I don't have the power to delete your post, but you can delete it by going into post edit.

All:

Good work everyone. I'm going to have to lock myself in my room and crank out an advanced summary to include all the goodies being posted

Discovery of...

1. trade = caravan

2. shipping = trade ship

3. commerce = no need for units, ability to trade automatically with any other civilization where you have an embassy

On point #3, I like the way Imperialism II allows this and puts different prices on each good depending on supply and demand.

And having mentioned the resource wars. How about having an international trade organisation (like the WTO). As we most likely will be seeing the UN in the game on the diplomatic side, howabout this?
Or what about having regions singing trade agreements like the EEC, the NAFTA, and similar agreements in Asia and South America?

Especially when the idea of minor/major civ gets implemented this could well be the lifesaver of the smaller civs.
If you've got trade agreements it becomes unlikely that war will be waged between those countries.

On the part of the traderoute idea, it fits very well with the also mentioned idea of a small group of resources being specific to one or two regions on the map. It might be a bit like what was done in the 15th till 18th century. Everyone was trying to be the only trader in spices by being the one to control the long route around the cape of South Africa.
It can bring both great wealth to your nation and a lot of jealousy from the other less fortunate nations in your region. It might even lead to some quarrels (IIRC Portugal, Spain, England and Holland fought several small battles over this one along the entire route).

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My suggestion would be to have the population of your city produce labor points. You can specify what percentage of labor points goes to everything that the city supports and does. A military unit requires labor points in upkeep and building (training) equal to the amount of labor that the people in the unit could be doing. For military units the amount of labor upkeep could not be increased at any time and decreasing it to 0% would disband the unit. City improvements would require labor to run and if the labor value of an improvement is redced, then its effect would also be reduced. Improvements should be able to be staffed up to abouth 125% of "normal" to give added benefit. Reducing an improvements labor support to 0 would mean that you have a useless building standing in your city that you can use later if you need it. You would also designate a percentage of labor to gather resources and to build things. Whichever resources are included in the model should not be able to be kept in the city for any number of turns unless an appropriate storage improvement (silo, warehouse, etc) is built in the city. Caravans could be loaded with an amount of a resource and sent to another city. This could also be set up as cyclic so that the caravan would carry a resource from one city to the other along the route you choose continuously. Also, the more labor you use on one terrain square, the less effective each person is at mining the space.

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No pixels were harmed during the creation of this post.

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This post composed of 100% recycled electrons

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"We have harnessed the power of lightning and used it to make sand think." -- Unknown

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"Fascinating" -- Mr. Spock

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"XYZZY" -- random adventurers in the Colossal Cave

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PLEASE let trade be done like in CCTP, where you just choose what to trade from where to where on a menu. I hated that you in Civ2 had to move those silly caravans around. If Firaxis incoorporate those great ideas about resources being far more important than in Civ2 - you actually need iron to build a tank - (wich i sincerely hope they will) it would be hell having to move caravans around the world.

I think a lot should be changed in managing your cities:

1) I think the cities should have a population in them i stead of those heads. It would start at 10,000, the next turn it could grow to 12,000 etc.

2) I say: Trash the grid system! Therefor, the city radius would be in a circle around the city. The computer would calculate how much land you have of each terrain type. The city radius should be decided by the size of the city. A size 10,000 city could have a radius with an area of, say, 2500 square kilometres. 1000 inhapitants could work on e.g. 50 sq. kms. A 10,000 city could then work on 1 5th of its radius. A city with 1,000,000 would have an area of 10,000 sq. kms, and a 10,000,000 city would have an area of 50,000 sq. kms. If a land area is irrigated, mined etc. it would need more people working in it, so 50 irrigated sq. kms would need 2000 people or something. In the large cities, only a small part of the pop would be working outside the city. Then what would the rest of then do? The answer needs a little explanation: i think it is a mistake, that production in civ games has always been produced outside the cities. That isn't so in real life. Therefor, i think an area worked outside the city would make no or little production. It would make food and/or raw materials (both vital ones like iron, coal and oil, and goods like cotton and wine wich could generate money if sent to your cities). I think production should be made by workers inside the city. They would produce a certain amount, say 1 prod per 1000 people. This could be raised by building improvements, so a factory would raise it from 1 to 2. However, for the factory to do this, it would require one unit of coal - or it wouldn't give any bonus. Likewise would nuklear plants need uranium etc. This would make coal very important in the imdustrial age, which would make worthwile. It could also give countries actual reasons to go to war. This, i think, would be a great addition to the gameplay.

