seeking your thoughts -Markets for resources (M.U.L.E. auctions )

[Drybean]

i read the other day - i think it was on the Civ 3 website - a little piece asking about the possibility of a Civ 4. The reply was something to the effect that Civ 3 currently has all of the things that they would want to include . . .

Well, I was thinking about this today and I had an Idea for another version of Civ - or at the very least, what I think would make a pretty cool expansion pack.

Does anybody remember the game M*U*L*E from the good ol' C-64 days?

Well, what if you set up Civ so that at the end of each turn you went to a world-wide market for strategic resources.

If we take iron for one example: instead of having one square with iron be enough for all your iron needs, you would have squares that could possibly yield different amounts of iron. There would then be a calculation at the end of the turn to determine how much iron you needed to meet your production needs for that turn. If you had a surplus of Iron, you could try to sell it on the open market for gold, or stockpile it if the demand is not there.

I think you could run through a miniature market for each commodity just like there used to be in the game M*U*L*E. The only major change I would like to see would be the ability to switch between Buyer and Seller at anypoint during the exchange.

For those who are not familiar with the game M*U*L*E, the market was represented by having a character on the screen for each of the players. If you wanted to be a buyer you were positioned on the bottom of the screen, sellers were situated at the top. When the opening bell sounded, sellers would move down and buyers would move up. The player out front on either side pushed a line that represented how much money they were willing to buy/sell for. When two people met at a price the commodity would begin to transfer from the seller to the buyer, and the money would go from the buyer to the seller. When either side had bought/sold what they wanted, they would just pull back and the next group would meet at a price.

I see this as a 'spot market' that would supplement the current long term trading system. Since the luxuries are only used for making people happy, there would be no need to have them included in the market. However, you would still want the ability to trade furs for iron. So, you could tweak the current trading system to include a quantity for each Strategic Resource (I want furs - I give Iron [10 units/turn]) like you currently do with gold.

everything in the spot market would be based on paying in gold.

In Civ, they could make it so that if you are not able to acquire enough of a resource some production would be lost. Maybe you could rank your cities - say that Washington gets all the Iron first, then NY . . . then whatever is left goes to Palo Alto. Maybe it would default to a pro rata cut so that if you were 10% short on Iron all cities would suffer a 10% reduction in production. I think there is room here for some interesting play. Maybe shortages of other commodities could have different effects- short on saltpeter, your musketmen become less effective, etc.

I suppose this could also bring in new improvements - warehouses, oil storage tanks, etc - to store extra commodities in, or they would not be able to be carried over from turn to turn . . . more cities with warehouses, more commodity you can store.

So at the beginning of each market session you would see what your current level of a particular resource, then what you produced that turn, then the net effect of any long-term trade deals. This would show you your starting position. You would then have a marker to show how much you need to meet current production, and how much room you have in the warehouses to store extra.

Maybe a 'rush build' would require a combo of money + stored resources.

Maybe this could also bring in more options for espionage. I think it would be useful info to know what a competitors needs were, and whether or not they had anything in storage. . .

There are a lot of little details that I have thought about concerning what this aspect of the game would entail - but I fear that I have already written more than most people will read. I would like to hear any other thoughts you guys would have on this type of addition.

Thanks,

DB

[Incan_Warrior]

I've seen other posters come up with similar variations on the strategic resource situation in Civ 3 - and I agree they could be tweaked and in effect improve the game. If you look at other strategic, builder games, resources are either infinite (WarCraft III) or can be 'flagged' (the Heroes series) - so every player has an opportunity to build everything. The strategy comes less from obtaining the resources and more from managing them.

What makes Civ3 unappealing is that you either have the resource or you don't. Yes, you can buy resources or beat them out of opposing Civs, but often at a diminishing return.

I think your specific idea would make a long game even longer. Instead, as I've seen other posters mention before, tile with resources should produce a numeric value (1 iron tile = 50 swordsmen, 25 knights, etc.) that is easy to manage and allows for a players to diversify their strategy further.

[Drybean]

true it would make the game a bit longer - especially towards the end of the game when all the civs have trade routs, and more of the commodities are discovered. In thinking about it, I could see this part of the game taking at least as long as the actual turn itself-doubling the time it takes to play the game. I figured that not everybody would enjoy that level of micromanagement.

I like the idea of the tile producing a numeric value for the resource.

Perhaps these could be different options to vary the degree of involvement that the player has in the economics of the game.

[dunk]

Only if the MULE theme music would play every time I successfully negotiated a deal.



I think it seems a bit complex for Civ. I would like to see a more involved version of MULE, in its own right.