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sharing gains with trading (patch included)


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The way trade is implemented is not very reallistic as the owner of the trader will make all the gains. I propose that these gains are shared between the trader and the market. Attached is a very simple patch to do it. In it, the sharing of the gains is 50% at each market, so that when trading between 2 markets, each of the owner of the markets will have 25% of the gains and the owner of the trader will have 50%.

As I like to play with several AIs, some of them being my allies, this new trading is an easy way to help them when needed.

mimo

trader.patch

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There was some discussion on just this topic a while ago here. If The consensus was that whoever owned the market/dock that a trader arrived at would get all the goods. This is to add another dimension to alliances.

Looks like your patch should easily be able to do that with a few simple tweeks. I like it :) You should make the changes and attach it to a ticket on Trac

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In fact, I do not agree that the market should have all the gains. The trader should be rewarded for his work :-) and the risks. But may-be 1/2-1/2 as I did was not the best. I've done a new patch with 1/3 for the trader and 2/3 for the market. But any-way, this percentage is a const variable which can be easily modified in my new version of the patch.

I attach it here again as I do not know yet how to create tickets. I'll have a look at your link.

mimo

trader.patch

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In fact, I do not agree that the market should have all the gains. The trader should be rewarded for his work :-) and the risks. But may-be 1/2-1/2 as I did was not the best. I've done a new patch with 1/3 for the trader and 2/3 for the market. But any-way, this percentage is a const variable which can be easily modified in my new version of the patch.

I attach it here again as I do not know yet how to create tickets. I'll have a look at your link.

mimo

I personally like your original division. It only seems fair since the owner of the trader made the initial investment and is responsible for keeping it alive.

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In my first version, each market would receive 25% and the trader 50%.

In the second version, both markets and the trader receive 33%.

But I guess the exact percentage can be tuned later. The point now is to be sure that we agree this is the direction to go.

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The logic behind the idea to have the market get 100% of the resources was in real life, a merchant wouldn't bring value to his faction until he actually returned his home market. When he goes to a foreign market, his goods arrive in that market, but nothing just magically appears in his own. In addition, this allows you to have your trader trade between two allied markets (and none of your own) without you magically gaining resources.

Besides, I can't think of a single other game (including the AoE series) where your traders give you wealth when they arrive at a foreign market.

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Yes, but in history, civs who were doing trade between two other civs brought wealth to their own civ (otherwise they would not do it :no: ).

But once again, the percentage to go to the trader can easily be modified in this patch if people think so.

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Yes, but in history, civs who were doing trade between two other civs brought wealth to their own civ (otherwise they would not do it :no: ).

That's the thought here too, it's just a question of when/how/how much :) You should still get more resources when trading with an ally, just that you need to wait for the trader to return with that model. As long as you benefit more from trading with an ally than with yourself I'm pretty much ok with either model, though I prefer to only have the profit for the market you reach so to speak so that there is a greater risk combined with the greater gain for the foreign trade :) In other words, you'd have a steadier income rate when trading with your own markets as you'd get income at both ends, but it would not be as much in total as when trading with an ally's market.
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That's the thought here too, it's just a question of when/how/how much :) You should still get more resources when trading with an ally, just that you need to wait for the trader to return with that model. As long as you benefit more from trading with an ally than with yourself I'm pretty much ok with either model, though I prefer to only have the profit for the market you reach so to speak so that there is a greater risk combined with the greater gain for the foreign trade :) In other words, you'd have a steadier income rate when trading with your own markets as you'd get income at both ends, but it would not be as much in total as when trading with an ally's market.

This in fact depends on the way the outcome of trade is computed. Looking at helpers/TraderGain.js, we see that it depends on the distance between markets, plus a 50% bonus when both markets are from a different civ.

so for a given distance and a round-trip, we have

presently (i.e. all income going to the trader) : 1 + 1 = 2 when trading inside our civ

1.5 + 1.5 = 3 when trading outside

so a real push towards trading with allies, but the fact that the ally does not earn anything from this trade is not nice.

with my patch (i.e. 1/3 for the trader and 2/3 for the market), we have

1 + 1 = 2 when trading inside our civ

1.5/3 + 1.5 = 2 when trading outside

so we loose the bonification for external trade which is in fact gained by the ally which get 1.5*2/3 = 1

rewarding the ally was the goal of my patch. But I agree that loosing the bonus for external trade may also be seen as a problem (although helping its ally should already be a good motivation).

having all the income to the market as was proposed by some people in this thread would even be worse in that respect

1 + 1 = 2 when trading inside our civ

0 + 1.5 = 1.5 when trading outside

and the missing 1.5 given to the ally

thus if we want to still favor external trade while keeping some part of its gain going to the ally, we should

- either increase the bonus for external trade

- or increase the trader share (but most people in this thread wanted to decrease it)

- or change the way the trade is implemented

going for example to trader=1/2 market=1/2 as I first proposed would give

1.5/2 + 1.5 = 2.25 for external trade and 0.75 for the ally

increasing the bonus from 50% to 100% would give

2/3 + 2 = 2.66 for external trade and 1.33 going to the ally

I've no preference, as long as the ally gets its part of the cake.