3) Gunpowder revolutionized war, as it made walls useless. Therefor i think that traditional city walls would give no bonus versus ballistic units using gunpowder (cannons, artillery, tanks etc). There should also be an advance a bit after gunpowder wich would let you make a "defence line" improvement in a city, wich would give defence bonus versus those units.

4) If there is no map grid, then how about letting the cities really grow - filling more in the landscape. This would give a new option:

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Q Cubed
Renaissance Q • Q-of-all-trades
Thread Discussion Facilitator for Wonders

Each product could have its utility (population happiness and growth, muster military units,...), and all could be traded with other civs. You should receive incomes by taxation of the foreign trade. You could trade with your friendly civs and blockade the unfriendly, even withour declaration of war. This way, p.e. a blockaded civ with shortage of horses could not muster cavalry units. This also allows, as in the real world, that civs who couldnīt product some weapons, could buy it to other civs. This gives a new interest to wars, cause neutral countries can benefit for trade with the beligerants, and the weaponry industry expansion, as in the real life, could became a factor to declare war.

The problem could be that many people dont want to expand micromanagement. They only want to conquer the world quickly and have a little fun, but I want to have a big fun, so I want the game to become more and more complex and "realistic". So this could be implemented as an option, that could work like this:
- Basic production sistem: only 3 product classes: food, shields and trade.
- Advanced production sistem: up to 20 or more product classes.

CORPORATIONS - RECCOMENDED MAX:3

a. perhaps with the advent of ECONOMICS, CORPORATIONS can be formed. They would be started in the three most profitable cities. They would expand through trade routes and would take over freight production. They would have their own corp. headquarters, research, and focus:
(MILITARY, NEUTRAL, CIVILIAN).
Civs could show favor to one over the other, be lobbied, communicate with through the DIPLOMACY SCREEN and buy military units (the unit would be bought for less than if the civ built it). The corporation would be able to build units in cities (transports, freight, engineers to build production facilities in unpopulated areas). If a civ was or became COMMUNIST, the corp. would not exist or its assets within the civ would be siezed. The civ would then be responcible for building its own factory etc.

I'd like to re-state that I am STRONGLY AGAINST changing the current food/production/commerce economic model into a more complex form. When I'm not conquering the planet as fast as I can, a turn in end game already takes me at least half an hour of city production-micromanagement and engineer management.

This system encompasses villages, regions, split labour and resources, fractional pop growth, and is intended to be used with CLAS-D combat.

CITIES

Cities represent the industrial, economic, population and military centres in a nation.

All citizens in cities are some form of specialist, even if it is "serf."
All economy and labour are produced in cities. All population growth occurs in cities.

All food and resources are produced in villages. Villages are population points that have been moved from the cites to surrounding tiles. Villages use some food to support themselves, and send the rest of the food and all resources to the region, to be distributed among the cities.

Labour is the work needed to build things. It must be used immediately.
Resources are what things are built out of. They can be stored. Stores of resources and surluss food "decay" at a rate governed by SE and structures and tech. 5 to 20 % a turn, to prevent loopholes that would alow people to stave off sieges indefinatly. You can only stave off a siege as long as your food and resources hold out.

Cities would get a happyness bonus depending on how many turns worth of food are stored. If there is a shortfall happiness takes a big penalty. In a siege a city surrenders when it would have food riots. Cities under siege are considered a region of one city and no villages.

This is the "village system model." It requires approximately 2 times as many population points as normal. You set a ratio of village to city for each region, and the new population is divided between the two areas. You can set "flags" to tell where you want new villages to form, or let the AI do it.

