So...I normally play Pangaea...and I switched to FM for the first time in a long time, probably since I got BtS (see avatar.) Now, customs houses are supposed to increase "intercontinental" :traderoute: by 50%, which, I naturally took to mean "across bodies of water". However, when I teched and switched, one of my coastal cities had "Customs House: 10 turns, Recommended." and when I built it, I think that it increased income. Does anyone want to shed light on this? :confused:

Mouse over one of the trade route's in that city. It will show you the breakdown of the final value. Do note that the +50% is added to the base value of the trade route, not the value that you see in the city screen.

So...I normally play Pangaea...and I switched to FM for the first time in a long time, probably since I got BtS (see avatar.) Now, customs houses are supposed to increase "intercontinental" :traderoute: by 50%, which, I naturally took to mean "across bodies of water". However, when I teched and switched, one of my coastal cities had "Customs House: 10 turns, Recommended." and when I built it, I think that it increased income. Does anyone want to shed light on this? :confused:

My first BTS game was a fractal map with random settings and it turned out to be essentially a pangea map ( 2 tiny islands adjacent to the mega-continent). It recommended custom houses everywhere, and the AI built them in most of its coastal cities. I built a few because I thought there was something I was misunderstanding about it. But when I moused over the trade routes (like the above poster says), I found out that they were indeed worthless. (I checked the ones I built in my cities, and in several AI cities where they were built, using the passive espionage ability).

This is an AI issue. They shouldn't be recommended/built by the AI unless it has at least 1 'intercontinental' route in its screen or the AI can actually identify another landmass that will soon have cities.

Custom Houses are only really useful for Portugal on a pangea map because of the commerce boost. Shame that there isn't a way to define another continent by drawing a line in worldbuilder or something.