You've really hit a good point there. Actually, I think that you should be able to go even further and state that amount of trade could have an effect on the relations, between nations.

I am currently developing a model for trading in Civ3 that I'll post in a little bit.

A. Background

1. The resource system of Civ2 will be kept. These resources would change as the game progresses, i.e. salt and hides will be replaced by iron and spices which will be replaced by oil and uranium, for example.

B. Interior trade mechanism

2. Each city will have a certain number of these resources. The resources would be assigned on an adjusted random basis that would take into consideration the terrain types surrounding the city. For example, a city that has plains with game next to it would have a much higher chance of getting hides as one of the resources than a city standing on a shore.

3. Trade will exist between each city that does not have identical resources and the amount of trade will depend on the number of different resources that each city has. For example, if two cities have two resources that are the same and one that is different, they will each have two additional trade arrows, while if two cities each has three different resources they would each get six additional trade arrows. This trade would also depend on the city size, that is the amount of trade will rise with the population and with building of certain improvements such as the marketplace or the stock exchange. This trade will be handled automatically.

C. International Trade Mechanism

4. Trade will also exist with any other civilization that you have established diplomatic relations with. This trade will be conducted on a civ to civ basis, and its size will depend on the size of the civ and on the number of economic improvements (marketplace, bank, etc.) that each civ has. This trade will also contain a certain scientific bonus that will depend on the number of scientific improvements (library, university, etc.) and on the number of scientists that the other civ has. For example, if you are trading with a civ that has much more libraries than you do, you will get a greater science bonus than they will. This would even the game out somewhat because it would make civs closer in scientific development. This trade would also be handled automatically.

D. Trade Modifiers

5. Caravans will be able to enhance the automatic trade described above. If a caravan from one of your cities establishes a trade route to one of your cities trade between these cities would be increased. If you send a caravan to another civ you will get a one-time bonus and trade between your two civs will increase.

6. Governments will also influence trade. In domestic trade, governments will simply increase the number of trade arrows that each city generates. In international trade however, government will have two effects. First of all, trade between civs that possess similar governments will be greater than between civs with different governments. For example, a democracy will have the greatest amount of trade with another democracy, less trade with republic, even less with communism, then trade would decrease through monarchy, despotism, and fundamentalism respectively. The second effect of government on international trade would be that trade between governments would slowly improve the relations between the two civs. The greater the amount of trade, the more rapid improvement. This would represent the fact that if you have a massive amount of trade with somebody, you would want to insult them and risk losing the profits.

7. The last modifier to the trade system will be the attitudes of the people involved. For the simplicity of the concept this will only be applied to internal trade. If the people in a certain city are happier than in most they will generate an increased amount of trade with all of the cities that they are trading with. This would simulate increased productivity of the people that are happy in their jobs and would like to support their government.

Whew, that was a lot of typing. Well, tell me what you think of that. Any ideas are apreciated, really .

*Like people in other threads keep saying, the caravan unit shold be taken away and replaced by a command creen, so that the computer can better manage the game, and also the reduce micromanagement.

*Also, I think trade wars should somehow be implemented, and have to ability to cripple civs.

*A civ shold also be able to prosper on trade - ie income (and income types) from trade should be significantly increased.

*And like I've said before, civs trading should also generate light-bulbs.

*Finally, the happiness of your civ should definitely affect revenues. After all, if the people are dissatisfied, then they won't buy anything, so how can trade exist?

quote: *A civ shold also be able to prosper on trade - ie income (and income types) from trade should be significantly increased. *And like I've said before, civs trading should also generate light-bulbs.

and also in other places, I've said think trading should be made so that a civ with the right SE settings can simply live off well trading with everyone. Trade wars would be when a disgruntled trading partner chooses to stop part/all of the trading, so that the civ that lives off trading would be crippled.
In other words, trading sohould be made important enough so that stopping it would be result in sever problems (ie trade wars).

Trade for sure improves relationships between nations, for two reasons: first, trading means also communication, which leads to better understanding and cultural approaches between the two nation. The second reason is that traders / bussiness men always had a substantial influence on politicians, and trade benefits far less from war than from peace.

Some could bring up counterexamples, I'm sure. But to make a RULE in Civ, we need to use general facts, not singularities. We must use a model, and I think that trade influenced by relationships and relationships influenced by trade is a good idea, which could lead to a good model.

