The Cinnamon War: Trade, Imperialism, And Strategic Goods
Why do societies go to war and what do they get from their military adventures?
Introduction
One of the old examples I used for a unique gameplay experience in Axioms was the “Cinnamon War”. This is a conflict a society would fight over their access to Cinnamon. I was eating a lot of oatmeal at the time so I had Cinnamon on my mind but obviously the specific thing doesn’t matter.
Why would a video game society fight a war for Cinnamon? That is a complex question and it is partly addressed in one of the earliest design posts on this blog:
However this was an original “founding inspiration” for Axioms that traces way, way back to 2013 and 2014. Sadly this specific topic does not appear to be one of the ones contained in my original blog, although it does contain early posts discussing iconic concepts, some of which like Secrets are now well known from their use in other games both indie and major. One of my great regrets about not finishing the game in my first attempt, which would have probably result in a 2016-2017 release, is that one unique features are no longer able to be iconic Axioms innovations, because although they were conceived and even mostly finished in code, the overall game was put aside for other aspects of life. You can read the old blog posts at the link below:
Cinnamon And Other Drugs
As you’ll know if you’ve read the linked post about Luxuries and Foods populations in Axioms develop a sort of “food/good/amenity” culture over time where they have staples and iconic flavors and unique architecture which they expect if you want them to have high happiness and a high quality of life rating. High happiness approves their overall opinion of you and gives you the “political/social capital” to convince them to support your various goals like a specific war or a political reform or w/e.
To some degree you’ll have sort of “maintenance” stuff that absorbs your popular support score. Keeping higher taxes, having various restrictions on freedom, levied troops and so forth. Or societal stuff like two populations who dislike each other not constantly feuding. And then you’ll have quality of life and happiness and social integration and personal popularity and authority/legitimacy providing you with political capital to spend.
Now there’s no “political capital resource/capacity” like some games have. Just things that impact quality of life, happiness, your personal popularity and so forth and when people have more negatives than positives you start to get unrest and have difficulty getting people to support you.
Additionally as noted in the linked post populations will compare their society to nearby ones. Do the neighbors have more access to food variety and luxury goods and also staple goods like decent clothes? After all in the modern world the poorest person in a developed country is better off materially in many cases than the upper classes of the past. Yet people aren’t permanently happy yeah?
Finally as noted in the linked post when your populations and characters lose access to something they value you not only lose the positive bonus to happiness but you start a ticking negative penalty the longer they are in want.
Now that doesn’t make cinnamon literally a drug, they won’t have physical health problems or withdrawal or w/e, they’ll just be in a slightly worse mood. But it does mean you probably want to correct this problem as quickly as possible.
You may endeavor to find another supply of cinnamon or you might go to war to restore the old supply, whether that is attacking the producer who stopped supplying you or getting some obstacle like a rival who wanted to hurt your society to know their place. You can engage in all manner of actions to accomplish these goals from diplomacy to intrigue to open conflict to smuggling.
You might even try to find a new route to the source of the good or good you want if the old route is no longer viable for whatever reason. Note that since the game plays out on the map to a unique degree for a map and menu game the cause of your issue could be weather issues, collapsed passes, dried up or dammed rivers, or any number of intentional terraforming or natural climate change issues.
Historically it was very common to engage in a search for a new land route or sea route to some place to make trade easier and faster, even in cases where the old route still worked.
Imperialism
In the section above I’ve laid out the various circumstances that might lead to a military conflict for something of value, say cinnamon, but in this section I’m going to talk about the search for valuable strategic resources and the conquest of specific valuable land, which was often the purpose for historical imperalism. Many nations weren’t off founding colonies in desolate or dangerous places just for kicks. They had specific goals.
Once you’ve identified a valuable crop or material resource you’re often going to want more of it. Whether that is to trade to other societies with a fresh market or to increase your own supply. Many historical powers developed colonies specifically to produce raw materials like cash crops or exotic foods. You can’t just grow chocolate or oranges or mangos anywhere you please. Many valuable crops were moved from the tropics of the Indian Ocean or the jungles of Africa to the Caribbean or the plains of South America. In other cases nations like France used their new world lands primarily for fur trading, often mostly creating smaller Greek style trade colonies that had a monopoly trade with the natives. Other colonial ventures were for mining rare metals in specific places like the silver mines of Potosi.
