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I believe giving the player the option to choose what territories you be giving away would be best with the option to release big vassals or city states.
The second place goes to @Todie , whose thread entitled "Toggleable quick-&-auto import" received 25 votes. He also added some further reflections in the comment section, so feel free to check it out as well.
The trade system in patch 1.5 is arguably in a decent place. There have been many suggestions for deeper and wider reworks to the whole trade system throughout past months, but my goal with this suggestion is rather to make the best of the system that exists now, by honing its implementation, usability and interactions with other existing systems.
As a framing for the general topic of the games trade system, here is some feedback on the state of the trade system in recent patches that seem to be consensus:
The removal of the export-bonus and streamlining of the provincial bonuses
makes it less gimmicky
removes a layer of fun nuance.
only two dimensions of local benefits to importing
keep people fed
keep people happy
(importing for local productivity is extremely far-fetched at 1-3% bonus per surplus of resources)
(importing for local utility is no longer a thing)
Managing imports and exports
Managing imports (and potentially exports) manually give the player detailed choice of what resources to trade and with whom, with impact on economy and diplomacy
Pops generating trade routes in 1.5 makes urban provinces all over, grow their import capacity in a dynamic way.
There isn't enough UI information about how the number of trade routes from pops gets computed in each province
Automating export-acceptance
Is convenient
works ok alongside the ability to forbid the export of certain goods
the UI tools for configuring automated exports are quite blunt - you can't configure exceptions on a province or region level and you cant favour or forbid certain trade partners
Automating export-acceptance removes most direct strategic player choice form this aspect of trade
Managing imports manuallyis not optional, and quickly gets overbearing.
Ties to other existing systems
cities and concentrations of slaves generate growing surpluses
terrain, buildings, inventions and laws provide options to make goods production more efficient (fewer slaves per surplus)
tools exist to move slaves to create and keep surpluses. these are OK but could use better UI and logic
Ties to diplomacy don't come through in gameplay the way they should
ties to warfare, blockades and occupation are almost non-existent.
colour coding:
GOOD
OK
BAD
CRITICAL
These two suggestions are focused on addressing the lack of any automation-option for imports - This is clearly the single most requested feature with regard to how trade works in 1.5 - Key for its usability - as soon as a player country starts getting more provinces with more trade routes and routes start getting cancelled regularly, it becomes a chore to keep up with, to the point where players rarely make consistent use of all their trade routes and very rarely make conscious decisions about what to import and from whom.
Toggleable quick-&-auto imports
The matter of combining usability and active choice
Quick-import and auto-import would take the form of adding four buttons in the province UI or import UI
One button for food, one for luxuries one for resources and one for commercial.
The game could use some algorithms to determine some priorities for what to import given from the choice between the three categories (not unlike the algorithms that determine what governor-policies will be enacted when a new governor is put in place of a region)
Enabling one of these quick-trade options would seek to use available unused routes in the province on available goods in this category. If the toggle was left enabled, the quick-trade would stay on auto - continually seek to make new routes using the same algorithm (once per month or however often would be appropriate for performance).
To give an idea about parameters of the algorithm: quick-trading for food would prioritize grain higher if the local food-supply is low or shrinking, and prioritize more valuable foods like livestock and honey if food-supply is plentiful. quick-trade for luxuries would be based on how much unrest is generated by pops of different types throughout the province (and/or on the happiness of non-slave pops). quick-trade for resources would look to first import one of each and then prioritize imports to boost economic output (elephants. Iron for tax, dates for commerce). The "commercial" option for quick-import would prioritize a balanced approach with focus on expensive goods. Enough food for a small surplus & medium food-storage, enough luxuries to stabilize province loyalty if possible and some resources if the others could be fulfilled. (capital provinces would need some additional layer of logic to account for capital surplus bonsues - to the extent auto would be used in capitals at all)
Trade relations favoured trade-partners and embargos
The matter of deliberate choice of trade-partner in an automatable system:
It was very welcome to get an option to automate trade-acceptance back in the 1.3 patches, and to block export of certain goods in 1.4. what gets lost when these systems are automated though, is the flavour and nuance that deliberate trade-relations can give to international relations.
My suggestion to address this, in conjunction with quick-trade, would formalize the numbers for AI willingness to accept an import request into the concept "Trade relations", that would also exist for player-controlled countries
There ought to be a number on trade relations, a number representing the proclivity to accept an import-request AND the choice of importing from one partner over another within the quick-trade system.
AI countries should make their import requests through the quick-trade system outlined above, all trade-requests would be parsed together, on a tick every 1-2 months, linking together trade partners in accordance with a combination of supply, demand and trade relations.
Essentially, any import request would check against every available exporter in range with mutually positive trade relations, and complete the route in cases where trade-relations are better than with other requesting countries. a seller's market of sorts.