REGIONS

A region is a area that can easily share resources...

In ancient times a region would be approximately the size of a current city.
As time progresses the size increases in both number of cities and land area allowed.
A city sized region using these rules will be very similiar to a current city.

In a region is based on with cities it includes. Borders are drawn between regions. All villages in the region pool their resources and excess food. Efficiency depends on tranportation infrastructure. The food is distributed to all cities on a need basis, extra is used to increase happiness, (and thereby population growth). Resources are stored in cities, but the actual location only matters when regions are redrawn or cities captured.

Each city has to have its own structures, with a few exceptions (stock exchanges).
In the regional menu there are four catergories where all labour from the region can be divided. All building is done by the regional menu. Details can be found on the layout can be found earlier in this thread. There are some limits based on SE choices. Resources are used for building as needed and available.

Resource uses are:

WONDERS: Only one wonder can be produced at a time. The location is set when building is started.

CAPITALIZATION: The Labour --> Money rate depends on SE and economic structures in the region. Resources can be sold independently of cities, or traded.

UNITS: Labour is used to build units. All new units are placed in reserve, and can be "deployed" the same turn. Explained later.

The units list is a build queue. Items can be directly added or the AI can build a list based on priorities you assign each unit type. The priority of a unit is a ratio of how many of that type to build to how many of each other type. If armour has priority 3 and mech inf 2, then 3 armour will be built for every 2 mech inf, over the long term.

IMROVEMENTS: Similiar to units. When all cities in a region have a structure the priority is counted as 0, so no more are built. The destination city is chosen by the AI, and can be changed by the player.

VILLAGE PLACEMENT

Villages can only be established adjacent to existing ones and within your borders.
Borders only extend into shallow water, usually 1 square, or 2 max.
Coastal villages, while really on land are represented at sea in a coastal square. Ships can only attack coastal villages, only the one that is represented by the square they are on.

MOVING VILLAGES

moving a village takes as long as it does to 'deploy' a unit. In this time no resources are produced, but it feeds itself.

DEPLOYMENT

All new units are placed in the reserves. Other units can be sent there also. Each turn you can deploy units to cities/bases/certain ships in the region. You can also send units to other region's deploy lists. The units cannot defend or be used until the next turn, but can be destroyed. Units in the reserve list cost less to maintain than deployed troops. This is the only way to move air and missile units.

Terraform units can normally only build forts, bases, and other transport and military TI's. When they are placed in the reserves they can build farms, irrigation, mines and other economic, terraforming and transport TI's, anywhere within the region. This prevents players from using their former types anywhere not near their population, except as combat engineers. It also makes them less vulnerable to airstikes. They still can take damage when cities are hit.

POPULATION

The population of cities are recorded as x.xxx. This allows fractional population points. The fraction has no gameplay effect until it reaches the next number. It allows growth rates to be expressed as an increase per turn. Attacks that hit population centers can now do fractional pop. points of damage. maybe 0.1 or 0.05 per hit. To simulate casualties of war, lose 0.001 pop per HP lost by units supported by the region.

The purpose of this proposal is to seperate growth from straight food production.
Growth rates can be expressed as a percentage per turn, (eg 2.5%) to give a familiar sort of look. What this means for gameplay terms is that 0.025 pop points are added every year. This gives a growth of 40 turns.

Population is recorded as fractional points, but it is easy to convert that to a real pop number.
The formula:
Actual population = 5000 x (population points + 0.5)^2 - 1250
This formula follows the civx model exactly for whole numbers, and can give good values for fractional numbers.

Effects on population growth. All numbers are arbitrary and should vary depending on SE choices and tech. This system is desigened to be compatible with the idea of villages.

I have made use of a "happiness rating," which is (#happy - #unhappy) / #total. This gives 0 for all content, 100 for all happy, and -100 for all unhappy. This can be applied to a city, a region, a civ or the entire world.

Base growth: 10%
Happiness : + city happyness / N. N depends on SE.
Villages : + 0.2% per village
Medicine : + 2%
etc.

