Trade Post

[Feldfeld]

One particular thing which concerns me in this game is the balance of trading, and the international bonus. I would really wish for trading to be viable in 1v1 games but as things stand, if trading was balanced in 1v1 it would be OP in team games and if it was balanced in team games, it would be almost useless in 1v1s. That is because of both the international bonus and the map size, but particularly the international bonus. My feeling is that therefore the international bonus, although a nice touch of realism, kinda hurts gameplay. Also Carthaginians have international trade as a civ bonus and are also hurt by that.

One solution I precedently thought of was to simply have a bonus for all trade when game settings don't reliably allow for international trade, for example in 1v1s on in no diplomacy FFAs. However this solution looks a bit unintuitive.

But recently I saw that AoE4 has this thing called the Trade Post:

So we could have neutral trade posts spawn in maps, and have international trade bonus apply to them. We could have other bonuses, for example technologies becoming available in a trade post when enough trade has been done with it, or perhaps training mercenaries. There could be an additionnal bonus for traders which relay 2 trade posts, instead of a player market and a trade post.

Also as a consequence, trade routes would not necessarily be in the back, so this also puts more importance to territory and map control.

[alre]

I like it. Isn't it strange that they decided to "come back" somehow, from the more realistic trade routes of AoE 3? I liked that concept better.

[smiley]

The trade mechanics of AoE3 is pretty different. There is a route along which NPC traders travel. Depending on the upgrade, from stagecoach to locomotives. You have to build trade posts along the route in slots and when the trader reaches it, resources will be deposited. Somewhat hard to get right in random maps in a balanced way.

It's a forced mechanic in AoE3, but some years ago, I thought of making specific maps with that gimmick using triggers.

The proof of concept is here.

 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

7 hours ago, Feldfeld said:

One particular thing which concerns me in this game is the balance of trading, and the international bonus. I would really wish for trading to be viable in 1v1 games but as things stand, if trading was balanced in 1v1 it would be OP in team games and if it was balanced in team games, it would be almost useless in 1v1s. That is because of both the international bonus and the map size, but particularly the international bonus. My feeling is that therefore the international bonus, although a nice touch of realism, kinda hurts gameplay. Also Carthaginians have international trade as a civ bonus and are also hurt by that.

One solution I precedently thought of was to simply have a bonus for all trade when game settings don't reliably allow for international trade, for example in 1v1s on in no diplomacy FFAs. However this solution looks a bit unintuitive.

But recently I saw that AoE4 has this thing called the Trade Post:

So we could have neutral trade posts spawn in maps, and have international trade bonus apply to them. We could have other bonuses, for example technologies becoming available in a trade post when enough trade has been done with it, or perhaps training mercenaries. There could be an additionnal bonus for traders which relay 2 trade posts, instead of a player market and a trade post.

Also as a consequence, trade routes would not necessarily be in the back, so this also puts more importance to territory and map control.

I have trade posts in Delenda Est on many maps and I tried to sneak them into the base game with the terrain update (check out the Hindu Kush skirmish map). They are also available in the base game in Atlas and can be used in your custom skirmish maps. I and a lot of others ( @maroder, who also worked extensively on the new map stuff, @wraitii and @Freagarach on the team who have expressed a desire for more interesting maps) do want to eventually have cool things on maps and to extend the biome code to include treasures, shrines, trade posts, villages, dangerous animals, creeps, aesthetic animals, etc. 

[chrstgtr]

Could also just get rid of international bonus. It doesn't really make sense--why should overall trade income increase when there is a middle man? It makes more sense that long distance trade would be most profitable when a player vertically integrates (i.e., when they build a CC far away and build a trade post there). 

[Lion.Kanzen]

9 hours ago, Feldfeld said:

One particular thing which concerns me in this game is the balance of trading, and the international bonus. I would really wish for trading to be viable in 1v1 games but as things stand, if trading was balanced in 1v1 it would be OP in team games and if it was balanced in team games, it would be almost useless in 1v1s. That is because of both the international bonus and the map size, but particularly the international bonus. My feeling is that therefore the international bonus, although a nice touch of realism, kinda hurts gameplay. Also Carthaginians have international trade as a civ bonus and are also hurt by that.