I have some suggestions for that model, but I need some time to make them right. I'll come back later.

quote: If trade becomes more important, I suggest being able to expel caravans much the same way you can expel a spy or diplomat. This way, you can get the caravan off of your land without assaulting it and starting a war.

I suggest to do this a little different. Civs should have a trade agreement in order to exchange goods and send caravans. If you don't have a trade treaty with a certain nation, you wouldn't be able to send caravans there, or maybe you could but with huge penalties or risks; if they attack your caravans it wouldn't be considered act of war ("Hey, we didn't attack your caravans, some barbarian thiefs did!" )

If UN declare a trade embargo on a certain country, we should be able to send caravans there, with huge profits, but if get caught then suffer reputation losses (like in Civ2 when stealing advances or poison water supply or planting nuclear device).

2. I think there should be more terrain "specials" to cope with the list of trade resources. I also think it would be more realistic to incorporate the shift with trade resources, as the civ progresses up the techtree, from primary production as represented by the current civ model (both agricultural and mineral) to secondary production as represented by manufactured goods. It would be quite simple eg using the current civ techtree to designate the advance of Industrialization and the building of a Factory to signal the transition from primary to secondary production. And the volume, sophistication and complexity of products, and therefore trading index, would increase with the further advent of Power Plant and Manufacturing Plant and so on.

3. Agreed

4. International trade: In the real world there is an inherent non-parity of trade between nations of different wealth and technological status, always favouring the more advanced (which is the rationale for the recent riots and protests at the World Trade Organisation conference in Seattle highlighting the one-sidedness of free trade). Although I would agree that "technology transfer" would take place, I think that the inequality of the trade benefits should be factored into the model. In other words, trade between nations in the Developed World would be equal as it would be between nations within the Third World, but it would be strongly biased towards the Developed nation trading with a Third World one. It implies in effect that low tech primary production associated with commodities from the Third World are worth much less than the manufactured goods from the developed countries.

5. I would agree with those who say that the current caravan/freight system is too micromanagement-intensive. It would seem to be superfluous under your model particularly if my suggestion of secondary production in the form of manufactured goods is accepted. All trading aspects can then be done automatically.

6. I'm not sure whether there needs to be a separate specification for governments. The present civ2 model already accounts for this in terms of the trade arrows generated by a city, which is dependant on the type of government adopted. This applies to any two trading cities whether internally or internationally.

I really appreciate the fact that you took the time to read what I wrote and provide very meaningful and constructive comments.
I am now working on the new version of the model and I'll be sure to include your suggestions. The only point where I have to disagree with you is the point about government affecting trade. I wanted to simulate the fact that nations that share certain government principles are more pre-disposed to allow increased trade than nations that have conflicting political ideologies. A great example of that would be the Cold War.

Anyways, I'll post the new model up in a little while and you can tell me if you agree.

A. Background

1. The resource system of Civ2 will be kept. These resources would change as the game progresses, i.e. salt and hides will be replaced by iron and spices which will be replaced by oil and uranium, for example.

B. Domestic trade mechanism

2. Each city will have a certain number of these resources. The resources would be assigned on an adjusted random basis that would take into consideration the terrain types surrounding the city. For example, a city that has plains with game next to it would have a much higher chance of getting hides as one of the resources than a city standing on a shore.

3. The types of resources produced will also be dependent on the types of technology available to the civ. Therefore after discovery of Industrialization the types of resources produced will be changed from raw materials to a combination of raw materials and manufactured goods. This will cause significant shifts in amount of trade between different cities and will model the redrawing of economic routes in the industrial era. Furthermore, increasing the city’s industrial capacity will add resources to the city list. For example, a factory will add a random manufactured product to a city’s list of resources, and a manufacturing plant will add two more.

4. Trade will exist between each city that does not have identical resources and the amount of trade will depend on the number of different resources that each city has. For example, if two cities have two resources that are the same and one that is different, they will each have two additional trade arrows, while if two cities each has three different resources they would each get six additional trade arrows. This trade would also depend on the city size, that is the amount of trade will rise with the population and with building of certain improvements such as the marketplace or the stock exchange. This trade will be handled automatically.