Axioms is design to allow for a much richer and more complex “colonial” experience. Rather than taking modifiers or abstract “colonial policies” you can engage in an expansive and varied overseas economic adventure. There’s no hardcoded “colonial vassal” system or “trade company toggle”. You’ll need to establish communities and infrastructure at a granular level, although you can assign immediate authority to subordinates as is the case in every other part of the game.
Using the Location system in Axioms and the ability for provinces to contain many populations under many separate “leaders”, forming a trading settlement is very integrated into the core gameplay. And you can have complex agreements over who can settle a given province/region and with what structure.
Additionally because Axioms doesn’t have hard coded “vassal” rules you can maintain a relatively open and varied set of subordinate states including representing tributaries, protectorates, dominions, vassals, and colonies with character/population requirements left to your discretion. Building a Roman style colonia in new territory, having treaty ports, having vassals who had total internal authority while delegating external relations to their superior, and so forth. There are no timers or hard set limitations on what it means to be a vassal or to integrate a vassal or w/e. You simply have to come to agreements with Characters and apply new rights and privileges and responsibilities to populations and then they’ll either accept it or oppose it based on their opinion of you, the populations you are binding them to, and other factors.
This is an older post related to the topic:
I might go back and expand on the details a bit in the future.
Note that you can have pre-defined sets of agreements to bind a new character to, and the AI will be aware of them. And you’ll often “commit” to applying those when engaging in a war. So the enemy characters will know the consequences of losing and this will impact their decisions.
Below are several older posts related to this topic which I think might need an expansive re-write as they are a bit simpler than my newer posts:
Trade And Treaties
Finally we get to trade generally. Axioms contains a large number of distinct resources, including around 200 historical resources that will exist somewhere on every generated world and ~800 procedurally generated resources that will very between generated worlds, mostly including the magical resources like alchemical ingrediants and unique metals and woods and crystals and stuff.
Every province will have at least 1 basic resource for the basic purposes of society. Water, mud, some kind of wood, a basic crop, or a type of animal, some kind of stone. The “historical” resources will often be quite widespread. But resources for more advanced purposes will be rarer with most resources only existing in a few provinces.
Societies will need to expand themselves or create trade to procure the rarer and more powerful resources and to get the breadth needed to engage in fancier production. Decorative stone and metal and wood, food variety, and so forth.
Treaties are pretty wide open for trade. You can allow for direct state exchanges, for trade access for merchants from one or more nations, you can have treaties related to state libraries or academies, so trading knowledge basically, allow for long distance trade routes, set tariffs on societies or individuals, and various other things.
You can have separate rules for sea, river, and land trade, restrict traders by race or religion, have weird rules like treaty ports and or specific locations for various groups, and all that. Specific rules on what goods can be bought or sold and what restricted, certain yearly periods where trade is open or closed.
You can also engage in reules and regulations regarding core territories vs colonies vs vassals. Right of first refusal for subordinate polities for instance. Import and export taxes, licenses and so forth. Indeed you can require licenses for all sorts of things like preaching or duels or private travel.
Conclusion
Axioms does the best it can to allow for the representation of any and all historical systems regarding treaties and trade and diplomatic relations and imperalism adjacent systems and also to provide for totally fantastical options. It also attempts to allow the NPCs to handle different kinds of travel and their advantages and disadvantages such as portals, skyships, river transit, sea transit, and roads and other land transit. You can engage in terraforming like canal building between existing bodies of water as well.
In Axioms trade is connected to the map with real resources and goods and products and construction and you need to have the ability to carry those real and defined things whether with animals or human power, with wheeled transit, boats or later on magitech trains and buses and airships. Civilian logistics and military logistics function under basically the same rules and with mostly on the purpose differing.
Not only can players engage in trade disruption of various kinds but the NPCs will often attempt such strategies based on the strictures of their Consciousness, as detailed in the link below:
How far will the modernization of this game go?