One solution I precedently thought of was to simply have a bonus for all trade when game settings don't reliably allow for international trade, for example in 1v1s on in no diplomacy FFAs. However this solution looks a bit unintuitive.

But recently I saw that AoE4 has this thing called the Trade Post:

So we could have neutral trade posts spawn in maps, and have international trade bonus apply to them. We could have other bonuses, for example technologies becoming available in a trade post when enough trade has been done with it, or perhaps training mercenaries. There could be an additionnal bonus for traders which relay 2 trade posts, instead of a player market and a trade post.

Also as a consequence, trade routes would not necessarily be in the back, so this also puts more importance to territory and map control.

that visual concept is very nice.

[Gurken Khan]

33 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Could also just get rid of international bonus. It doesn't really make sense--why should overall trade income increase when there is a middle man? It makes more sense that long distance trade would be most profitable when a player vertically integrates (i.e., when they build a CC far away and build a trade post there). 

I don't understand the point with the middle man; I also don't understand why you say Carthaginians are hurt by international trade. I think it's historically correct that trading internationally is stimulating trade, if only because other regions have stuff not available domestically.

Spoiler

Fun fact: AFAIK amber from the Baltic Sea was found in an Egyptian pyramid; imagine that trade route, >3,000 years ago...

 

[chrstgtr]

59 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

I don't understand the point with the middle man; I also don't understand why you say Carthaginians are hurt by international trade. I think it's historically correct that trading internationally is stimulating trade, if only because other regions have stuff not available domestically.

  Reveal hidden contents

Fun fact: AFAIK amber from the Baltic Sea was found in an Egyptian pyramid; imagine that trade route, >3,000 years ago...

 

Trade only generate so much income--the amount of food/wood/stone/metal that was actually being carried by traders from one location to another. If you are trading with a seperate party instead of one of your own colonies then the income is being shared with the other party. Thus, the total income you capture is less. For example, let's say Rome traded 100 metal with Carth. Carth would would some portion of that metal in order to facilitate the trade. If, however, Rome captured Carth or built a Roman colony right next to Carth where they could access the metal then Rome wouldn't have to share the trade income and could keep it all to themselves.

The "domestically available" bit isn't relevant because income is determined by distance (i.e., where the market is). The international bonus is on top of whatever trade income the route would naturally give, which just doesn't make sense. 

In other words, trading with a specific trading market shouldn't magically create additional trade income just because it is owned by someone else. If anything, that someone else would want a portion of the trade income bc they are facilitating the trade as a middleman. 

Edited August 8, 2021 by chrstgtr

[Gurken Khan]

@chrstgtr Either I'm confused or you are; metal from trade doesn't have anything to do with deposits? So access to metal deposits has nothing to do with trade?

 

45 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

The international bonus is on top of whatever trade income the route would naturally give, which just doesn't make sense.

It's an abstraction of the benefits int'l trade offers?

 

46 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

In other words, trading with a specific trading market shouldn't magically create additional trade income just because it is owned by someone else. If anything, that someone else would want a portion of the trade income bc they are facilitating the trade as a middleman. 

Again, an abstraction of the benefits of int'l trade? And 'someone else would want' is not how it actually works in-game? So again, I don't get your point of being hurt by it.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

The int'l trading bonus is to tie together the economies of allied players on a team. What is also missing from the discussion is that the way trade works in the game is completely different from trade in reality. In the game, there is no actual "trade" occurring between 2 parties. It's simply a way to gather more raw resources besides chopping it from trees. To make it "realistic" you'd have to exchange 1 resource for another, each amount taken from 1 player, transported by the trader, then deposited into the other player's treasury. A new amount of a different resource taken from the second player's treasury, transported across the map by the trader and then deposited into the first player's treasury. Now, this could be an interesting change in how trading works: a kind of in-world tribute method, each player determining which resource they want from their trading partners, but it's way more complicated than what we have currently, and I don't know how that would work when trading with yourself.

 

[chrstgtr]

1 hour ago, Gurken Khan said:

@chrstgtr Either I'm confused or you are; metal from trade doesn't have anything to do with deposits? So access to metal deposits has nothing to do with trade?

 

It's an abstraction of the benefits int'l trade offers?

