The fall of the Camel

[Matthew]

So the Great Camel, conveyer of wealth and knowledge, has been unceremonially executed? No more cashes of great wealth for those who were bold enough to be the first to travel to distant lands to sell what were before hand unknown goods?

So once the land is settled, there is absolutely no use for boats but military purposes? are they now only for transporting weilders of weapons and conveyers of subtrifuge? Thus we know that any ship that ventures into our waters can only have diabolical intent?

[Sarxis]

Let the Camel die peacefully.

The commerce system in Alpha Centauri worked well- it was clean, and efficient. But that system was very 'basic', and didn't offer a lot of variety (which worked for AC, since the only commodity on Chiron was energy credits).

I am looking forward to what Firaxis has done in CivIII.

[Rakki]

I sink the ships of any other civilization i come across anyway, camel or no camel

[Christantine The Great]

conveyers of subtrifuge

They're gone, too. Where have you been?

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Matthew
So once the land is settled, there is absolutely no use for boats but military purposes?

No, I dont believe this is true.

The caravan & freight units are gone together with diplomat & Spy's, yes. But also remember that landbased trade-routes are established, NOT automatically by diplomacy-contacts (as in SMAC) - but by manually building/connecting roads/RR's to other empires road/RR networks. Its seems only logical that you must establish ocean trade-routes manually as well, with ships (although not to each and every coastal-city in that foreign empire, as in Civ-2 - one or a few transit-cities is enough). Late in the game, you can finally connect routes by your airports.

[Father Beast]

I'm of 2 minds about this thing.

Camels and spies are gone, to be replaced with abstractions.

On one hand, I recall all the things I did with them things, and will miss them.

On the other hand, I recall all the things I did with them things, and am glad they have been toned down.

Let's face it, the power of dips has been discussed on this forum, and generally agreed that they need toning down. for the power of camels, I only have to play an OCC game to see how unvbalanced that is. the number one suggestion on the civ2 strat forum is "build caravans, and when you think you have enough, build some more".

I also am relieved that I won't have those occaisions where I spend 300 years moving a camel to find a city gone, changed it's demand, or see someone off the camel in pique. same thing in moving dips, trying to establish embassies.

Look at it this way, They're going the opposite of CTP, which had a unit for every type of way to transact.

[Skanky Burns]

You *can* use boats for peaceful purposes. Just load up some settlers and workers, cart em off to a distant land, and start raking in those rare resources.

Also, you can use this city to build a road network to the civ on that continent, and thus allow trade with them.

I dont think you actually need 'trade ships' to establish a trade network with another civ, instead a harbour in your city and a harbour in one of their cities can complete the necessary network. But then again, you will probably need to contact them first to *know* where they are to trade with... so therefore you will need ships for peaceful purposes. Unless everyone is on the same continent.

[KrazyHorse]

It makes more sense this way; once exploration was done, it was usually up to private enterprise to start trade moving. You don't have to build trade ships; your citizens will do it for you

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
You *can* use boats for peaceful purposes. Just load up some settlers and workers, cart em off to a distant land, and start raking in those rare resources.

Also, you can use this city to build a road network to the civ on that continent, and thus allow trade with them.

Good point.

But then again, you will probably need to contact them first to *know* where they are to trade with... so therefore you will need ships for peaceful purposes.

Yes, I also believe that ships are needed in order to establish new ocean trade-routes. Just trading diplomatic contacts and having a coastal-city available isnt enough by itself.

[Urban Ranger]

I would like to know how espionage will be handled.

Will it be something like MoO? More complicated? Less complicated?

[Bleyn]

Personally, I find it a bit disappointing that the caravans and diplomats are disappearing.

As was pointed out in another thread, just because all of the unique units that have been seen (and probably will be seen at least in the initial release) are military units, doesn't mean they would all _have_ to be military in nature.

It would have made sense for a commercial civ to have a unique unit that was an improved caravan, or an industrial civ with an enhanced worker as their UU(could still happen). Sure you might have to expand the range of allowable UU-based GA triggers, but I think it would be worth it for them to do sometime down the line.

Furthermore, even with what we know now, I could see making the Phonecians as a custom civ with Commercial as an attribute and the Trireme(upgraded galley) as their UU. Maybe give it an enhanced cargo capacity if possible.