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Good stuff, plus some maths

Yeah, the foreign trade bonus is going to have to be raised, regardless of what happens with respect to your patch. Trade is just poorly balanced as it currently stands. I propose that the foreign trade bonus be raised to 110% so that, even while you'll be getting resources half as often, it's still worth more to do foreign trade.

One last thing that needs to be done still I think is that the tech system needs to be updated to include trading techs. This way, late game trading will be strictly speaking, better than gathering to free up extra population for fighting.

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Yeah, the foreign trade bonus is going to have to be raised, regardless of what happens with respect to your patch. Trade is just poorly balanced as it currently stands. I propose that the foreign trade bonus be raised to 110% so that, even while you'll be getting resources half as often, it's still worth more to do foreign trade.

Please justify this.

I like the idea that allied trade is not beneficial to you but instead helps your ally, it is a fun cooperative element. Also in a standard game your allies market will be further away than your own so it is advantageous to you anyway.

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Please justify this.

I like the idea that allied trade is not beneficial to you but instead helps your ally, it is a fun cooperative element. Also in a standard game your allies market will be further away than your own so it is advantageous to you anyway.

The distance also means that you are at a greater risk as the enemy is more likely to be able to kill your trader, so imho you should definitely benefit more from it than just your ally being helped. Sure, it's cooperative and all that, but we need to give the player an incentive to do it in the first place. I do think you have a point that the benefit shouldn't be too great compared to domestic trade as helping your ally should be part of the motivation, but should at least get something for it.
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Please justify this.

The foreign trade bonus must be greater than double for the foreign trading to be better than domestic trading from a pure resources/time view. If you can get a trader to your allies base, then you can get a citizen solider there and build your own market. If foreign trading is worth double or less than domestic trading, then trade with your own market at that point will be better than trade with your ally (the special case for when foreign trade is worth double domestic trade means you'll get the same resources/time, but in half sized increments twice as fast.)

Though, this ignores the net benefit for the team, which is probably what you're thinking about. When you trade with yourself for 1 unit of resources, a round trip for the trader nets your team 2 resources (2 for you.) When you trade with an ally for 1 resource, your team nets 4 resources (2 for you, 2 for your ally.) I believe your worry is that trading in this fashion, while it balances it for any single player, makes trading unbalanced for the team as a whole.

What we need to do is change the way we're looking at (and talking about) the issue. We're saying "foreign trade is worth double" when what we should say is "domestic trade is worth half." Instead of balancing domestic trade then doubling it (the current mindset) we should balance foreign trade, then halve it. The current mindset will give us good domestic trade and either overpowered or under-powered foreign trade. The "balance foreign trade first" mindset will give us good foreign trade, and poor domestic trade. This is clearly the better option in my opinion.

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The foreign trade bonus must be greater than double for the foreign trading to be better than domestic trading from a pure resources/time view.

No, with the current system you get 1.5 times as many resources with international trade, so for two equally placed markets it is always worthwhile to use international trade. 1.5 times is pretty big already in my opinion. Are you aware that with the current system the owner of the trader gets all of the resources?

Even with the strongest suggestion of 33% going to each of the markets and the trader it is still an equal gain of resources to trading between two of your own markets.

If you can get a trader to your allies base, then you can get a citizen solider there and build your own market.

You can't build in your allies territory, you would need to build and defend a civil centre beyond your allies base to do this.

The distance also means that you are at a greater risk as the enemy is more likely to be able to kill your trader, so imho you should definitely benefit more from it than just your ally being helped. Sure, it's cooperative and all that, but we need to give the player an incentive to do it in the first place. I do think you have a point that the benefit shouldn't be too great compared to domestic trade as helping your ally should be part of the motivation, but should at least get something for it.

I don't see why the player should necessarily get something for themselves, anyone who is silly/selfish enough to decide that it isn't worthwhile just hurts their own team and makes them more likely to lose. I would be happy with a 0.75/0.25 split (or even the current system), I just prefer the idea of it only helping your ally.

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I don't see why the player should necessarily get something for themselves, anyone who is silly/selfish enough to decide that it isn't worthwhile just hurts their own team and makes them more likely to lose.

IMO this is not true. If said ally turns on you, you have effectively been showering the enemy with resources at your own expense, making you less likely to win.

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IMO this is not true. If said ally turns on you, you have effectively been showering the enemy with resources at your own expense, making you less likely to win.

