Trading system is totally broken

[HEAVY FIRST RATE]

So apparently your trading routes bombard you with huge amounts of your trade partner's religion and culture to the point that you can find yourself constantly facing religious and or cultural conversions in your own cities. Well you can just stop trading and all other types of interface actions you have with that player , right, right! So why does the map still show a constant flow of cultural exchange into my lands, well, it seems that stopping your trade treaty only stops the flow of goods. religion and culture flow for the other guy - apparently, as near as I can tell, cancelling your trade agreement does not stop the flow of goods you bought from them! In fact, it would seem that you have absolutely no way to stop that flow yourself! Short of a war in the area that destroys the trade route, or I guess if you declare war on the former trade partner, the goods, the religion, and the culture bombardment just keeps on coming!!!

Really, why do I not have a way to just turn off the money tap and cut all physical ties to an overpowering culture or religion. Knowing you cannot stop your own trade routes, except for declaring war I guess, why would you ever start trade with any player in the game ever, since everyone of them has the potential to change to a culture or religion that totally overwhelms you sometime in the game and you have no way to stop contact except through war.

Well, tell me I am wrong about this because I am truly not enjoying the game I am currently playing because you cannot say I don't want to buy from you anymore!

[yutterh]

Only way to stop it is to take the isolationism civic. Besides that, just be aware of what your in for if you start trading next time you play. Check to see if they are an expansionist or aesthest empire, which is subject to change anyways.

[Dorok]

Are you sure the isolationism civic is relevant? There's been plenty problems with this civic and eventually its intended design change. But it's not a civic stopping current trades, it only disable future trades, so in general it solves nothing when you quote the problem.

There's a religious civic to low down foreign faith influence and another to increase the duration of a faith change for a territory.

Otherwise you can also give up on state religion with two options I never tried, still civic. And you can just choose another religion, typically the one dominating if it has a good set of Tenets.

[Dorok]

Sorry for a second post, but I wanted answer OP points clearly.

Trades as a vector for faith and influence:
The problem here is not trades, but have made them a vector. It makes impossible to represent clearly influences.

Stop trades:
In civ you can't stop trades either because they are too important, instead they have a duration. In HK a duration could not work because there's too many trades.

Mechanic allowing stop trades or lower trades are all unbalanced in HK because trades are too powerful, hence limit them is a weak choice. There's perhaps a few cases where it would be efficient but very very few.

Totally broken:
I think it's exaggerate, at least from my point of view.

What's clearly Early Access stuff and related to trades:
- The inability to see a clear table of trades sold to an AI like you can see trades bought from AI.
- The Merchant investment mechanic is non sense currently and its design needs a global cleaning.
Firstly the buy price to the merchant not the resource owner is absurdly high, if AI ever pay those prices no surprise they don't have a good management of their empires.
The buy to merchant is disabled if the buy to owner is disabled so the rare case the very high price would be really justified, thern buy to merchant doesn't work.
Consider it allows some buys before have done trade treaties to the owner is a wrong design because trades are too important and are opened too fast.
It's also wrong to consider it can cover cases where you didn't made trade treaties with resource owner. Because start diplomacy is very easy and fast, because AI refusing trade weaken themselves hence all the mechanic is pushing to many trades with all AIs, and if not weaker play. But this makes merchant investment totally pointless.
- The merchant mechanic still doesn't allow see the list of investment anywhere neither on global map nor at trade diplomacy screen.

Past that, and really give sense to stop trades, this is a whole review of many gameplay elements, starting from Merchant cultures and ending with stability management.

[yutterh]

Originally posted by Dorok:

Are you sure the isolationism civic is relevant? There's been plenty problems with this civic and eventually its intended design change. But it's not a civic stopping current trades, it only disable future trades, so in general it solves nothing when you quote the problem.

There's a religious civic to low down foreign faith influence and another to increase the duration of a faith change for a territory.

Otherwise you can also give up on state religion with two options I never tried, still civic. And you can just choose another religion, typically the one dominating if it has a good set of Tenets.

Yes it is relevant lol as isolationism will stop influence gain even from vassals.

[Dorok]

Hadn't quote the influence thing for this civic, but from wiki it's not clear it matters with Faith, could be just for "culture".

So now it finally works properly? It was broken for trades aspects at the minimum.

EDIT:
Cultural Eradication is the civic I had quoted for influence, I mean stop foreign culture influence, quoted it but always ignore it.

It's another civic that reduce faith foreign influence when you have a state religion. And one more to increase duration for Faith change.

