tile gives you two food. A grassland tile with a cow on it gives you three food (without a pasture) or three food and two hammers (with a pasture). Other grassland tiles are unaffeted, and you obviously don't get any bonus if you don't work the tile.

So what happens to food from farms and to the cottages that are outside the fat T?


Also how do you irrigate a farm?

 

[JackOfClubs]

You don't get the food, hammer or commerce bonus from anything outside of the fat cross. You still get the health bonus from food the happiness bonus from luxuries or ability to build military units with strategic resources.

Irrigated farms are those built next to fresh water. In the early game, these are the only ones you build so it isn't an issue. After researching the Civil Service tech, you can chain farms together so that you can build farms on non-irrigated tiles (ie you can build farms next to farms). After Biology, the irrigated farms will get a +1 food bonus, but I think the non-irrigated farms will not.