C. International Trade Mechanism

5. Trade will also exist with any other civilization that you have established diplomatic relations with. This trade will be conducted on a civ to civ basis, and its size will depend on the size of the civ and on the number of economic improvements (marketplace, bank, etc.) that each civ has. This trade will also contain a certain scientific bonus that will depend on the number of scientific improvements (library, university, etc.) and on the number of scientists that the other civ has. For example, if you are trading with a civ that has much more libraries than you do, you will get a greater science bonus than they will. This would even the game out somewhat because it would make civs closer in scientific development. This trade would also be handled automatically.

6. To simulate real-life trade processes and tendencies, an inherent disparity will be present in all international trade. The civs that are more advanced economically will get larger economic benefits, but the civ that is more advanced scientifically will actually get smaller scientific bonuses. This would represent the fact that more advanced civs have less to gain in terms of science from the less advanced civs.

D. Trade Modifiers

7. Caravans will be able to enhance the automatic trade described above. If a caravan from one of your cities establishes a trade route to one of your cities trade between these cities would be increased. This effect would cease with the discovery of industrialization to imitate the fact that as nations become more industrially developed the benefits to internal trade due to caravans diminish.

8. If you send a caravan to another civ you will get a one-time bonus and trade between your two civs will increase. The presence of caravans will imitate the influence of adventurous traders such as the Polo brothers that greatly increased trade with distant nations. This effect would stay throughout the entire game.

9. Governments will also influence trade. In domestic trade, governments will simply increase the number of trade arrows that each city generates. In international trade however, government will have two effects. First of all, trade between civs that possess similar governments will be greater than between civs with different governments. For example, a democracy will have the greatest amount of trade with another democracy, less trade with republic, even less with communism, then trade would decrease through monarchy, despotism, and fundamentalism respectively. The second effect of government on international trade would be that trade between governments would slowly improve the relations between the two civs. The greater the amount of trade, the more rapid improvement. This would represent the fact that if you have a massive amount of trade with somebody, you would want to insult them and risk losing the profits.

10. The last modifier to the trade system will be the attitudes of the people involved. For the simplicity of the concept this will only be applied to internal trade. If the people in a certain city are happier than in most they will generate an increased amount of trade with all of the cities that they are trading with. This would simulate increased productivity of the people that are happy in their jobs and would like to support their government.

This was compiled by:
Napoleon I
Tonic

I think that the use of caravans in the international sphere is intended to simulate the advanterous and industrious people who want to explore new opportunities to place their capital at work. Even now in the post-industrial era, this sort of enteprenuership can greatly increase revenue. For example, Bell South was the first to tap the South American market in cellular phone technology, and now it is reaping the benefits.

That is the only thing that caused me to leave the caravans in there for the international section. However, I don't really have a strong opinion about them, so if there are objections, lets just get rid of them

Thanks for the compliments on the rest of the model. Now I just hope that we can get some reasonable feedback on what the other folks here think of this idea.

Part I. (Attitudes)
Depending on the Civ's attitude, worshipful etc. trade should increase or decrease, thus if there were five levels of attitude. Trade would be as such:
1. (Best) +10 gold per person per base on border between your country and theirs; with the borders in (Alpha Centauri)
2. +5 gold (see above)
3. 0 gold
4. 0 gold
5. (Hate) -1 gold (They steal your gold)

Part II. (War etc.)
1.Allies generate a total of 2*your pop trade in each of your cities in gold because of taxes you put on the goods.
2.Peace generate a total of 1*your pop
3.War generates no trade

I don't think that a treaty should be necessary for you to trade with someone. If two civilizations are in contact with one another (have diplomatic relations of any kind), trade will exist between them, treaty or no treaty.

To address the issue of expelling caravans, yes there should be a way to expell them. However, such action would be considered an insult to the other civ and after the second time your caravans are expelled you would have the option to cancel alliance / declare war / etc.

DarkCloud:

Actually, I think that the concept should be reversed and the relations between your civs should depend on the amount of trade. (In trade model above, see number 9).

The idea about war and peace is reasonable, the trade model probably should include some sort of a modifier for alliance and that sort of a thing.

***Napoleon I makes a note to himself to update the trade model***

***Napoleon I types fevereshly, working on his trade model***