As mentioned, trade relations halfway exist already, as represented by AI reasons to agree to an export something to you or not, listed in trade UI on import-goods mouse-over. this willingness is based on a combination of availability, opinion and diplomatic reputation. (however, lacking any automated imports, the player cant systematically interact with trade relations, because goods level of availability is binary - either it's available or not, at the moment of purchase, it doesn't matter who else would want to buy it)
A dedicated number for trade relations between parties would still be based on opinion - the exporter's opinion of a potential partner.
To add player choice to this, Give players (and AI) the option to favour potential partners by giving them "trade favour" in increments of something like 20 trade-relation, through UI-elements in diplomacy or trade-tab. Give trade-favour three tiers (+20/40/60) and an option for trade-embargo. of course, these options would come with impacts on wider diplomatic relations - especially embargos. diplomatic implications would be smaller and more quickly fading than those from insults. Insults would effectively function like embargos in a lot of situations, but ones that cant quickly be lifted and that have a more instant and lasting impact on opinion. (because trade-relations are based on opinion, and opinion ruined by an insult can usually not recover quickly.)
In summary, these two suggestions would tweak and frame the existing trade-systems in ways that let players and AI countries use trade on a more level playing field, giving more meaning to sustained trade relations, and much more easy access to strategy in choice of what to import and from whom - without committing to completely overbearing micromanagement as presently.
I'm not sure exactly how to best make such a system work in conjunction with existing instant point and click one-by-one trade-route creation any day of the month, but I'm sure it'd be well worth making some concessions on that system to make room for something that works better in larger scale play. (either way I suppose you'd still be able to import manually at any time from the goods that were still available at the last months trade-tick). Another outstanding question would be what to do with domestic trade; if the automated import system would continually cancel some of the domestic routes it made when lacking other options, etc, but that is a technicality.
With auto-trade and trade relations working in tandem I can for example see situations where Egypt and Rome will often have even more reasons to maintain good relations, making Rome get dibs on most of the Egyptian grain, this will make it so that other countries looking to import food may have to settle for fish and vegetables more frequently. an embargo, insult or other diplomatic complication may notably interfere with the trade between two countries in ways that are not as binarily " on/off" as currently; if Egypt starts favouring others and Rome has not improved Egyptian relations, it will get harder to get that grain and papyrus, but they may still get some of it, and they may still get plenty of other lesser goods from Egypt.
Thank you for reading, contributing and voting on the forums!
Okay, so I got a decent amount of support for my suggestion these last two weeks, so here's the improved version for this week.
Tribal mechanics in this game... aren't that realistic. This suggestion seeks to improve this.
For one thing, every time a migratory tribe settles down, the entire tribe settles down. This isn't realistic. Instead, whenever a tribe settles down, its chiefs should consider whether or not they want their clans to settle. Some may wish to continue migrating. As such, I think that it should be an option for them to do so. The AI could decide this based on traits and random chance. This would allow certain tribes to be in different geographical areas, as the Goths - and even, in the distant past, the Indo-Europeans - did. This would ensure that migrating is a very political process, which would aid historical accuracy.
How migrations work isn't that great either. They could be improved by changing a few things. For one thing, there should be a list of areas where tribes can naturally reach and a "migration cool down". The tribes should choose a specific area within their natural reach to migrate to, and that should be where they will migrate. Once they have done so, they should not be able to migrate again for a set period.
The "natural range" will not necessarily be states that border the tribe. However, if you are resettling your pops in the target area but must pass through other states first, there should be a chance that these states mistake you as invaders of their territory, in which case you will have to fight them.
In addition, there should be a "tribal mission tree". This would allow tribes to migrate when it makes logical sense for them to do so, although a player won't need to follow it.
Also, similarly-minded tribes who are living near each other should be allowed to ally and move to new lands as one force - perhaps this alliance would lead to the creation of new tribes, united in pursuit of new lands?
You are expecting too much i think. I would expect, suggestions are primarily used as inspiration. if some suggestions end up bearing fruit to features /content in the game, we're likely not going to see that until significantly later down the game-development road.
... suggestions can still be a great way to guide attention towards game-design problems and solutions though..!
You are expecting too much i think. I would expect, suggestions are primarily used as inspiration. if some suggestions end up bearing fruit to features /content in the game, we're likely not going to see that until significantly later down the game-development road.
... suggestions can still be a great way to guide attention towards game-design problems and solutions though..!
I read the instructions and I already know the devs want this just to get some inspiration and it would be naive to expect the devs are going to implement all of them just for being the most voted.
But I still wonder if the devs like some of them so much they consider to implement. The most voted suggestions are 15 right now. I am sure they liked a lot at least 2 or 3 of them. Could be?
I read the instructions and I already know the devs want this just to get some inspiration and it would be naive to expect the devs are going to implement all of them just for being the most voted.
But I still wonder if the devs like some of them so much they consider to implement. The most voted suggestions are 15 right now. I am sure they liked a lot at least 2 or 3 of them. Could be?
Could be! but I would still not expect them to be shouting it from the roof-tops about one particular suggestion or another.. and I think, even if several devs would like one or more suggestions there are still a lot of other considerations in production & development that we can't be privy to the details of - existing plans and priorities etc.
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