Imagine if trade simply happend.

[Kraut and Tea]

I posted this thread on the official forum whilest I was suspended here and intended to post it here on return.

Basicaly I`d like to propose that the developers completly rethink the economy system that hasnt changed since the first tw game. So here we go:





I am intersted in your thought on this.

What if trade simply just happens between factions once they encounter each other?

It wouldnt even have to be restricted to ports. Trade routs could go through a third factions nation. And the option a faction has on the political and diplomatic field would be taxation, customs tariffs, boycotts, putting a minimum prize on products through founding your own state owned trading company. I would also advocate changing resources to have a greater effect.

Trade and it`s gameplay effects have always been a weak spot of tw games. In fact, trade hasnt changed since the first tw game. Besides the fact that trade agreements are almoust impossible to get, it sometimes feels like a heartless moneyprinting machine with no substance to it. Rather than a tool that can be used in various differnet ways to further the progress of your nation. And I believe it is essential to improve it and even to give a player more options in managing it.

Example:

Say I play a tw game in which I own a province that produces tea. Once other factions have been encounterd trade outomaticaly starts and amongst all products I export, tea is also exported. Currently there are two factions with tea producing provinces. So I declare war on that faction and conquere it`s tea producing province. Now I have a monopoly.

I build a state owned company building in that province that gives me control over regulating the price and how much taxes are payed for selling it. I open my company window in the game and set the prize of the product of which I have a monopoly. of course, if I put the prize of my monopoly product to high - I get diplomatic penalties, if I lower the prize I get diplomatic bonuses but my income falls. Tea is also a consumer good, therefor it`s availability increases public order in my own provinces aswell as abroad. Therefor I should be carefull in how I push the price and levy taxes on it`s sale.

A faction I like contacts me via diplomacy and asks for a reduced tarif for them. I agree but in return demand the tariff for products they export also reduced for my faction. And that is what the new trade agreements look like.

There is a faction which I dont like and which doesnt like me. So I open the company window and set a customs tariff on tea for export into that nation. I thereby gain a diplomatic penalty with that faction. But that faction loses some public order bonuses because the price of tea rises.

That faction has declared war on me. So I open my politics window and initiate a "boycott". This option drasticly decreases the ammount of products exported into the regions of that faction from my own, but not from other factions. I can however ask other factions via diplomacy to join the boycott. But my enemy also uses that option and my enemy produces suggar which is also a consumer product with public order bonuses. So I build a company building in one of my provinces that specialises in smuggling. I send a spy into the enemy province that produces suggar and initiate a "create smugglers route" action. It is successfull and a smugglers route is established between that province and the provinces with smuggler building along the usual trade route. It remains there until my spy is killed or injured or leaves the sugar producing province and the smuggled products are not impacted by tariffs or boycotts.

Another faction has a monopoly on fur. Unfortunatly it is a landlocked country and the trade route goes through a country I dont like. Through it`s politics option (which I also have) that country has raised the customs tariff for all goods going through it`s trade routs and heading to me. That reduces the profit for the country owning the fur production aswell as makes fur more expensive for me and gives more income to the facion through which the trade route goes. So I recruit another spy. I send him to the fur producing nation and it`s fur producing province and again initiate a smugglers route. Sending the fur to a province with a smugglers company building without the usual tariffs having an impact.

Back to my war. My enemy is on an island, so I build a fleet and send it to the island and blockade it`s ports and trade routs. The nation can no longer import anything, including consumer products like rice, weat, coffee, silk, gold, silver, wood, cloth and other. So besides food going down the consumer public order penalty is massive.

The nation surrenders and becomes my client state. I open my politics window and now have access to the suggar it produces. I can regulate the custom tariffs aswell as the taxes set on the sugar that my client state produces and the money goes to me and not to them. The product is produced there and they still get some money but most of the profits are mine and I determin how and where the product is sold.

fin.

[Mountain_Commander]

I do sorely hope for a much more indepth trade system with more resources that unlock certain things. But not automatic trade upon discovering each new faction.

[♘Top Hat Zebra]

I love the idea. Trading has only gotten worse since Rome II, as now it only happens between two capitals, as if those two cities are the only cities in either empire doing any trading. It's absurd, and it looks absurd.

There should be internal trade, between owned cities. They are working well on an abstraction of this logistics system with food production, but they could do even better.

Say I have food production in Egypt. Whole province is dedicated towards being the bread basket of my empire. The people there, of course, are well fed and have a surplus of food.