[HEAVY FIRST RATE]

Seriously guys, did not any of you see that in my post I said, that breaking the trade treaty after you have bought some commodities yourself only deletes the other player's trade route NOT YOURS. The justification that the trade system is so complicated that it can't turn anything off does not hold water because it clearly can turn off the other players purchases. You can click on the target of the religious or cultural conversion and it clearly shows the paths of YOUR PURCHASED trades are still open and operating' Not only that, but if you go to the trade treaty chart and click on the commodity you bought, it still shows you as purchased and active and you have no way in any screen that shows this to simply stop buying commodities once you agree to buy them that first time.

This a totally dumb design, stopping the trade treaty should stop the flow of goods both ways simple as that, and, you should be able to stop buying a commodity even if the trade treaty is still active. Seriously, if you are having money problems, do you solve that by continuously buying LUXURIES!

[yutterh]

Originally posted by HEAVY FIRST RATE:

Seriously guys, did not any of you see that in my post I said, that breaking the trade treaty after you have bought some commodities yourself only deletes the other player's trade route NOT YOURS. The justification that the trade system is so complicated that it can't turn anything off does not hold water because it clearly can turn off the other players purchases. You can click on the target of the religious or cultural conversion and it clearly shows the paths of YOUR PURCHASED trades are still open and operating' Not only that, but if you go to the trade treaty chart and click on the commodity you bought, it still shows you as purchased and active and you have no way in any screen that shows this to simply stop buying commodities once you agree to buy them that first time.

This a totally dumb design, stopping the trade treaty should stop the flow of goods both ways simple as that, and, you should be able to stop buying a commodity even if the trade treaty is still active. Seriously, if you are having money problems, do you solve that by continuously buying LUXURIES!

I understand now. Sorry my man, I did read that at first but I think I kind of overlooked the problem if you know what I mean. I think it's probably a bug and is supposed to be stopped both ways.

I suggest making a post in the general section on their official forums. The devs regularly reply there. This could either be a oversite or a bug. Either way bringing it to their attention sooner may get the fix in by the next big update. Otherwise you may have to wait for the update after that.

If you don't want to do it I don't mind making the post on your behalf.

[Dorok]

I read perfectly well, looks more like you don't understand.

Break trade you bought:
You can't but why bother, only for stopping spreading vectors of faith and influence. Otherwise give up on a resource is bad for you. And for stopping vector of faith of influence, yutterh and me answered you, various edict will provide some tools achieving this purpose.

But yeah it's global, I understand it.

You can't broke trades either in civ, bought or sold. I repeat:
Instead in civ trades have a duration. In HK a duration could not work because there's too many trades.

Quote that it's not acceptable a trade is easily break, they are too important, particularly for stability management, if that's what you expect, it's wrong expectation. Stop think it only one way, against AI, remind it's against you too.

And no, the system isn't totally broken, but I already developed that topic in the thread.

[yutterh]

Originally posted by Dorok:

I read perfectly well, looks more like you don't understand.

Break trade you bought:
You can't but why bother, only for stopping spreading vectors of faith and influence. Otherwise give up on a resource is bad for you. And for stopping vector of faith of influence, yutterh and me answered you, various edict will provide some tools achieving this purpose.

But yeah it's global, I understand it.

You can't broke trades either in civ, bought or sold. I repeat:
Instead in civ trades have a duration. In HK a duration could not work because there's too many trades.

Quote that it's not acceptable a trade is easily break, they are too important, particularly for stability management, if that's what you expect, it's wrong expectation. Stop think it only one way, against AI, remind it's against you too.

And no, the system isn't totally broken, but I already developed that topic in the thread.

Dorok I love you man, but you are misunderstanding the posters concern. They are simply upset that trade has unleashed influence and faith overwhelmingly into their territories. They wanted to stop this as they currently do not have enough faith or influence to halt this crossover. They simply wanted to cancel all current trade in order to stop the influx of influence and faith from other nations. They cancelled the trade agreement but found out that current trades are still on going, which is still pumping the unwanted influence and faith into their territories. At least if I am understanding their concern correctly. I'll wait for their post before continuing though.

[Dorok]

I don't see what I misunderstand, but for sure it happens sometimes. :-)

Cancel all trades is not acceptable, civ5&6 don't allow it. Do you disagree on that?

If you don't disagree I'll continue develop. If you disagree on this, can you elaborate?

[brulis2]

Originally posted by Dorok:

...
Cancel all trades is not acceptable, civ5&6 don't allow it. Do you disagree on that?...

In Civ, you can simply wait for the route to expire and then not renew it. There is not that option in HK.