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by Ralf
Just trading diplomatic contacts and having a coastal-city available isnt enough by itself.

Thats why i had this part:

instead a harbour in your city and a harbour in one of their cities can complete the necessary network

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
I would like to know how espionage will be handled.

Will it be something like MoO? More complicated? Less complicated?

I agree. Below is the only info we got so far, to my knowledge.
Dan Magaha, Firaxis in http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=27277

"And you might as well know that Diplomats and Spies have gone the way of the caravan as well; this is all abstracted to advisor screens and game interfaces."

Originally posted by Bleyn
Personally, I find it a bit disappointing that the caravans and diplomats are disappearing.

Micromanaging 2-3 routes per city was a rather tedious with 15-20+ city-empires. Also, thanks to those city-indevidual standalone foreign trade-routes, you couldnt embargo/ be embargoed easily in Civ-2. No economical warfare was possible. Finally, the AI has its well-known limitations then it comes to navigating its units just as effectively as the human player. Therefore, the more they can stuff it away in appropriate manager-screens, the better it is.

[Warm Beer]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
I would like to know how espionage will be handled.

Will it be something like MoO? More complicated? Less complicated?

Perhaps there will be none or little. I can't imagine it like MOO, all things concidered. That is one aspect of the game we have heard nothing about.... or maybe I missed something.

[Sarxis]

I do hope there is an aspect to the game that involves espionage. This 'Dark Art' would be fine if it were played in the shadows- in the background so to speak- without actual units. But I still would like to see something more than "Pay this amount in gold and you can see what your enemy is up to".

Almost October- guess we'll know soon enough.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Anunikoba
I do hope there is an aspect to the game that involves espionage. This 'Dark Art' would be fine if it were played in the shadows- in the background so to speak- without actual units.

Good point! Why should they be clearly visible as units?

But I still would like to see something more than "Pay this amount in gold and you can see what your enemy is up to".

Good idea. In Civ-2 you had to pay a resource-cost for your diplomats & spy's. In Civ-3 you dont have to build them - but the information they provide shouldnt be costless. Especially not then it comes to advanced spy & sabotage-activities. Establishing embassys should be connected with an one-time cost.

[Earthling7]

I'm happy. Two things I hardly ever bothered with was establishing embassies and building trade routes. You could communicate without an embassy and the economy model was so unbalanced that trade was never needed to make cash.

I am looking forward to seeing the changes

[Chronus]

I'm also going to miss the camel. I enjoyed the challenge of having to escort a fleetload of goods to some far off destination. The measure of success I felt was high because the accomplishment took a bit of work. The game payoff (cash & bulbs) was usually worth it as well (not to mention all the wonders I snatched). Conversely, failure to get my camels there (and on time) was dissappointing . . . but I liked that feeling under those circumstances. It created a high-risk/high-payoff element in the game.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Chronus
I enjoyed the challenge of having to escort a fleetload of goods to some far off destination. The measure of success I felt was high because the accomplishment took a bit of work.

Well, I didnt like the camel-micromanagement, but I nevertheless understand your point. If one dont have to work for it, one wont appreciate it much either.

The latter is why I never liked the SMAC-solution; all you had to do basically, was to establish comm-link frequencys with all factions + maintain treatys with at least 2-3 of them, and you got enough trade automatically. And since you easily could trade yet unknown comm-links from 1-2 already known factions, it didnt took that long to get full access to all of them, without having to move out much and find these factions.

Now, what to do? Well, it seems to me that the Civ-3 team have come up with a good middle-ground solution here. Just establishing embassys with peaceful civs isnt enough. You must manually build roads and connect to foreign road-networks as well. Also, just building coastal cities isnt enough either. Logically, you should manually go out and discover/uncover any foreign coasts with your ship-units - and by that establish ocean trade-routes. Im not 100% sure about the latter, though. I really hope it isnt enough to just trade political contacts and/or maps with these foreign Civs + founding coastal-cities, in order to get automatic ocean trade-routes.

True - each and every of your cities must no longer produce caravan-units. Its now enough to move one ship from its coastal-city to any island-based foreign coastal-city, and any cities that is road-connected to these two coastal transit-cities, on either side, gets automatically access to the now established ocean trade-route.