I can then export that food to other nations if they do not have enough, like giving grain to Rome. It helps keep them afloat, and then they are dependent on me. It would be the same system as the OP proposes, in that I can sell it for low prices to promote good relations, or jack the price way up and antagonize them, while also lowering their public order.

But, on top of foreign trade of goods, I need to make sure my own populace has enough food. This could be a very simple system.

Egypt produces, say, 200 food. -50 per turn goes to Rome.

In the internal trade menu, you can create custom trade routes to determine the flow of goods. Say you want food to go from Egypt to Palestine, so you left click Egypt, then drag the mouse over to Palestine province and let go. From there, you can determine what goods will flow along the trade route, in this case we will just have food. Then, you can determine the quantity of goods to be traded between provinces, selecting 50 Food. Now Egypt has a surplus of 100 food, -50 to Rome, and -50 to Palestine.

However, depending on distance, road quality, and crime/piracy, a percentage of goods would be lost. Crime and piracy would both be percentage modifiers, that can be lowered by various things like certain agent actions, quality roads with toll booths and guard posts, certain buildings, the presence of an army and a governor, etc. If you want to send goods to a province right next to Egypt, it will be very easy. But to send food from Egypt to, say, Parthia, you'd need to manage the crime and road quality to whole way to make sure the goods all arrive safely. It would be the same for sea trade. Want to provide food to Rome? Depending on the state of sea provinces (Controlled, shared, contested) the piracy will be worse (So trade is easier between allies who's ports are in the same "Controlled" sea province, than between neutral states that are far away.) You would also be able to reduce piracy with naval patrols and port buildings and such.

Now, in order to keep it simple, I think this system, and the OP's, should only control special resources, like iron and food and dyes and such that are owned by the states. Regular generic trade, as we have now, should still be possible as well, to simulate just average, misc. goods.

When Paradox made EUIV, they said something along the lines of "Adding complexity, without adding complications." I feel that is a fantastic model for strategy wargames, and something that could greatly benefit Total War. There doesn't have to be complicated trade mechanics in order to make a complex trade system. Just a simple, abstracted system like this would add immeasurably to gameplay, I feel, adding an entire new layer to the grand campaign.

[Ngazi]

Since you are speaking generally for the franchise, let me explain trade in RTW. There are resources on every province and they will be traded to all road-neighbors and the most profitable sea routes to anyone you are not at war with, with trade treaties and own provinces usually being more profitable. This happens along the specific road or sea route and can be affected by rebels or units sitting on the route, and sea ports can be blockaded by armies or ships. The distance to capital creates corruption but at any time you can optimize income by moving your capital to a rich province near the center of your provinces (Rome, Carthage, Alexandria). Although you will have to balance this with public order penalties due to distance to capital.

The resource grain gives a growth bonus in its province and any same faction provinces it is traded to. So actually not having grain in a province that is next to two grain provinces gives double bonus, but they won't trade the same resource to a province that has it. There are resources that let you build specific units (camels and elephants) or that let you build mines (silver).

[♘Top Hat Zebra]

Indeed. Trade in the older games was far more in depth, though trade in, say, Empire Total War, also had some nice ideas, especially about being able to see what it was worth on a world market and such.

But still, I feel like no game has properly represented trade, and it has only gotten worse since the original Rome. It's practically nonexistent at this point!

[Kraut and Tea]

Indeed. Trade in the older games was far more in depth, though trade in, say, Empire Total War, also had some nice ideas, especially about being able to see what it was worth on a world market and such.

But still, I feel like no game has properly represented trade, and it has only gotten worse since the original Rome. It's practically nonexistent at this point!

In Empire the value of a resource could be changed through the players actions.

If you controled all provinces that produced spices in Empire, the value of spices would go up, because you have a monopoly and you would receive more money through trade agreements.

But that was about it.

[Ozymandias Maximus]

How has it gotten worse since the original Rome? Isn't it exactly the same? You sign a treaty and trade ensues. If a faction likes you, they will trade with you. If they don't, they won't.

Don't get me wrong. I'd like there to be some more depth to it, but I don't feel like it has really changed at all. If I'm not mistaken, that was the OP's point.

[♘Top Hat Zebra]

How has it gotten worse since the original Rome? Isn't it exactly the same? You sign a treaty and trade ensues. If a faction likes you, they will trade with you. If they don't, they won't.

Don't get me wrong. I'd like there to be some more depth to it, but I don't feel like it has really changed at all. If I'm not mistaken, that was the OP's point.