 

Again, an abstraction of the benefits of int'l trade? And 'someone else would want' is not how it actually works in-game? So again, I don't get your point of being hurt by it.

There is no need for an abstraction. Trading from far away places is beneficial. Usually trading with a far away place means international, but not necessarily. Given a fixed distance, trading amongst yourself should be more beneficial than trading with someone else bc then you don't have to share the fixed trade. Trading between different countries over a certain distance doesn't magically make it more profitable than trading over that same distance amongst yourself. 

[chrstgtr]

17 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

The int'l trading bonus is to tie together the economies of allied players on a team.

But why give a bonus? It is already beneficial to trade over long distances. Just split the fixed amt of res. 

The abstraction causes a problem, and the abstraction itself doesn't really make sense. So why keep it?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

56 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

The abstraction causes a problem

You still haven't really articulated what in-game problem there is with it, other than you don't like the abstraction. 

[Gurken Khan]

8 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

You still haven't really articulated what in-game problem there is with it

Yeah, I still don't get what the problem is supposed to be, or why trading with someone else being beneficial wouldn't make sense.

[chrstgtr]

16 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

You still haven't really articulated what in-game problem there is with it, other than you don't like the abstraction. 

Read OP post. 

[chrstgtr]

5 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

Yeah, I still don't get what the problem is supposed to be, or why trading with someone else being beneficial wouldn't make sense.

 

17 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

You still haven't really articulated what in-game problem there is with it, other than you don't like the abstraction. 

Read OP post--it explicitly attributed the problem to int'l trade bonus. 

@Gurken Khan Here: There is a market somewhere on the map. Why should it matter if I own the market or my ally owns the market if the benefit is tied to distance. Put another way, if an American company is importing a natural resource from a country in Africa why should the amount extracted increase if the extractor is American or African? The amount extracted is the same. The only thing is how is the benefit split up. If the American company has to pay the African country then obviously the amount of income will be less. 

 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

On 08/08/2021 at 9:04 PM, chrstgtr said:

 

Read OP post--it explicitly attributed the problem to int'l trade bonus. 

@Gurken Khan Here: There is a market somewhere on the map. Why should it matter if I own the market or my ally owns the market if the benefit is tied to distance. Put another way, if an American company is importing a natural resource from a country in Africa why should the amount extracted increase if the extractor is American or African? The amount extracted is the same. The only thing is how is the benefit split up. If the American company has to pay the African country then obviously the amount of income will be less. 

All well-argued.

I wonder then if an "International Trade Bonus" could be removed as a default feature and given to a civ as one of its Team Bonuses*. Persians and/or Carthaginians perhaps.

*There's nothing to say that civs can't have more than 1 team bonus, though we shouldn't get too carried away. It could be a way to make (e.g. Athenians) more relevant in team games if they could have another bonus to fall back on if their primary bonus (e.g. based on a map having water) was not applicable. Perhaps a different discussion though.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

I am in support of removing international trade bonus and instead giving it to the “Gaia market” (or trade post as it is called in aoe4)

In 1v1s and TGs the Gaia market would be in the middle of the map (or in some other fair location).

This means a 1v1 player who trades to the Gaia market can have better trade than their enemy.

I feel this solution removes the gameplay issues of international trade bonus and it also makes trade a more interesting and varied mechanic. 
 

Also the AoE3 trade routes were very gimmicky and forced in my opinion.

Edited September 4, 2021 by BreakfastBurrito_007

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

18 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I am in support of removing international trade bonus and instead giving it to the “Gaia market” (or trade post as it is called in aoe4)

In 1v1s and TGs the Gaia market would be in the middle of the map (or in some other fair location).

This means a 1v1 player who trades to the Gaia market can have better trade than their enemy.

I feel this solution removes the gameplay issues of international trade bonus and it also makes trade a more interesting and varied mechanic. 
 

Also the AoE3 trade routes were very gimmicky and forced in my opinion.

I agree, especially about the last part. Simply building a trading post on the right slot was essentially the entire extent of trading and it was about as deep as a pizza box. Having biome-appropriate trading posts to trade with seems a lot more dynamic than the AOE3 method.

BTW-in Alpha 25 there are Trading Posts on a few of the new skirmish maps by which you can test the concept.