This artstyle has the opportunity to do something interesting with Trade Routes

SpacesuitSpiff

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5 years ago

Jun 14, 2020, 6:54:57 PM

Trade Routes in 4x games are not great. Sure they're usually functional, but also super unintuitive and players ignore them most of the time. And unless you're massively focusing on them, they just come off as a tiny drop in the economic bucket.

A more interesting approach would be to let the player develop specific paths that exist on the overworld and have their effectiveness determined by terrain. Certain terrain arrangements could create excellent pathways that define a continent and inform settlement locations, and they could be improved further by the player. Suppose you've got a river going halfway through the continent, so you put your cities along the river and then develop a boat network to further utilize it. There's a chain of mountains at the end, so you build a road through and connect to another naturally existing trade route on the other side. The trade routes wouldn't be something you just throw down in every city, but an expensive long-term project for optimizing the region. Trade route wonders are a natural conclusion.

Developing for throughput isn't enough to create interesting decisions for the player though. Trade routes also need to be secure, since they're the backbone of a region. NPC pirates and bandits would be attracted to the trade route and siphon resources, not to mention subterfuge other empires could get up to. Trade routes need to be placed such that they can be defended, not always militarily but in a "security vs guerrila tactics" sense. In that sense you'd want to not go near forrests or other terrain that can conceal enemies, unless there's a city nearby that can exert influence over the region. A high-altitude place would allow for a watchtower that adds some security. For ocean trade routes, you would want to hug islands to avoid pirates on the open seas, but you would also need to control those islands for the same reason.

Trade route infrastructure is permanent and can be built collaboratively in alliances, or captured/destroyed in war. For border-crossing trade routes, a player controlling particularly valuable infrastructure might impose a tax for other players, who have to decide whether to pay it or reroute and lose access to the infrastructure. Not to mention the region's owner can deny an opponent's routes protection from the local brigands.

In terms of UI, I'm thinking something like the hacking in ES2. The routes run passively once set up (none of that caravan micro in civ 5), and there is a limit to the number you can have, similar to the ES2 hacking. The path is set up to use the maximum throughput of the tiles, so there is no reason to draw redundant identical paths. Alternate routes between 2 cities is possible of course.

The glaring issue with this system is that the player needs a reason to actually bother with it, so here my ideas get a bit controversial: resources no longer teleport between allied cities, but need to be moved on trade routes. Not in a "you can't build anything because no iron here all the buttons are red" sense, but the resources will need to be brought in over the course of the project, and a solid trade route will get them there faster and speed things up. Maybe a placeable hoard of resources on the map would add to this system as well. This could even apply to player trades; same interface as the previous games, but the resources are placed at a mutual border and have to be moved to a city. If war is suddenly declared while all that precious uranium is being transported, well, *surprised pikachu face*.

This could be a really neat way to add some gameplay to regional economics. Probably as an expansion.

Dormantus

Frozen

What lays dormant, frozen in depths, will be awakened as well.

Dormantus

Frozen

24 500g2g pts

5 years ago

Jun 14, 2020, 9:33:48 PM

I like the focus, as trade routes are really underwhelming game mechanic in most 4X games I have seen so far. Functional, but nothing to be really excited about, and often somewhere in the background. Usually you will get some currency equivalent if you build them.

SpacesuitSpiff wrote:The glaring issue with this system is that the player needs a reason to actually bother with it, so here my ideas get a bit controversial: resources no longer teleport between allied cities, but need to be moved on trade routes.

I think this is a good idea and it makes the game both more realistic and trade routes relevant in gameplay. Especially if there is some luxury resource equivalent, it makes all sense, it wont magically supply itself to all corners of empire. On the other hand I like to have balance between microing everything and relying on default game setup. So there should be some autonomous aspect to trade routes = they will emerge by themselves if conditions are there. Two relatively rich cities nearby, both with different resources would establish some rudimentary trading which would improve with time and technology. But player could actively invest in it as you suggested, if he needed some more intense growth or specific goal to be completed. Trade mission could be also a thing then - protecting caravan with special strategic shipment of marble to boost wonder building, establishing some level of protection on trade route to get some temporary boost there, improving total gold revenue to improve diplomatic relations, securing several luxury resources to a city to unlock new options, etc.

SpacesuitSpiff

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SpacesuitSpiff

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5 years ago

Jun 15, 2020, 12:24:45 AM

Agreed. I ommitted this detail but cities would, by default, draw little trade routes the way they do in EL. These would suck without investment, but there would be some gradual resource distribution. Then the big trade routes would be more like Trading Companies that are numerically limited and need to be set up manually. Trade route improvement projects should probably be locked to the Trading Companies paths, so that we don't have to micro developing every single route (lore explanation: without a Trading Company there is no infrastructure to develop/maintain miles and miles of improved roads).