I agree with zoot here, Jonathan. Remember that some teams only stand together while it's benefical for both parts, to defeat a stronger oponent, for example. So what is the point in helping your now-partner if you'll defeat him soon? You won't give him more resources than is convenient, for he can use the resources you gave him to defeat you, afterwards.

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IMO this is not true. If said ally turns on you, you have effectively been showering the enemy with resources at your own expense, making you less likely to win.

Agreed, this, and the fact that you are the one taking the risk (the enemy just has to build a market while you have to protect your traders, or at least risk losing both them and the resources they are carrying), is what makes me think that at the very least you should benefit from foreign trade, if not to a huge degree at least some.

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No, with the current system you get 1.5 times as many resources with international trade, so for two equally placed markets it is always worthwhile to use international trade. 1.5 times is pretty big already in my opinion. Are you aware that with the current system the owner of the trader gets all of the resources?

I think there's a bit of a mix up here. I was talking about my proposed system whereby the market own gets all of the trade resources. I am aware of how the current system works, in fact, I mistook it for a bug and filed a report. >_> Regarding the "1.5 times is pretty big already" bit, I still maintain that a large bonus won't be a problem if we balance with foreign trade in mind. There's no "foreign trade bonus" but rather a "domestic trade penalty."

You can't build in your allies territory, you would need to build and defend a civil centre beyond your allies base to do this.

You're absolutely correct here. Plus, there's a considerably larger initial investment involved in building your own civ center + market when compared to using your ally's market. I'll agree that with the start up costs in resources and especially time, a bonus smaller than 2x will still be quite the incentive.
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I guess this doesnt really fit in this topic, but... In teamfixed games, resource-sending would be a nice feature. Especially to exploit the civ's advantages. There should be some loss(5-15 %) by sending, so that its not too much exploited

The idea with the market owners getting something from each trader that comes to it is very realistic and fits perfectly in to the game play IMO. On the other hand I do understand the objections when it comes to a nonfixed teams game...

edit: On the other hand, I must say... when you win 75 % (or whatever this part could be changed to (90% or something to be less radical and compromise))

then, you really do win relativly to the player you are trading with. You are not really giving him an advantage if ever he turnes against you (you had a much better deal with it them him)

In the mean time, If the teams are fixed, a good player making lots of traders can help a less skilled partner, and in a nonefixed teams game their gains will just ballance/cancel out according to their skill (or traider number if you wihsh)

So I'm all for that suggestion :)

BTW, between 2 markets there should be 2 different routes calculated: one for each direction, to counter those excited camels going straight on each other. (same for workers going to, or coming from a tc to a specific tree, or mine or idk. I know I'm being idealistic here, and that is easy to describe, but hard to implement correctly, but for the markets it's really not that hard, since camels really go form one precise point on the markets eadge to another one on the other market, so insted of going on one road back and forth they could do some kind of a rectangle with eadges 2 camellengths on markets)

also not really belonging here, i guess, but rather to what ever this might point to XD

There was some discussion on just this topic a while ago here.

(looked it up, "time to report some progress and discuss what should be changed/added", but didnt read it all, maybe it has been suggested already)

Edited by alkazar-ipse
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ok then,

compiling the different opinions on this thread, I hope we can reach a consensus if we link the fraction of gain going to the market and the bonus to international trade (for internal trade, we do not mind as both trader and market have the same owner).

so let's take b this "international" bonus (which is 0.5 now). After a round trip, an internal trade will give a gain of 2 while an external trade will give 2*(1+ B). We want that extra gain 2*b to be shared between the player and its ally, with proportions not necessarily equals. Let's call a the proportion taken by the player (i.e. the owner of the trader). We then want that the player gets 2+2*b*a and the ally gets 2*b*(1-a).

with the patch I proposed, which gives part of the gain (when a trader arrives to a market) to the market (proportion f) and part to the trader (proportion 1-f), after a round trip, the player will have (1+ B)*(2-f) and the ally will have (1+ B)*f

so it is enough to take for the proportion of gain going to the market f = 2*(1-a)*b/(1+ B) to have what we want.

as an example, if we keep b=50% for the "international" bonus and want that a=60% of that bonus goes to the player, we should then take f=0.26. So I propose to modify the patch so that the quantities to be modified/tuned are a and b as they have a simple reading in the game, and f would be computed from them.

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I'm a computer science student, and though didnt quite understand your math (admited, i didnt read it more then once)

But I guess What you suggest is surely a possible solution, I'd have said:

as it is now 0ad computes an amount of resources according to distances,

I'd just suggest a percentage (ie 10%) of that amount goes to the market owner (so basicly the trader would only carry 90% of what it does now).

If it's your own market, there is no difference.

Only change is your market can chose which resources it gets, maybe

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