Immigration: To take into account people moving around in your civ and between civs.
The advantages of including this is that large unhappy cites will tend to slow down growth or shrink, while your smaller cities will pick up the extra people.

In civ immigration = (city happiness - civ happiness) / Y. Y depends on SE and the overall level of transportation available. In cty immigation tends to have larger volume than between civs.

between civs migration = (city happiness - world happiness) / Z. Z depends on SE and transport of all players. For this calculation government types can influence the happiness used. democracy might add 10 points, while communism subtarcts 10 points, to reflect that democracies never have had problems with too many people trying to flee from them.

Wonder: Iron curtain. Prevents all between civ emmigration. (for gameplay all cities count as average happyness level)

TERRAIN

First step is determine the form of the terrain. Form never changes during the course of the game.
These are:
Deep ocean
Ocean shelf
Glacier
Mountain.

Flat
Hills
Major Rivers

Navigable rivers cannot be in hills, so to keep things simple they will be their own landform. Otherwise it is basically the same as flat.
Flat terrain gives a food bonus, hills have a defensive bonus and allow mines.

Vegetation:
Vegetation can only be applied to the last 3 landforms. The first 4 do not support vegetation types.

Plains
Grassland
Taiga (Evergreen Forest)
Boreal Forest
Rain Forest
Tundra
Desert
Swamp

Combinations to note:
hill + grasland = plateau
river + grassland = flood plains, the most fertile standard terrain type.
flat + grassland = no irrigation reguired.
taiga + hills = shield, like the canadian shield or siberia. This is the best resource producing terrain.
swamp + hills, acts as fresh water lakes, these cannot be changed to anything else. (just as a place keeping way of programming it)

Landform cannot be changed by your engineers.
Vegetation can.

Allowable changes:
Grassland <--> Boreal Forest
Taiga <--> plains
Swamp --> Grassland
Jungle --> Plains
Irrigated desert acts like Plains.
Irrigated plains acts like Grassland.
Tundra can't be changed to anything else.

Terraforming model.
Economic TI's are auto built by enginners in cities. A former type unit is fortified in a city. While it is there, it can automatically build farms and mines as well as changes the vegetation in friendly squares. You can change the terrain view mode "T" and click on squares to set their priority and change preffered. If villages are used, can only do squares surrounding friendly villages and cities. Squares do not have to be near the city the engineer is in, just connected by roads, or in the same region.

Engineers outside of cities act like normal civX, but they cannot build farms/mines. (to prevent building away from your pop centres). When acting this way they can build paths (along with most millitary units) as well as Roads, highways and RR, and military TI's

Nothing can be built on deep ocean/glaciers.

military TI's:

Bases act as both fortress and airbase, coastal bases can have ships enter as well. Units can be 'deployed' to bases.
Forts act as a scout unit and stop the first enemy unit to step on it. also offer some defense bonus.
Sonar acts as a fort in the water.

economic TI's:
Farms / modern farms, built on any plains, grassland or desert.
irrigation, built on desert or plains, makes it act as the next stage better, without changing it.
mines / modern mines, built on any hills or mountains. Farms can also be built if it is a grassland/plains square.
fisheries can only be built in continental shelf, which usually only extends one square from land, but sometimes more.

transport TI's:
Paths, built by and most military units as well, MP/2 move
Roads, MP/4 move, and give a trade bonus (and allow resource sharing) when connecting cities.
Highways, modern roads, MP/8 move, more resource sharing.
Rail-roads, MP/8, take 50% longer than highways to build, but enemy units act as if on path (or road?) when using.
Tunnels, connect two squares of land under a shallow ocean square. Allows land units to cross water.
Canal, connect two ocean squares over flat land. Can connect a city on a river to the sea if 1 square away.
When a unit enters a tunnel/canal it uses 1 full MP and goes directly to the other side, units cannot rest in a tunnel/canal. Both can only be used by the owner. Neither can be pillaged by sea units.
A tunnel is built by having an engineer on each end of the desired location. Both then build the tunnel. To use you press a key.