Hopefully, if you have traded an embassy-contact through a middle-man Civ, you get political access - but not trade & recource access. Not until you actually have visited that Civ "physically" with a ship, so to speak. At least I hope that this is the case. An official clarification would be great.

[Ralf]

To be able to enter into trade negotiations with other civs, you need a road connecting one of your cities to one of their cities.

Above I found in this thread. It seems to be an official Firaxis-answer to a guy named Orange, but I dont know for sure. Anyway, I hope above princip goes for ocean trade-routes as well. That is; before oceanic trade-routes is even available in the trade-screen, the player must first physically visit that supposed foreign coastal transit-city, with one of his ships. Otherwise, there is no, or very little incentive to invest in oceanic explorer-journeys.

[Haphazard]

Originally posted by Ralf

Micromanaging 2-3 routes per city was a rather tedious with 15-20+ city-empires. Also, thanks to those city-indevidual standalone foreign trade-routes, you couldnt embargo/ be embargoed easily in Civ-2.

And when you get to 100+ cities it's hand-destroying. Also I don't know about most people, but I never traded with other civs. Why should they benefit when I can get double the trade bonus. I only end up 'liberating' civs I trade with anyway

The Camel. RIP 2001

[KrazyHorse]

Why would you trade with the outside? Because the extra trade is reduced when you trade domestically, and because the instant bonus is much higher for foreign cities. None of that instant bonus goes to your enemies, BTW.

[Falconius]

In the words of that chick who sang "Midnight at the Oasis":

"Send your camel to bed..."

G'Night tedious economic micromanagement!

[Asmodean]

I, for one, won't miss them camels a bit. They were just too tedious to move around. Gameflow over micromanagement, please!!.

Asmodean

[splangy]

umm, Im almost positive that you wont need ships for trade routes, your gona use ether harbours or airports...

[PGM]

The camel is not dead, it's now sitting in a room, making trade decisions and advising us. He's even happy he no longer has to be running out on the sun anymore. And I'm glad too, because checking out and establishing trade routes for 200 cities in civ2 could be a bit boring and tiring sometimes.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by splangy
umm, Im almost positive that you wont need ships for trade routes, your gona use ether harbours or airports...

Well, only one ocean trade-route with that other Civ, is strictly needed as long as both your own and that foreign coastal transit-city are road-connected with respectively homeland-cities.

A ship-unit should be needed in order to establish that one ocean trade-route, once and for all. Otherwise, there is not much economical incentive to explore/uncover the surrounding world at all, since diplomacy-contacts can easily be traded.

Also, most (almost all) empires is likely to establish at least one or more coastal cities, right. If the only additional requirement for ocean trade-routes, is embassy + peaceful relations, then why would anybody ever bother with slowly & laboriously road-connecting with other foreign road-networks? You get your trade-routes automatically anyway, through your coastal-cities, without having to lift a finger.

I would be very unballanced; land-based trade-routes = comparibly slow and labourish to establish. Ocean-based trade-routes = automatically and without any effort. I dont think so. Only in later modern stages, then you have access to airports, it becomes comparibly easier.

[Haphazard]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Why would you trade with the outside? Because the extra trade is reduced when you trade domestically, and because the instant bonus is much higher for foreign cities. None of that instant bonus goes to your enemies, BTW.

Yes, but only if the AI cities were as big/developed as mine, which they usually aren't. I know they don't get the tax/science bonus, but they do get the trade/turn bonus. Oh well. Mute point now.

[Sandman]

Am I the only one who thinks that trading via airports is a daft idea? Airfreight is diabolically expensive, and I can't imagine anyone transporting iron or oil by plane.

As for sea trading, well I reckon that the number of harbours you've got will decide how much overseas trade you can do. One harbour = one resource. So if you want to trade overseas in a big way you'll need a lot of coastal cities. Building ports will allow two resources to be traded.

I read a while ago that naval blockades of ports was in the game. Does anyone know if it's still in?

[HalfLotus]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
You *can* use boats for peaceful purposes. Just load up some settlers and workers, cart em off to a distant land, and start raking in those rare resources.

Also, you can use this city to build a road network to the civ on that continent, and thus allow trade with them.

I like the sound of this!