[Dorok]

Originally posted by brulis2:

Originally posted by Dorok:

...
Cancel all trades is not acceptable, civ5&6 don't allow it. Do you disagree on that?...

In Civ, you can simply wait for the route to expire and then not renew it. There is not that option in HK.

Right, and it wouldn't work in HK because there' two many trades, do that 30 times and more, nope.

[Dorok]

Mmm, so yes trades are a spread vector for Faith and Influence. For me a false good design idea because it's not allowing show a clear feedback to player of Faiths influences struggles.

But after a better check of wiki and some saves (wiki seem up to date, but not test), there's good tools against foreign influence, but not much against Faith influence:
- Civic Isolationism but it is probably only "culture" related.
- Civic Cultural Eradication but it is certainly only "culture" related, it is in Culture category.
- Civic State Atheism but you can't keep your religion with tenets instead it's replaced by Atheism.
- Secularism but it seems only stop Religion grievances against you.
- Wonder Tōdai-Ji: +20% turns before being converted by other's Religion on City or Outpost. But that's only conversion time not blocking foreign faith influence.

So:
1. Again, no, allow break trades isn't the proper solution as believe OP, and civ5&6 don't allow it either. But eventually the game could add tools similar to those against foreign influences.

2. Currently the "only" Faith tools are:
- Struggle to have a stronger Faith spreading, many cultures and EB, many wonders (build or capture), Civics Religious Hostility / Divine Mandate.
- Use Prayer building action, preferably with all holy sites (faith wonders included) attached to a unique town to have to use it with only one town. Quote it's a weak tool compared to many Faith cultures, and to edicts with a wide Empire, but it's better than nothing.
- Capture territories with holy sites of enemy religion, optionally destroy them to totally stop their faith production. In practice capture is already a serious blow but destroy is required to totally annihilate.
- Capture territories with EB strong on faith, they'll switch to your state religion unlike holy sites.
- Choose the dominant religion, quite ok if its set of tenet is good.
- Gave up and pick State Atheism.
- Gave up and pick Secularism plus pick Taxed Minorities or Untaxed Minorities so you get bonus in territories changing to another religion than state religion.
- And last point but not minor, quote some tools Faith related are bringing bonus more than more Faith.
Cultures, I quoted Aksumites and Teutons.
Wonders, I quoted Stonehenge but you need also have your religion adopted by other empires. Angkor Wat surprisingly powerful if you dominate with your Religion, and you can combine it with Machu Picchu to spread this power to all towns.

If you focus and put care, it's not that bad, and it can generate long struggles along many eras. It will depend a lot of some AI focusing a lot on Faith and not weakened seriously.

EDIT:
Stonehenge+Angkor Wat+Machu Picchu all in capital, would probably have a huge effect. Angkor Wat alone is weird when your religion dominate.

[Cythal]

For me the spread is too fast. Both culture and religion.

And the spreading mechanic is too hidden from player control. We only have few ways to control it. And trying to expand early game without touching too much of another empire at high difficulty is difficult as expected. Without paying attention, AI can almost kill your culture and religion within a few turns. And it is too inefficient to bring it back to prominence within your empire if you are not playing a culture or religious game.

As to OP this is what I know.

1. Breaking trade agreement only stops future trades.

2. Ongoing trades for resources continue to function ( even when at war? I think so but cant remember correctly ) Our current real life situation is a prime example.

2a extra. Culture and Religion will not spread through ongoing trades when at war. (and through roads, harbours and borders. So you are right in saying that war stops spread.

3. Only way to stop ongoing trade is to ransack some location where the trade passes through. These are visible on the map.

4. To claim a stake for the religion and Culture spread through trade, you need to have more to trade and buy less. As well as the respective Influence and Faith that you need to generate. But is it worth it. There is a reason those resources are called luxuries and to pass up on them to prevent spread of culture is often not wise. Though the Zhou might argue different. "Perhaps you do not need markets when you have deep philosophers and dangerous chariots"

5. However buying other AI resources can also be a way to spread your culture and religion far from your continent if you have a strong one. eventually if managed correctly your culture may overtake others' late game using the right civics, wonders and faith and influence districts.

Early expansion is where the battle for dominant faith and or culture happens most. I think. Once you build an outpost, before trade routes, that touches another empire, you need to proactively watch the spread of religion and culture. Without care yours will be wiped and clinging to a religion that is not practised widely is probably foolish. Good luck bringing it back to prominence. It can be done through various ways. Similarly having the AI dominate your spheres of influence is another recipe for disaster when you choose civics that do not match theirs.

[HEAVY FIRST RATE]

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