In Rome II, if you played as Sparta, you could not trade with any faction except Athens, because you had no port (For some reason) and they controlled the only land entrance to your region. This never happened in the previous games.

[Ozymandias Maximus]

In Rome II, if you played as Sparta, you could not trade with any faction except Athens, because you had no port (For some reason) and they controlled the only land entrance to your region. This never happened in the previous games.

So go conquer Athens! It's a war game ya know!

[Abdülmecid I]

How has it gotten worse since the original Rome? Isn't it exactly the same? You sign a treaty and trade ensues. If a faction likes you, they will trade with you. If they don't, they won't.

Actually, it's changed a lot. Now, you can only trade through your capital with natios with which you had signed a trade agreement. In R1 or M2, every region was trading with its neighbors (or those which were close, in case they both had a port), unless they were at war. That means that there were many more trade routes, internal trade did exist and a trade agreement was not necessary.

[Ngazi]

Pretty sure the real Sparta had a port and a navy.

[daelin4]

What if trade simply just happens between factions once they encounter each other?

It wouldnt even have to be restricted to ports. Trade routs could go through a third factions nation. And the option a faction has on the political and diplomatic field would be taxation, customs tariffs, boycotts, putting a minimum prize on products through founding your own state owned trading company. I would also advocate changing resources to have a greater effect.

That sounds nice, but I can't imagine the AI doing anything besides trading or not trading. After all, he AI is pretty much the fundamental challenge of the game, so how well they work dictates how well many game features work.

Trade and it`s gameplay effects have always been a weak spot of tw games. In fact, trade hasnt changed since the first tw game. Besides the fact that trade agreements are almoust impossible to get, it sometimes feels like a heartless moneyprinting machine with no substance to it. Rather than a tool that can be used in various differnet ways to further the progress of your nation. And I believe it is essential to improve it and even to give a player more options in managing it.

Total War is focused on making war, which means economies are designed so that players can get money so they can get armies and go fight in battles. It sounds dumb and superficial (and it actually is, since that's way to simplified of history), but it is the main staple of TW. TW is meant to be that sort of zero-sum game where you're either prosperous because you killed off your opponents o you're not and being having a hard time. It's not really possible to "trade" your way to winning a campaign.
The irony is that often it's the other way around: economy causes war because people fight over scarce resources. In Total War you fight because that's the only way to win the game or to do things. Sure there is the challenge of "we need more Timber or Ore to build X and Y so let's declare war on Carthage" but come now, how many people play the game that way? More often than not, the AI declare war on you en masse and you pummel them, and you gain those resources because you're taking settlements to prevent them from recruiting armies. Resources don't really have that strategic element in Total War, especially when it comes to trade: those Ebdanians aren't going to love you because you have lots of exotic things to offer. In Rome2 at least, only the very top tier upgrades require resources to build; in Shogun2 you don't need to own the regions to benefit from them, you just had to import them by trading with factions that occupy them. One good thing in that game was that Trade Nodes let you bypass some of these restrictions (though it was not possible to force AI ships from the nodes short of war).

The thing about trade in Total War is that it's there for political (and therefore military) reasons. If trade was automatic it reduces the need to go to war and fight in battles, therefore make it boring to some people due to the way the game works. And even if that weren't the case I have doubts CA is going to commit themselves to improving the AI so that sort of experience is achieved for the average player.

Income in Total War is pretty much limited to taxation. Now if the factions were instead merchant guilds of a single country than you're on to something. Unfortunately factions in Total War have always been political regimes, the staleness comes from this IMO. If there was a TW game where you're a faction of a kingdom rather than playing as the kingdom as a whole (with a "pseudo" house like Julii, which really are just one of three factional buffs to choose), then trade manipulation would work better and with great immersion.

In my opinion TW would probably be improved if factions had ways to improve trade without the consent of the other factions involved, a kind of Black Market warfare if you will. Trade relations serve primarily to boost political bonds whereas black market (or unsanctioned) trading focuses on income, and damn the consequences of pissed off countries. That way you're not constantly asking factions for trade agreements every single turn because they don't like you, you can opt to try to get around it by interfering with their economy for your own gain.

[apostrophefz]

You guys should do a coup de CA and make a new TW game. Excellent ideas.

[barry12]

Great idea, it's bizarre that trade has to be agreed through a centralised government, when there's nothing to stop Bob from Sicily shipping his lemons to the Levant if he so desired. Good luck trying to squeeze any sort of extra work or design out of the developers. The only thing this game will get is more DLC.