Not sure about having specific caravans going back and forth. The arguments in favor were explored in civ 5 and I'm sure some people liked that, but focusing on total throughput seems simpler for meshing with the other game systems. Similarly, I wouldn't have specific Brigand units running around on the map, just some terrain texture that indicates they're active in the region and a tooltip that tells how much stuff they take per turn. The system, presented this simply, would imply a ton of activity going on in the trade routes, but only need the player to pay attention to the numbers at each endpoint. This avoids throwing another layer of stuff onto the main UI (and then people try to bring in the army to deal with Brigands because they're drawn on the same layer, which is probably not how this system should work).

That said, giving the trade routes their own UI layer like the hacking in ES2, might help sell an expansion based on trade routes.

Taokr

Lord Adamantian

Don't build in wood when you can build in stone.

Taokr

Lord Adamantian

18 400g2g pts

5 years ago

Jun 16, 2020, 7:17:07 PM

"Similarly, I wouldn't have specific Brigand units running around on the map, just some terrain texture that indicates they're active in the region and a tooltip that tells how much stuff they take per turn."

This is an excellent way of having trade threatened but not annyoing the player with civ 6 barbarians. I would also like to see forts constructed to protect trade and naturally expand borders, with the downside being a maintance gold cost. This way efficent trade networks are protected along with being key defensive points against players and privateers.

Eulogos

Ten Smart

Knowledge is power

Eulogos

Ten Smart

64 200g2g pts

5 years ago

Jun 16, 2020, 9:14:45 PM

I really support that fort idea for a second reason, it makes forts useful. Forts should also block supply lines, in other words if in war an enemy moves their unit past your fort without taking it then that unit is unsupplied and begins suffering attrition. That's a big part of what forts and castles were for in real life, otherwise everyone would just walk around them. Additionally tiles near the fort should have a lower pillage value while it stands, since the people can flee to the fort with their vaulables. Without some kind of function like this forts are entirely useless except the rare situation where mountains or water provide a one tile wide bottleneck.

Updated 5 years ago.

SpacesuitSpiff

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SpacesuitSpiff

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5 years ago

Jun 19, 2020, 9:39:31 PM

I feel like implementing supply lines would be a bit of a nightmare unless it's as simple as "increase upkeep by X% and prevent retrofit while in range of a hostile fortress". And even then that's a little messy. Letting ranged units take potshots from the fortress is simple from a gameplay perspective.

Fortresses with a radius of influence tie in great with the trade route idea, but it's tricky to make them into military obstacles because military obstacles tend to just piss players off. Reducing movement feels bad. Economic and logistic penalties feels bad unless really clearly explained. Maybe the fortresses provide militia units to battles in their radius, ala EL, so you have to get rid of them or risk getting ganked on retreat. But then what happens when people just plop fortresses everywhere? It's an interesting problem; mechanics that make the military system worth playing usually frustrate people because they don't want to strategize, they just want to steamroll.

Aye_Avast

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Aye_Avast

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11 400g2g pts

5 years ago

Jun 20, 2020, 12:18:28 AM

I would highly encourage you to check out how Unity of Command 1 and 2 handle supply. While they are exclusively war games, I think some of the design would work well.

For HumanKind, a city-to-city connection would be based on this "path of least resistance" as mentioned before, with water transport offering the highest efficiency. Players can be presented with a numerical summary if they don't want to bother with details.

For example: (City A to CIty B: 21 Money (5 Money lost to inefficient route, 3 Money lost to bandits)

Eulogos

Ten Smart

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Eulogos

Ten Smart

64 200g2g pts

5 years ago

Jun 20, 2020, 3:03:52 AM

I'm not really advocating for a supply line system. Just if a unit is in enemy territory beyond an unoccupied fort then it gets an attrition debuff which causes it to take a small amount of damage each turn.

SpacesuitSpiff

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SpacesuitSpiff

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5 years ago

Jun 20, 2020, 11:50:04 PM

Incremental damage would be a good way to implement that. It would likely have to be just within the radius of the fort though, otherwise the game has to figure out what is and isn't "behind" a fort and that would get weird quick.

Eulogos

Ten Smart

Knowledge is power

Eulogos

Ten Smart

64 200g2g pts

5 years ago

Jun 21, 2020, 5:30:39 AM

Figuring out what is and isn't behind a fort isn't too bad, EU4 had that system and it was usually pretty clear what areas you could go to and which forts you needed to take to get into the heart of their country. Without it there is nothing stopping enemies from marching straight past your forts to your capital unless you have to have a very convenient bottleneck they cannot walk around.

KrRingo

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