COMMENTS
The idea behind this is to make the economic model have a more accurate and flexible representation, but mostly invisibly. Regions attampt to reduce micromanagement.
CLAS-D, which this is intended to be used with, attempts to to the same for combat.

This model assumes SMAC style trade and social engineering as a baseline, but uses Civ terms for cities and such. Sorry for any resulting confusion.

I. Remove the division between ECON and Commerce. ECON is now used exclusively, although in function it will actually resemble commerce more.

I.a ECON has no effect on the energy production of individual tiles. It is purely a measure of a civs interest in trade, affecting the revenue generated by the trade equation. (Which may be the same as the SMAC trade equation or a new one.)

I.b Every civilization trades with itself. Cities are paired up from largest to smallest, with the odd one out paired with itself if necessary. This shows up in the trade window as "internal trade." Trade generated substitutes for the energy gained or lost from ECON tile modifications, so the trade level for a developed city in free market democracy trading with itself should roughly approximate the size of the city, which is the current bonus. A small modifier to the trade equation may be required for this to work out to the right number.

I.c Tech advances that would increase Commerce increase ECON. Thus a civ that develops coinage will see an immediate boost in all trade revenues. This makes sense. (Note that this concept might be useful for other SE factors. Frex, medicine might give +1 GROWTH.)

I.d Certain city improvements will increase ECON for that city only. A marketplace might increase city ECON by +1, for example. Wonders might have greater effects; frex, the Colossus might give +5. It is also possible that certain improvements might reduce ECON as a side effect, frex Cathedrals might give -1 econ, representing increased religious tithing and condemnation of usury.

I.e Certain terrain specials generate extra ECON. Gold, jewels, oil, etc. all can increase the ECON of a city exploiting them. Additionally, a city on a river gets +1 ECON. (Port cities will get an ECON bonus from a Harbor, as opposed to getting a straight bonus.)

II. Give the player more control over inter-civ trade, and allow for diplomatic effects of trade.

II.a Start trade at contact, rather than requiring a peace treaty. Unless actively prevented, there will be trade between any two civs that aren't actually at war. (And even then there might be smuggling between them - see below.) Suggest a ratio of 1/2/3 trade income between neutral/peace treaty/allied civs.

II.b Allow player to set a trade policy for each civ they know, with diplomatic and economic effects:
TRADE SUBSIDY: Other civ gets X % of your trade revenue, you in turn get 100-X%. Positive diplomatic effect, stronger if much revenue is generated.
OPEN TRADE: Standard. Small positive diplomatic effect if lots of revenue is generated for the other civ.
BOYCOTT: No trade, regardless of diplomatic status, but smuggling is possible. Negative diplomatic effect. Not possible for allies.
Note that if the other civ sets a trade policy as well, the lower one from the list above applies. They don't have to accept a trade subsidy, or may want to give you one. (If both civs want to subsidize each other, trade reverts to open trade.) It is possible to negotiate trade status on the diplomacy screen.

II.c If two civs have boycott, cease fire, or war status, smuggling is possible. It happens if trade generated under most recent friendly status (default neutral, if two civs meet and immediately declare war) would have been larger than POLICE + PROBE + 5 for both civs. (The POL + PRO +5 equation is just a guess, but seems like a good start.) When smuggling occurs, it shows up highlighted in the trade window. The city with better ECON gets neutral level trade. The city with worse POLICE + PROBE suffers -1 EFFIC. After five turns of war, recalculate assuming neutral status.

II.d Allow for improving your trading relationship with another civ through production. Early on, you could build a "Caravan" to civ X, which gives +2 ECON for trading with Civ X. (This is not a unit, but a city improvement.) If you go to war with civ X, there is a 10% chance each year that the improvement is destroyed, 20% if there is smuggling.) Later on, a "trade consulate" will increase this to +3, and a "free trade agreement" will increase it to +4.

III. Allow large civs to trade with every one of their cities. If you have more cities than the other civ, your remaining cities (after the best trades have been matched up) get 1 trade each from the relationship anyway. A small incentive to keep smaller civs alive.