Trade

[Christian Strand]

Does anyone know how trade will work in this game? will it be the same as previous games, like "trade rights" and stuff? i hope we will get a lot of new options in Rome2.

What about trade spots like in Empire and Shogun2 ? if you know what i mean.

[SturmChurro]

More or less. I expect them to be about the same as SHOGUN 2, showing how much you will profit from trade with this faction, foreign trade nodes, etc.

[HusKatten]

I really hope that CA will re-think their trade systems to make it funnier to interact with. If CA is looking for less and more decisive battles, then i want the campaign map to be a lot more interesting than it is now. The Trade Nodes starts to get pretty annoying even in mid-game since factions will declare war on you just because you have a boat on a node. And to get it back, you have to travel long distances and hope you don't get attacked by pirates or other factions that just dislikes your presence. And that process is repeated over and over again, with no fun what-so-ever achieved.

The trade ships along with the trade nodes works pretty much as the merchants of M2. It's not fun to spam out units and replacing them during the whole game.

[Anna_Gein]

I really hope that CA will re-think their trade systems to make it funnier to interact with. If CA is looking for less and more decisive battles, then i want the campaign map to be a lot more interesting than it is now. The Trade Nodes starts to get pretty annoying even in mid-game since factions will declare war on you just because you have a boat on a node. And to get it back, you have to travel long distances and hope you don't get attacked by pirates or other factions that just dislikes your presence. And that process is repeated over and over again, with no fun what-so-ever achieved.

The trade ships along with the trade nodes works pretty much as the merchants of M2. It's not fun to spam out units and replacing them during the whole game.

That is one of the reasons why I prefer your idea.

That and the fact you are forced to attack your ally or a neutral faction to take the node.

[Ichon]

That is one of the reasons why I prefer your idea.

That and the fact you are forced to attack your ally or a neutral faction to take the node.

Or defend your ally if they are neighbors as you get some benefits from them controlling trade nearby but if far away might attack or aid a faction so another faction even further doesn't gain control.

[myaku]

The Trade Nodes starts to get pretty annoying even in mid-game since

Trade nodes have annoyed me at every part of every game since Empire

Just finished a domination campaign in S2 as Mori last night; had problems with this from the start. "Hey look! My area contains generally crappy soil unsuitable for farming and my early-game economic hypothesis included utilizing my clan's naval strengths to grab the Western trade nodes, except the Shimazu (a clan that I had banked on allying with to protect my Western borders) seems to have nabbed them ALL! Whatever shall I do?"

Obviously, I had to declare and kill them all

Then again, I can't really see them doing it any better without involving a lot more micro (which would be appreciated on my part, but probably not by the legions of players who just want a campaign of battles and little else)

The way it's set up now, trade routes are an "abstraction" (in the same way CA said transporting entire armies in one boat is an "abstraction") and the number of ships you have reinforcing your trade fleet probably represents the escort size that is going back and forth to wherever with your trade ships - when you think about, it's a pretty smart and climactic way to integrate that into the game

For trade, I'd like to see a minimum of 10 trade-able resources (with ICONS, god I love icons and other minimalist graphic representations)

I'd like to see a Sierra (Pharoah, Caesar) system of trade where developing infrastructure to a certain level will give you X units of Y resource and you can sign treaties with other factions to accept Z amount of that resource (limited by infrastructure). Also, maybe stockpiles?

It would be cool if they had a unit like the Privateer from Civilization IV, a "faction-less" vessel that could blockade ports and raid trade routes yet wouldn't cause immediate war because nobody knew who they belonged to

[daelin4]

One thing they definitely need to re-do is blockading/raiding. In Shogun2 it was instantaneous and did not take into account the number of ships that blockaded or raided your trade lanes- one ship can easily cripple your merchant economy as much as a full fleet. Having it a trickle or delayed effect would at the least allow you to marshal some response.

So the AI sending their small ships to attack your trade will usually be negligible and at worst a waste of their resources. Disruption to flow should also vary- on some turns it will be more lucrative than other turns (think the "Happy Days" of the Battle of the Atlantic). Tech advancements can also add a bonus to trade income while simultaneously offering increased resistance to trade disruption. If trade ships are still units in the campaign, then there should be opportunities to make them improved against attacks, or more lucrative per ship.

As for land trades, I'm envisioning land-based trade nodes at the edge of the fear eastern map to represent the Silk Road and so forth. If there are merchant agents in the campaign then they can either be stuck into certain province specialties like gold mines to increase their productivity, or in settlements to increase efficiency of taxation. Land-based trade nodes should first be occupied an army and a fortified trade settlement can be established, and you can pump it full of merchants. Armies can then attack it, so it would be wise for the owner to allocate the necessary military resources in defending it when necessary. Merchants can also be put into ports to invrease maritime trade. This way, merchants aren't useless outside of certain parts of the map and their usefulness can be applied far more widely.

One possible issue with this is the increased types of agents can cause clutter. This can however be amended by adding agent types as a subcategory when sorting them. In RTW and MTW2, you had to sift through all your agents, AND the scrollbar jumps back to the top once you did something with a selected character, which was really annoying.

[Nicolaos]

I think they should keep it like it is in Shogun 2. With certain resources like gold or war horses being avaliable in certain regions. That would make some regions more important than others, i liked that in Shogun 2.
And lets keep the trade nodes. There could be sea trade nodes for trading ships, but also trade nodes on land, for merchant agents, for example far off in asia, because believe it or not: CA will probably not include China, I even doubt they would include India, so trading nodes leading to that area are the most likely thing we will see

[ngr]

I like the current trade system and idea of trade notes.

Though I would fix some details:

- Make trade ship a kind of campaign map character and limit their number. For example, every trade route in port could allow you to have 1 trade ship. So there won't be too much trade ships and trade ships won't be part of any military navy.

- Factions should not import and export same goods to each other. Imho it's just illogical. For example, if Romans and Greeks both have horses, they should not trade horses with each other, but sell horses to other factions which don't have it.

- Allies and friendly factions should not deny offer of trade agreement. I always wonder why it happen so often in S2TW (any ideas?).

I like the idea of land trade nodes. I thought about the same. There could be nodes in certain provinces on the edge of the map that will represent trade routes to China, India, Sahara, Baltics, etc. You could hire merchant character and send him to occupy such trade node (like trade ship now). Land trade route will connect this node with your capital. There will be trade activity if this route pass through friendly territory. But any trade will stop if you'll start war with factions that hold territories that your trade route pass through. Other merchant could try to supplant your agent or assassins could try to kill him (like in M2TW). Imho it would be funny

[♠ Thomas Cochrane ♠]

NO TRADE SPOTS! Trade spots were good in ETW, ok in NTW, and TOTALLY SHITHOUSE in Shogun!!
There is NO reason to have this in the Ancient Roman setting. In fact, when I think about it, It's unrealistic to assume they will. Oh no... they probably will.... oh man i'm going to hate it so much....

[MonkeyD]

I just want the AI to realize it would be in there best interest to open trade routs with the player even if *gasp* they follow different gods and have a strange culture!

You can argue that the current ruler may be less open to outsiders but in the end the AI should understand money can wash away a lot of differences.

[Sharpe]

I hope there are global markets and value on items that change depending on availability etc. So small states can become rich due to wealthy deposits and larger states could be comparably poor.

[HusKatten]

Myaku: i agree with you. What do you think about my signature as a solution to this Trading problem?

Sharpe: exactly. Nowadays bigger empire means more Money. I think that if you insert a global value on a resource into my idea in my signature this problem Can also be solved.

id like to hear what you guys think about it. there is a lot of pictures to ease the information intake