Columbian Exchange

The Columbian Exchange is a situation that portrays the goods from different regions of the world that were exchanged as a result of the ‘First Globalization’. In our game, the situation may happen during the Age of Absolutism, that is, from 1637 to 1737. Although we know that new goods circulated before and after those dates, we decided upon these dates to make the gameplay and pacing of the different situations smoother, and it also coincides with the spike of ‘colonial plantations’ happening in the Caribbean, the East Coast, and Brazil.

In our game, these goods are divided into two categories, ‘Goods of the New World’ and ‘Goods of the Old World’, depending on when they are present when the situation fires. So, as an example, Rice and Horse are ‘Goods of the Old World’, while Potatoes and Maize are ‘Goods of the New World’:

As you see, you can spread both New World Goods to the Old World, and vice versa, with some money and prestige as the cost. This means that the raw material in the selected location will be changed to the new one, opening up a different economic gameplay loop, allowing you to plant highly demanded goods in the New World, which could be exploited via Plantations and Slaves, while also allowing the plantation of goods such as Potatoes in Europe. An important thing: we've investigated the actual spread of each trade good that can be exchanged, so you can only grow its accurate geographical distribution, which also takes into account the terrain features (climate, vegetation, and topography) - meaning, you can't plant Rice in the Alps, nor Wine in certain climates.

This also makes it a very mechanical situation, with no events for it, so I'll just show how it works today: